{"id":412,"date":"2010-01-27T07:55:07","date_gmt":"2010-01-27T07:55:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/lifesapitch\/wp\/?p=412"},"modified":"2010-01-27T07:55:07","modified_gmt":"2010-01-27T07:55:07","slug":"some_light_stalking_and_observ","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/lifesapitch\/2010\/01\/some_light_stalking_and_observ\/","title":{"rendered":"Some light stalking and Observ-ations"},"content":{"rendered":"

Having read his music coverage on The Awl<\/i><\/a>, which you should all be reading if you’re not, and in The New York Observer<\/i><\/a>, I decided that NY-based writer Zachary Woolfe would be the perfect person to pitch a Gabriel Kahane story to around Gabriel’s March 3rd American Songbook date<\/a>.<\/p>\n

When I get it into my head that a writer I don’t know will be a good fit with one of my clients or with a specific story, I go into crazy “Discovery” mode and try and find out everything I can about what they’ve covered and how in the past. Fortunately, I live in 2010 and am in possession of the HTTP:\/\/World Wide Web, so this research\/stalking doesn’t take terribly long.  (A friend of mine constantly gets asked about basic things he’s already been asked in interviews, and he always wants to respond–and I think did, once–“Simple. Google. Search.”)<\/p>\n

All this is to say that in my Google frenzy, I came upon the (new?) New York Observer <\/i>website, and it’s really beautiful. Look how they lay out authors’ profile pages<\/a>: <\/p>\n

\"NYObserver.jpg\"When you hover your mouse over a photo, the title, author name, and first sentence of the piece appear. It’s actually nearly identical in form and function to the old Mac Cosmetics site<\/a>, which I also loved but that they seem to have changed. We based Measha Brueggergosman’s homepage<\/a> on the old site, to give you an idea of the look. Also, the Stella McCartney online store<\/a> has a similar feel, though not as bright and snappy (which is fine, because her clothes are neither bright nor snappy):<\/p>\n

\"StellaMcCartneyWeb.jpg\"Exceedingly Unrelated:<\/b> I’m wondering which of my clients I can talk into adding Disney woodland creatures to their press photos a la the current Stella McCartney homepage<\/a>:<\/p>\n

\"StellaMcCartneyDisney.jpg\"?<\/p>\n

\"DavidLangWithOwl.jpg\"But I digress. My point is, the New York Observer<\/i> site makes you want to spend your precious time exploring it. They use production photos to draw you into the articles. This is, after all, performing arts coverage: why not use the visuals to your advantage? And performing arts coverage aside, we are just generally a visual people who are, at this point, accustomed to Flash functionality (just in time for web developers to move away from it!).  <\/p>\n

One more thing about the Observer’s <\/i>site: there’s a feature called “The Big Board” that points their readers to coverage in other publications that may interest them. We’ll call this “The Progressive Car Insurance Model”: Stick with us because we don’t care if you look elsewhere, and actually, we’ll tell you where to look. Because we’re just that cool and confident. <\/p>\n

\"TheBigBoard.jpg\"<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Having read his music coverage on The Awl, which you should all be reading if you’re not, and in The New York Observer, I decided that NY-based writer Zachary Woolfe would be the perfect person to pitch a Gabriel Kahane story to around Gabriel’s March 3rd American Songbook date. When I get it into my […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-412","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-main","7":"entry"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/lifesapitch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/412","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/lifesapitch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/lifesapitch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/lifesapitch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/lifesapitch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=412"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/lifesapitch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/412\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/lifesapitch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=412"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/lifesapitch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=412"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/lifesapitch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=412"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}