Michael J. Media

YOUR MONTHLY DIY TIP FROM MICHAEL J. MEDIA-- March 2009

March 2009

Respect Your Editors

If you’re an independent artist with a new album or soon-to-be new album, and you’re doing your own PR, I would like to offer a small but very important bit of advice to you.

Respect your editors.

Read that back, because I didn’t say “elders,” though I do believe that is also important in today’s world as general respect isn’t always a given anymore. But respecting the editors you pitch your product and your project to is vital if you want them to consider writing about you.

Not only should you be polite on a personal level, keeping your e-mails and other correspondence brief and to the point, but you should respect that they don’t have to write about you. They usually need to be convinced of your relevance, and it helps if you consider what they are up against—namely, deadlines. Even if newspapers or magazines are slowly gravitating to online versions, that doesn’t mean they don’t have deadlines that you should honor. If they tell you what that deadline is, do not ignore it.

The same goes for interviews, or sending editors and journalists information when they ask for it. Nothing spoils a PR party more than an artist not being available for an interview when they were supposed to be, not getting e-mailed questions back to the editor in a timely manner, or not giving them a photo or the ticket price of a show when they ask for it.

Most of you who do PR for a living are nodding in approval right now, because you know how important your relationships are with the media. True, some journalists or editors go out of their way to ridicule publicists, but that’s usually because they have been beaten down by bad pitches and unprofessional folks who do not respect the intricacies of their job. That, and there are a few bad eggs who give everyone else a bad name.

But the best way to make friends in the editorial world is to be professional, and to show the respect you would like in return.

Thanks for reading!

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Thank you!