Category Archives: Writing

Media implosion

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09_01newyorktimesWhile the news about the economy in general continues to be grim, the news in regard to the media economy is pretty much catastrophic. Earlier today, my friend who works at a regional weekly newspaper told us about a three-person layoff at their small office (including one of her bosses) and her feeling that newspapers were “pretty much toast” right now. Soon after, I found this article on The Wrap, via MediaBistro, with some pretty grim statistics of its own. The headline doom-and-gloom story continues to be the New York Times, becuase of news like this:

  • The New York Times Co. said Wednesday that fourth-quarter earnings plunged 48 percent and online sales fell for the first time as the recession depressed spending by advertisers. –The Huffington Post

It’s a pretty scary time to be a writer, that’s for sure. As I’ve written on here before, I just hope that being a freelancer in this kind of economy is a good thing, not a horrific thing. But who knows? Not many thought it would get this bad, this fast, in the first place. Yikes.

Photo: Flickr Creative Commons

Please call me back

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There’s an aspect of my writing life that I often just don’t understand — people not returning my phone calls. Now, if I were a scoop-getting investigative reporter calling about your involvement with a certain Mr. Blagojevich, I’d certainly understand not getting a call back. But when I’m calling to get your opinion on whether red is an “in” colour for jackets this year or not, I don’t get it. It’s free advertising, people. You call me back, answer my questions, I put your name in the story and presto! You’re in a magazine and you didn’t even have to pay for it.

Some people get it. And I love those people. They’re always the first to call me back, always the first to help me out or get me what I need. And guess what? Those people, those brands, are the people I go to whenever the opportunity presents itself because I know I won’t have to chase them and that they won’t string me along. They get twice the press (from me) than other people.

I know people are busy. I get it. I am too. But a two-minute call back is just two minutes. And it’s free. And nowadays, what’s better than free??

-KB

Yeah, I do my turtle’s PR

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Harold, basking in his moment in the spotlight. Next thing you know, he'll be asking for champagne and caviar.

As many of you may know — friends that is, or other fans of Harold — my turtle Harold was treated to an article in Toronto’s daily newspaper, The Toronto Star this weekend. It was very exciting.

Since many people have expressed their curiosity as to how Harold achieved such notoriety, it went down like this:

When I saw that the Star had started the Condo Pets column, I thought ‘hey, I live in a condo and I have a pet’ so I wrote in to the email address listed and pitched Harold as the topic of a future column. That was the PR part of it.

The column’s author, Janice Bradbeer, replied and said they would indeed like to feature Harold in the column, as they hadn’t done a turtle before. She sent me an e-interview to fill out, which I did joyously and wrote far too much. Hey, I always do the interviewing, not the interview-filling-out. Which brings me to another point: It was really interesting to be on the other side of the media equation.

It really is a bizarre experience reading your own quotes in a story. I now understand why people will often ask me ‘Did I say that?!?’. Because when your quotes are pulled from the greater point you may have been making, it just sounds weird, even though it’s perfectly correct. It makes you feel a little self-conscious.

So, Harold got his time in the spotlight, and I got to learn what it’s like to be interviewed and quoted in a story. All in all, a successful experiment in pet PR!