I found this some time ago – it was a guest post on one of the finance blogs I follow – and I meant to write about it, but somehow forgot. So, here it is, better late than never.

The author provides a great list of Do’s and Don’ts when trying to cultivate online press contacts and woo the blogosphere into covering your product/service/show/album/whatever.

It is specifically written for people who work in PR & publicity, but I think Lindsay outlines some great principles that independent artists can adapt and apply in cases where the PR/pub duties fall to us.

My favorite tips are these two:

2. Pick Eight Blogs

While the rest of the publicists in her company were sending out mass emails to everyone, hoping to get bites from Perez Hilton, Gawker, HuffPo, or wherever, this publicist focused on a lower traffic tier with the (correct) understanding that these days, content filters up as much as it filters down, and often the smaller sites, with their ability to dig deeper into the internet and be more nimble, act as farm teams for the larger ones. A site can be enormously influential without having crazy eyeballs, because all eyeballs are not equal.

4. A Monkey Can Send a Mass Email: Build Relationships and Understand What Your Real Job Is

I don’t know why one of the oldest truisms of publicity, marketing, salesmanship, and basically every other field is ignored by online publicists: it’s about relationships! I can find my own content without the help of any publicist — any blogger worth his or her job can. I just get annoyed that my time has been wasted. If a publicist shows that they know what they’re doing, the resulting surprise on behalf of the blogger/reporter/editor will lead to more attention paid to that publicists offerings. Duh.

Amen sister! The original post is a really quick read and if you are dealing with online publicity, I suggest you check it out.

In this post, I’ve included links to some important financial resources that were mentioned in Saturday’s workshop. Among them, you’ll find some of my favorite blogs and sites, as well as a gigantic financial glossary, three articles on how to hire a financial planner and some handy tools and calculators (loan, savings, retirement) courtesy of FINRA.

Banking & Lending

Bankrate is the place to get the best available rates on just about any kind of consumer financial product; Mortgage 101 is an educational site for potential home-buyers; if you’ve gone to college recently and wanted a scholarship, you probably remember filling out a nightmare of a form called the FAFSA; and if you are looking for basic, general information about all-things-banking why not head to the source and check out the educational resources provided by the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City?

Credit

Be sure to review your credit history each year using Annual Credit Report (it’s FREE); learn how your credit score is calculated and what affects it by visiting MyFICO; if you are trying to avoid debt collectors and bankruptcy, the National Foundation for Credit Counseling can put you in touch with a free credit counselor; if you are new or just inspired to learn more about how the game works, visit Credit.com; and next time you are ready to shop around for a new card, be sure to check out Card Ratings first.

Insurance

Such a topical issue given the health care “debate”…If you are an artist looking for health or liability insurance, you can find it at Fractured Atlas; if you are any kind of freelance worker looking for health, dental, life or disability coverage, check out Freelancer’s Union.

Investing

If you are curious about or ready to take the plunge into investing, here are some resources to help you learn the lingo, grasp key concepts and demystify the complicated world of “Wall St”: Investopedia, The Motley Fool, Morningstar, and Mutual Fund Education Alliance. The topic of peer-to-peer lending as an investment strategy came up, made famous by the international organization Kiva.

Retirement

The U.S. Social Security Administration sends you a statement twice a year to report on your taxable income and projected benefits. If you haven’t received one in a while, you can request it online. Be sure it matches your tax statements – I found they missed crediting me over $15,000 of income one year!

And obviously Social Security won’t be enough to support those of us under 40 when we reach collecting time, so you should consider participating in an employer sponsored plan (usually a 401K or 403B) and maximize any matching funds opportunities they provide. If that isn’t an option, consider an Individual Retirement Account.

Taxes

Why not start at the top and just contact the IRS (or consult their new YouTube channel – seriously!) with your questions? In preparation, you might want to spend some time on these blogs: Don’t Mess With Taxes and TAXGIRL.

Personal Finance

My top blog picks are The Simple Dollar and Get Rich Slowly – I have been reading both for years now, and think they are two of the best places online to find tips, tactics and techniques for reducing debt, saving for retirement, learning to craft a frugal lifestyle that doesn’t cramp your personal style and more. Of course, what is theory without practice, so be sure to investigate the free money management tools offered by Mint and Wesabe.

Finance, Economics, Policy

Here a few of my favorites blogs: naked capitalism, The Big Picture, and The Baseline Scenario. These are serious blogs written by serious minds who really know their stuff. Sometimes I don’t follow every little detail, but reading them has helped me dramatically improve my understanding of macroeconomics, fiscal and monetary policy, and the financial calamity we are currently living through.

