An update on last Friday's work sequence. It's like it suddenly occurs to [boss] that she's the boss, at exactly 11:40 every Friday. Because even though on Monday, I contacted reps from two choral/arts organizations to get that announcement in their next publication, and emailed the Arts Editor of the U-T to find out about getting some print space there, today at precisely 11:40 a.m., she brought it up again.
"Okay, Elle, why don't you start making calls to set everything up for next month?"
...Calls? Next month? "Calls to whom?" I asked, thinking maybe she meant to set up auditions (something my calendar says I'm supposed to do next week).
"The people with the announcements. Make sure they got your emails - call the arts editor at the paper and see if he got your article..." (I had attached the article-length announcement I'd written for our own newsletter, to give a better idea of the information we wanted him to print, and, yeah okay, in the hopes that he'd love it and hire me for exhorbitant amounts of money.) Then she said, off my I-don't-really-wanna-do-that look, "What if he offers you a job as an investigative reporter?!"
"I'd hate it. I'm not investigative. I don't like making phone calls and annoying people who probably don't want to talk to me." Like right now, for example.
"Oh. Well, call him anyway."
"I can't. There's no number. Just an email address. That's why I emailed."
"Well, google it. I'm sure you can find the number; you're so good at finding things online!"
So I googled it, got onto the U-T's contact page, and then tried again. "There is no phone number. All the sections just have emails. The only ones that list phone numbers are News and Editorial."
"Yeah, call that one! Because he's an editor, right?"
"No, Editorial like Opinion."
"Oh. Well then call News. This is news."
"No, this is definitely Arts. News is like breaking news. Trust me - the news department doesn't care about the arts."
"Just call them anyway; maybe they can put you in touch with the right person..."
I looked her right in the face. "No."
I almost added the classic, "What are you gonna do, fire me?" I was ready to collect my things and go, knowing I could come back Monday no problem. But I held my tongue, just in case. She asked me for the phone number for the News Department, wrote it on a Post-It, which she then stuck in the void that is her purse, and didn't say another word about it.
I went out to get the mail, and when I came back, all she asked was whether we'd gotten any donations. So really, the newspaper thing? Must not have been all that important after all.
Seriously though.
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I can tell you right now: I do news AND arts (and dining and events...) and I get annoyed like nothing else when someone calls me with an arts thing and acts like they're handing me a scoop.
Actually, I get annoyed when people call me with arts info instead of e-mailing it to me, but that's my issue. So yeah, you should call the arts editor or the events listings person. And tell yer boss that a newspaper will blackball you if you annoy them.
(Not really. But I did blackball a restaurant listing -- just this week -- because its owner called one of our freelance writers a "stupid slut." I don't need to help that man.)
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