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Notes from the “Meet with The Press” session

April 7, 2008

The meeting started with the introduction of the four panelists, Amy McCollough (WW), Luciana Lopez (Oregonian), Ezra Caraeff (Mercury) and Barbara Mitchell (Tribune). Some general questions were asked by Bruce Fife, President of Local 99. These first two sections of the meeting went for about half an hour total, during which I was signing people in and taking contributions to MEAP. I didn’t really hear much of the panel discussion section of the meeting. After the panel discussion there was a Q and A session that went for about an hour.

The questions ranged pretty widely and got varied answers from the various critics. The things they all sounded the same on were that they get a lot of press packs, cds and requests for their time and attention. They also all said that they work with a limited space constraint, so not everything that should get covered gets covered. They want everyone to understand that when they don’t get covered, it’s nothing personal, it’s usually a space limitation or that they were up against a larger act that they were going to cover. It was also echoed that if you don’t get a review this time, that time may still come, just don’t burn bridges by insulting them and then expect them to cover you.

They talked about how a creative description of your band can really help get them to a show. If they’re thinking, ‘I wonder what that sounds like’, it’ll help. They also all preferred email to telephone contact. If you are going to send anything in the mail, they suggested creativity. They all noted that those things that catch their attention are more likely to get covered. Obviously, don’t send them something that will get their attention in a negative way.

They said it doesn’t much matter if the press pack comes from the band or the agent, as long as it is professional. Also, a point was made that if you spell the name of the critic wrong, they probably will just stop reading what you’ve sent them. The point was that you should be careful and check your spelling if you want to get written about.

There was an anonymous question asked (sent in to Bruce) that was about the WW and Mercury’s covering a narrow segment of the music community. Both Amy and Ezra admitted that they are unable to cover everything because they either don’t have a writer who covers it and/or don’t have enough space. Ezra cited his space limitation as about 2 and a half pages.

One comment came from a local singer-songwriter who noted that she had gotten great reviews in both the Oregonian and the Tribune, but the WW and Mercury wouldn’t review her. She asked how to get coverage in their papers. Their responses were essentially that she should just keep trying them, but that they get so many requests to review things, that she shouldn’t be discouraged the first time. The other writers agreed. They all said that if an event or album does not get covered when it is new, it probably wont, but try again for the next album.

There was a question about whether the papers hire guest columnists to write on a given style of music. The answer from each of them was yes. They all said to be creative and professional in your pitch if you want to write for them. Luciana said that they’d recently hired a metal critic “Jason” because he’d pointed out the lack of coverage of metal acts and had made a persuasive argument to be their writer on that scene.

Overall, the meeting was very well attended (standing room only) and went for about an hour and a half total. It was very informative and we raised almost $370 for music education!

Thanks to everyone who came.
Ross

Ross Lampert
Organizer
American Federation of Musicians
Local 99