Business

SBA stands for Small Business Administration – it is the part of the Federal government designed to help support small businesses; SCORE is an amazing national organization that provides business education, resources, templates and even mentoring in locations around the country; and if you are looking for general business advice, check out inc.com or allbusiness.com.

If there are any questions we didn’t have time to cover in the workshop, or follow-up thoughts or resources you’d like to share (whether you participated or not), please post in the comments section.

This Saturday February 6th, I am teaching a brand new workshop - Finance Basics for Artists – at The Field.

Here is the description:

From planning your next project budget to managing your personal finances, join us to explore tips and tactics to help maximize your financial resources. We will discuss basic principles of saving, investing, budgeting, short-term vs. long-term planning, frugality, goal setting, personal risk tolerance, cash flow, bartering and other practical techniques to help cut overhead costs and meet your bottom line.

If you are in the NYC area, and want to get your finance on, please join us. You can register here and there is a small fee to participate.

The radio silence of late is due to illness – one of my teeth just decided it was done with me.

I closed out 2009 with a bang, being the Maid of Honor and featured vocalist at my mother’s wedding, becoming certified as an IRS volunteer tax preparer and spending New Year’s Eve at the best dance/art party in NYC that didn’t get shut down. It was hectic and wonderful and exhausting.

And right before it all started, on Thanksgiving eve, I found out that I had somehow cracked a tooth – one of my bottom molars #19. Under the care of my amazing dentist and new periodontists I had no symptoms and I got through the holidays without incident.

Not so much after the New Year hit. The pain started in the early morning hours on 1/1/2010 – I went to sleep as the sun came up and my mouth started to smart. The discomfort over the next week was intermittent and I had scheduled a follow up with my doctor, so I just lived with it.

Another week later, an infection has ravaged my fractured tooth causing an abscess and my face has been swollen for the better part of five days. I saw the doc on Monday and got the meds I need to get better. I will probably have surgery in the next week or two. I’m no stranger to dental surgery, but this is much more involved (titanium screws?) and will take more than six months to complete. What a way to start the New Year!

The frustrating part is that this broken tooth is actually a failed root canal. Twice now this tooth has betrayed me, while no other teeth have anywhere near this level of difficulty maintaining the daily grind.

The good news is that for the first time in my entire life I have real dental insurance. Thank you progressive NY State health care laws allowing Domestic Partners to buy into employee sponsored group plans! Staring down the barrel of several thousands of dollars of work to be done (on a tooth I’ve already spent $2000 on out-of-pocket for the root canal – talk about sunk costs), it is amazing to know that even some of it will be covered.

Now that I have returned to a semi-normal mental state without the throbbing, blinding pain in my face, postings shall resume.

Happy 2010.

I’m pleased as punch to announce that I will be serving as Associate Producer for Tisch School of the Arts‘ 2010 hotINK International Play Reading Festival. The festival runs during the last two weekends of January on 1/23 – 1/25, and 1/30, 1/31.

A completely FREE festival of plays from around the globe, this year features playwrights hailing from Uganda, Ireland, Canada, Russia, France, Romania, Finland, Austria and Japan.

Now in its ninth year, hotINK is an annual, international festival of play readings, presented by the Department of Drama, that brings together playwrights from around the world with distinguished actors and directors from the New York theatre, as well as students, alumni and faculty from the Tisch School of the Arts.

The many distinguished U.S. playwrights, directors and actors who have taken part in hotINK include Bill Camp, Kathleen Chalfant, Migdalia Cruz, Liz Diamond, Kathryn Erbe, John Gallagher, Jr., Joe Grifasi, Kathryn Grody, Rinne Groff, Stephanie Roth Haberle, Jeffrey Hatcher, Jessica Hecht, Marin Ireland, Len Jenkin, Francis Jue, Arthur Kopit, Michael Laurence, Paul Lazar, Robert Lyons, Joan MacIntosh, Heather McDonald, Steve Mellor, Itamar Moses, Victor Pappas, Keith Reddin, Henry Stram, Caridad Svich, Mac Wellman, B.D. Wong, Frank Woods and Janet Zarish.

As an alumni of Undergrad Drama, I am thrilled to be working again with some of my favorite people on staff at 721 Broadway. Full details for the festival can be found here. Tickets will be available after January 4th through Smarttix and more information will be forthcoming after the New Year.

