More Vanity Fair

In my last post, I looked at Vanity Fair‘s music issue from the viewpoint of its editors. Why did they pick the two classical artists they included?

Now let’s look at it from the outside in, from the viewpoint of the classical music world. Why isn’t there more classical music in Vanity Fair, and especially in its music issue? Suppose I ran the Cleveland Orchestra. I might ask myself, “Why aren’t we featured in the magazine this month?”

I can think of four answers (not that there might not be more):

a) We don’t belong there. Vanity Fair is commercial, slick, and trendy. We’re artistic and refined.

b) We’re too dorky. They’re not interested.

c) Even though we’re a vital musical group, and far from dorky, we don’t know how to create events that get on Vanity Fair‘s radar.

d) Our publicist dropped the ball. He or she didn’t think to pitch us to the magazine, or doesn’t know how to do it effectively.

If the answer is a), I’ve got another question. How do we project our artistic, refined image to more people than are captivated by it now?