For immediate release? Pool Tables, Postage and Paper…
Darka Tarnawsky, arts publicist since 1989
Thank goodness Roadside Attractions – the arts touring and marketing company I first worked at fresh out of the Arts Admin Program at Grant MacEwan Community College - was based out of a 70’s style home basement (dark-paneled, small-windowed, and well-suited to a troglodyte such as myself). Fortunately, it also had a huge honkin’ pool table which I needed to efficiently send out media releases in those days.
Yep. I needed the giant table surface to spread out and organize the media release I was sending out about the Royal Winnipeg Ballet’s production of Swan Lake coming to the Jube in Edmonton. The planning started several days prior. There was writing, approvals, inkjet printing, photocopying, folding, confirming media addresses and contact names, prepping labels, stuffing envelopes, adding in a black and white feather (so clever, I know), sealing envelopes, labeling, then sorting into postal code areas to keep the postage costs as low as possible. It involved many trips in my stocking feet around the billiard table. I’m sure I hit the magic 10,000 steps. Then the bundling, the trip to the post office for postage, and seeing my release safely off to the media through Canada Post. Good thing I had the show details correct for time, place, and ticket info. It would be another horse and buggy experience to provide a correction to the many arts, entertainment and community reporters who existed back in the day.
Each media release that had to be sent was a similarly daunting process. I once knew all main media outlets’ postal codes by memory. Journal? T5J 0S1 CTV? T5S 1A8 Those two stick in my mind to this day.
Then the dawn of the ultimate office machine. The facsimile --- where I could print off one copy of the release, create a custom cover page for each media contact, and spend the entire day punching in fax numbers and checking that transmissions were successful. And yet another advancement, the programmable fax (!) where I could hit one button to send a plethora of faxes buzzing in radio stations, newsrooms, and freelance offices around the Greater Edmonton Area. How cool was that?
These days, when we can write and send out a release in 10 minutes or less, it feels silly to look back at the arduous process we once undertook as publicists. But then, we had time to pitch great angles and interview ideas, and develop relationships with rotary phone calls and rolodexes. And news didn’t disappear as fast as you hit “send.”
I miss those days, those phone calls with reporters, and heck, even the jaunts on the shag rug around the pool table, prepping the latest hot tip in the arts world. It had intent if nothing else. And it felt weightier than it does now.
I’m glad I had the experiences I had as the world of publicity changed relatively rapidly with the technology around it. I absolutely love the efficiency of today’s email system. But you know, you can’t put a feather in it.
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