I always knew the incomparable beacon of light that is Bill Moyers would be featured in this column at some point, so when I learned last weekend that he announced he will resign from PBS in April 2010, I figured now was the time to write a post about him. I have been watching Bill Moyer’s Journal program regularly since it was resurrected for a second life on PBS in 2007 – I believe at the suggestion of my Grandma. I don’t own a television so I watch it online and while I don’t follow the schedule, I check in weekly to see who he’s been talking with.

Qualities he possesses that I respect most include:

1. his commitment to being one of the lone voices speaking truth to power in the tattered shreds of what we call “news media”;

2. the level of sincerity that fuels his investigations and an honest desire to get to the truth of the matter;

3. the courage he demonstrates by presenting important issues from many different sides without apology.

His understanding and mastery of the process behind investigative journalism, knowledge of history and ability to place events in meaningful context is now a dying art in our media. He has been unrelenting in his coverage of the health care reform debate/debacle and very recently challenged the President and members of Congress to reinstate the draft if they feel we should send more troops to Afghanistan.

Earlier this month he featured an interview with Anna Deavere Smith, one of the most awe-inspiring and unflinching voices in American theater, about her current show Let Me Down Easy. Some of my favorite episodes include several conversations with the noteworthy economist Simon Johnson, a fascinating discussion about Thomas Paine with two noted scholars and a mind-bending dissection of potential outcomes in relation to an important case currently under review by the Supreme Court that “could decide to erase the legal distinction between corporations and individuals”.

Last week’s episode was a lesson in history and featured rare recordings of LBJ in conversation with various advisors talking about how to deal with the war in Vietnam. It was particularly compelling given the current political debate about how to deal with Afghanistan (a war I believe we cannot win and should not be fighting) and I am sure Mr. Moyers intended to provoke reflection on our past experiences waging wars in foreign lands against guerrilla fighters. As the (paraphrased) saying goes: Those who do not learn from history are condemned to repeat it.

Bill Moyers is one of the last independent journalists in the U.S. who knows his history and is using his position and program to advocate for our society’s progress and evolution, instead of serving the same old interests with the same poor results.  Watch him (and check out the show’s archives online) while you can.

Mr. Moyers – you will be sorely missed. Thank you for always shining your light into the dark places of our society.

Last night, I had the immense pleasure of seeing a film on the “big screen” that I helped become what it is in a little tiny way…

William Kunstler: Disturbing the Universe is a documentary about William Kunstler, the famous/infamous civil rights attorney who defended the Chicago 8, the Catonsville 9 and a host of other controversial figures throughout his career.

The film was made by two of his daughters, Emily and Sarah Kunstler. I met them while managing the fiscal sponsorship program at Fractured Atlas and worked with them to process the donations and manage some of the funds that helped make this movie a reality. They also used Women Make Movies as a fiscal sponsor, another important organization that serves women filmmakers.

The film is a beautiful story of a complicated man and the relationship his daughters had to him while growing up here in NYC. In Kunstler’s later years, he defended some rather unsavory characters, including handling two years worth of appeals battles in behalf of Yusef Salaam, one of the Central Park Jogger rapists who was later exonerated when the real culprit confessed to the crime.

The film is currently playing at Cinema Village in NYC – it runs through this weekend and will be extended if ticket sales warrant it. They are having talk backs/Q&As with the filmmakers and some of the key players after certain showings and if you have any interest in the history of civil rights and/or this fascinating man, I strongly suggest you see the film.

Yusef Salaam was one of the speakers at the Q&A last night. To hear him talk about being falsely accused, convicted and to ultimately serve 5+ years for a crime he didn’t commit at age 15 was frightening, heartbreaking and ultimately inspirational. He has become an amazing advocate and a bold example of why we need serious prison and judicial reform in this country.

It will be opening in LA, San Francisco, Seattle and more cities around the U.S. this weekend – you can find all the details on the film’s website.

Congratulations to Sarah and Emily for creating this amazing documentary about their father and an important figure in American history. To me, this is the best possible use of a fiscal sponsorship program in the arts.

Early this week, the Wall St. Journal’s Personal Finance section had an interesting article written about how to fix some of the most common problems that plague the philanthropic and non-profit sectors with regard to charitable giving.

For anyone who has worked in the sector for a substantial length of time, these suggestions are kind of a no-brainer, but it is good to see them in print in the WSJ nonetheless. The article also includes an interview with the author (in which he digs into the issue of how wealthy individual donors direct their support) and some great charts.

It is a quick read and it makes some fine points. Some suggestions (see #7) are already being implemented in certain sub-sectors (namely ours!), for example, the Cultural Data Project – a streamlined online application and data collection system developed and launched in Pennsylvania and now used in California, Ohio, New York, Illinois, Massachusetts and Maryland.

