NOTE: This is the information for publicists and tipsters—NOT for freelancers looking to pitch us a story.
To propose a story to Newcity’s editors and writers, please read the following:
MAIL: Newcity endeavors to reduce unneccessary paper waste, not to mention unneeded postage expense for its coverage subjects, many of which are nonprofits. Unless you are sending a physical object—a CD, DVD, book, bottle of tequila, etc.—please submit press releases by email only. Do not mail. Most of Newcity’s editors and writers never visit our offices, so every day we recycle painful amounts of mail that will never get read.
CALLS: Unless we’ve called you or otherwise reached out to you, DO NOT CALL US. It will not increase the chances that we’ll cover you and it may reduce them if you catch us when we’re cranky and on deadline. And please keep in mind that we get hundreds of emails a day so, for the love of god, do not ever think of calling us to confirm receipt of an email. We have no idea. We’re spending every minute going through those hundreds of emails and your call just meant, ironically, we might not get to yours in time. Not to mention that we’re probably on deadline, and might bite your head off, which forces us to wallow in remorse a few minutes after your call, because we really don’t want to be jerks. So if you’re worried that we didn’t get something, send it a second time. But please don’t send it more than that.
PHOTOS: If you want to send along photos, fine, but keep the quantity and file size reasonable, that is, just a couple images and file sizes in total under four megabytes. If we need more, we’ll ask. Also, do not embed captions into photos but rather include them either in the email body or a Word file. Since we post photos directly to the Web, captioned photos are nearly worthless.
EMAILS: As outlined above, email is the preferred method for conveying pitches. Not a DM on Facebook, Instagram or Twitter. Please do not send Word attachments, but rather put the release text in the body of the email itself. We might actually read it then. It’s okay to ALSO attach a Word file if you have one, but the relevant info should be available without it.
In April, 2009, Newcity implemented a new email structure for publicity submissions, and we updated it in August 2012. Each section, as outlined below, has an address for all the writers and editors. (We used to have a separate address for calendar listings, but we don’t publish those anymore.) Feel free to send us stuff personally as well, if you are already doing so, but do not expect us to forward them on. If you want editorial consideration, make sure it goes to the appropriate editorial account. Releases sent via postal mail will not generally be of any use at all since we throw them away, unopened.
Newcity Today: Our daily compendium of everything culture-related in the Midwest
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Writers and editors: [email protected]
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Stage (Theater, dance, opera, comedy and performance in print and at newcitystage.com)
