Saturday, November 21, 2009

New York Times, TV Guide, Advertising Age and People Magazine Editors Share New Media Trends and Insights with LA Entertainment Publicists

By George S. McQuade III
West Coast Bureau Chief

EPPS Panel on New York Media


Twitter, Facebook and social networks have become mainstream for entertainment writers and editors Entertainment Publicists Professional Society (EPPS) members learned recently(11-19-09) at a media workshop sponsored by the International Cinematographers (ICG) Local 600 in Hollywood.
West Coast Editor Michael Fleeman, People.com said, “Whether we like it or not, reporters are being dragged into new media, some kicking and screaming about it. You have to know how to do it, and you have to file under deadline.”
“We have a designated Twitter person, and when you see our newly redesigned website in January, you’re going to see something interesting with Twitter,” said West Coast Editor Michael Fleeman, People.com.
Fleeman has been with People.com for three years, which is one of the leading entertainment sites Online. Before that he was with AP for 13 years.
Staff Editor Natalie Abrams, TVGuide.com said they don’t have full time twitter people, but each individual use new media to drive more traffic to TVGuide.com’s websites.
Abrams also said deadlines are important. “The East Coast picks up all morning and we (LA bureau) come in at night, so deadlines for TV shows, interviews with actors and producers that air on Thursday should be up on the home page Wednesday night, so everything is fresh the next morning,” she said.
New York Times Reporter Edward Wyatt, Los Angeles said reporters are being asked to post their stories Online and twitter about it. “Sometimes I record audio interviews or TV interviews and post them on the site,” he said. Wyatt cautions PR Pros to not miss the forest for the trees.  “If you have a webisode that is attracting 50,000 eyes, and you want to tell me about it great, but it the television show associated with it attracts 16 million people a week, that’s the meat of the story.” Wyatt covers the television business in LA. He joined the Times in New York in 1995 as a finance and investing reports and has covered education, the redesign of the World Trade Center site, the 2004 Democratic primaries, publishing business, as well as professional cycling and the Tour de France. He moved to LA in 2006 to cover Television. Wyatt also said he’s looking for national stories, because the Times just doesn’t report on Manhattan stories. “When I came to LA I found we had not done a story on Two-and-a-Half Men, which is the biggest comedy on television and watched all over the country,” he said. “A lot of people in Manhattan don’t watch it, but people in Iowa, Kansas and elsewhere do. So if you bring stories with a national pace, we’re interested.”
Wyatt said his two pet peeves from entertainment publicist who pitch him include: “getting asked ‘who have you been talking to, which is none of your business when I am trying to just do a story”  and when publicist lies to their client, “because what will happen is one day I’ll meet your client at a cocktail party and they will say ‘why didn’t you talk to us to promote this new show of mine?’ This actually happened. I said, “Because I asked your publicist, and he said, “you couldn’t talk for X and Y reasons, and I was there on the set, and you walk right past me three or four times. Just don’t do that (lie).”
(pictured) Andrew Hampp,Ad Age Mag Michael Fleeman, People.com) Los Angeles Reporter Andrew Hampp for Advertising Age echoed other complaints of panelists on publicists’ followup calls on a pitch. “Please don’t pitch me after you received a big NO from another editor above me,” he said. “We are still a work in progress, and started our website three years ago. We have separate website and magazine editors and then we share editing staff. It’s about 99 percent original content on the website. There’s not much overlap between the magazine and website. The site is shorter, faster and more newsie, breazier and a younger user,” he said. Hampp said the print version deadline for  Ad Age magazine is Thursday or early Friday, and the AdAge.com has a daily and weekly newsletter so there is much to choose from through the week. He says deadlines are many at AdAge.com
Hampp’s pet peeves of PR Pros is that second followup phone call he receives after the press release has been received.
“I think my biggest pet peeve is just the coordination on events,” said TVGuide.com’s Natalie Abrams. “ I’ll get three separate emails a network publicist, a studio publicist, a show publicist or a personal publicist for the actor, and it is all on the same thing, making it hard to decide who to respond to, so coordination on that end would be good,” she said. Abrams also agreed with Wyatt about lying, “if you don’t want it out there that your client is going to be killed off of a show, or that your show has been cancelled, we can embargoed it, just be honest with us.”
Natalie Abrams, staff editor, TV Guide.com is the west coast Staff editor at TVGuide.com, a one-stop entertainment and video content destination serving more than 20 million unique users per month. From television spoilers to insider scoops, Abrams breaks the latest in entertainment news. Since joining in September, 2009, she landed exclusive interviews with some of the hottest celebs including the cast of Glee, Lost, Grey's Anatomy, 24 and 90210 among others.