chocolate and counterpoint as if i weren't already distracted enough, a pr volunteer agent gushes she's going to pay me in chocolate for a little more info on how the wire service i work for works.

there is a chocolate festival in remote suburban long grove at the end of the month, and of course they want more coverage. more coverage is free publicity. free publicity means freeing up more funds for other activities. other activites for sponsors to contribute to, like sending chocolate to media outlets who give you the time of day. more publicity means more people might think of coming to town. the more people come to town for the festival, the merrier for the small town's budget. voila.

so i told her, if you are someone willing to pitch something to a writer up in her ears in paper - and she's only started her shift a mere two hours ago - you should put it all in writing, preferably:

WHAT IS GOING ON
WHO IS INVITED
WHO IS GOING TO BE THERE
WHAT TIME
WHERE
HOW DO WE GET THERE
WHAT IS YOUR CELL PHONE NUMBER because we usually get lost in the suburbs and will need directions to your event.

and then we'll decide whether we should drive out there to see.

trying to decide whether a story is interesting enough to pay attention to takes two seconds and costs very little (time, i should say. costs very little time). so pitch away, i say - it's a lot better than us having to dig around for news. you don't want to know what we find sometimes.

some writers will hurry up and hang up the phone because they want to go back to work (or blogging, ahahaha), but i try to be different. pitch all you want, and don't worry that i ain't got all day - i'll let you finish. i like stories told without concurrent counterpoints. they're pretty rare. :-)  ¶ 4/22/2005 04:29:00 PM