Here is a quick list of the suggestions made the author, Pablo Eisenberg, who is is senior fellow in the Center for Public and Nonprofit Leadership at Georgetown Public Policy Institute in Washington, D.C.:

1. Increase the Distribution Percentage (Referring to how much of their assets Foundations are required to grant out per year – this is my favorite suggestion)

2. Increase General Operating Support (A topic those of us in the arts have been talking about for years)

3. Increase Multiyear Funding (Yes, yes, yes – foundations offering financial stability year over year – what a concept!)

4. Adopt Rolling Grant Making (Especially given the range of fiscal years that exist, it would be helpful with planning & cash flow)

5. Allocate More Funds to the Truly Needy (I can get behind this given our current economic contraction and high unemployment – but take it from somewhere else besides the arts orgs!)

6. Reach Out to Local Groups And Underserved Regions (We are all in this together people – think Purple, not Red vs. Blue)

7. Simplify Application and Reporting Procedures (Amen, hallelujah!)

8. Improve Public Accountability (I don’t think the non-profit sector are the ones who need more accountability right now – how about going after the banking and finance sector first?)

9. Fund the Watchdogs (Having working for an arts service organization for the last 4+ years, I wholeheartedly agree)

To me, the elephant in the pie-chart is the unavoidable fact that the largest percentage of charitable giving goes to religious organizations who often operate a lot of programs for the poor & needy. I can’t figure out why Pablo doesn’t address this and instead lumps together “higher education, health, the arts and culture” (in the interview) as the largest recipients of individual and institutional support and suggests that support should be redirected for more “charitable purposes”.

His statement about the largest recipients doesn’t agree with the charts included in the article that are sourced from Giving USA -  if you add the percentages listed (education 13%, health 9% and the arts 4%) you only get 24% of total giving going to these areas which is hardly a whopping majority. Maybe he is including the religious organizations in his definition of “culture” and if so, then he is absolutely correct, but this should be clarified if that is indeed the case.

What suggestions would you add to the list?

In less than a week, the U.S. has witnessed three ugly incidents in which an armed gunman entered a public place and started shooting people. The current state of affairs in this country is pretty disastrous in my opinion, so while I am saddened by this news, I can’t say I am surprised.

- First was Fort Hood, Texas where an army psychiatrist shot up a military base right before a graduation ceremony was to begin (PTSD anyone?). My brother is a retired army veteran, so incidents involving the men & women of our military hit me close to home.

- Second was a disgruntled worker in Orlando FL (where I lived for almost four years and still have close ties) who returned to his former employer’s office to settle a score, apparently believing the firm was sabotaging his quest for unemployment benefits.

- The third happened yesterday just outside Portland OR – a murder/suicide perpetrated by a man allegedly in a relationship with the woman he killed, who also injured two innocent bystanders before killing himself.

I wonder – is this symptomatic of a general unraveling of our collective psyche?

Are these challenging times stressing people out beyond their breaking point?

Or are stories like this just the result of an overzealous media ploy to divert our attention away from more important issues (economy/jobs, health care, financial regulation, climate change)?

Is this any different from the normal scale & scope of violence we see in our society or does it portend something bigger?

Are we approaching a tipping point wherein our citizens reject traditional methods of conflict resolution and resort to taking matters into their own hands via gun violence?

I have no idea…What do you think?

Rupert Murdoch thinks you will and has announced plans to remove all his “news” sites from Google sometime next year when they launch required paid subscriptions to access content. Apparently discussions surrounding his plans may violate some anti-trust laws in the U.K..

What a fantastic business strategy for publishing in the 21st century, especially at a time when (according to The Guardian) Newscorp has experienced “a plunge in profits from newspapers, which saw their earnings fall from $134m to $25m”.

Way to be Murdoch. Too bad you fail to realize that in the U.S., your target demographic for Faux News can’t afford toothpaste these days let alone online content….Of course, Murdoch also owns the Wall St. Journal, but folks who read that publication online have plenty of cash to pay for content and already do so.

An interesting article supporting the strategy appears in HuffPo of all unlikely places. I suppose only time will tell if it works.

As my English Granny likes to say “Good riddance to bad rubbish”!

I say “Don’t let the printing press hit you in the ass on the way out.”

UPDATE: Here is some NY Times coverage featuring thoughts from the blogosphere on the subject. My favorite reader comment is this:

It reminds me of the episode of “The Simpsons” in which Mr Burns attempts to block out the sun and then charge a fee for its use. — Ceadan