Publicity is one of the true market drivers for Broadway sales.
Variety and The New York Times have been two primary resources for covering both the art and business of Broadway. To the Broadway community, their coverage has an incredible impact on our business for better or worse. Furthermore, it’s clear that the Internet has changed the playing field and we believe further increased the importance of their role in the survival of a Broadway show.
First, their coverage no longer just hits their print readers. Stories in both of the journals now hit online and spread virally to readers across the globe. Second, their coverage is no longer a one shot deal. The stories are archived and available at any time.
We were fortunate enough to chat with Gordon Cox of Variety to discuss his take on reporting in the digital age.
(theSITUATION) Has the Internet expanded opportunities in the way you cover stories? Before you may just have one or two photos... now, you could include audio slide shows, video coverage, etc.
(GORDON COX) For Variety, and for journalists and news outlets in general? Yes, absolutely. For my beat personally, not so much, at least not yet. But it's always something we're thinking about and trying to figure out how to implement, and I know that another paper I used to work for was also dipping its toes in the slideshow/video interview formats. I think fuller integration of online possibilities will be a slow process for us more traditional news outlets, as we figure out how to integrate the opportunities/obligations of the internet into our duties putting out a paper every day.
(tS) I'm assuming that it has helped reduce your lead time to publish a story. It seems as though information must travel much quicker within your organization now. Has that changed the types of stories that you cover?
(GC) I don't think that it's changed the types of stories we cover, no. At least not that I've observed, but then, I've only been a journalist during the internet age, so I'm not sure how things were different back when we relied on things like non-mobile phones and copy boys.
(tS) Reading online is much different than reading in print. It seems that this sort of explains the success of blogs. Quick hits of information throughout the day. Do you think over time, this will affect the types of stories you publish? It feels to me that we could start to expect less big features and more shorter, quick-hit type stories (assuming people are reading them online, cell phones, PDAs, etc.)
(GC) That prediction seems not unreasonable to me. For me, though, Variety prefers a quick-bite take on things for the Daily edition, and reserves longer, more analytical pieces for Weekly. Which is to say that we have forums for both kinds of articles, and both forums are important to us.
(tS) Because online news can be very interactive, do you foresee advertising being embedded into your writing. Not blatantly... but, imagine your story mentioned a specific show and that show name was simply linked to the ticket purchasing page. I can't imagine this being far away from a reality. Do you agree and/or do you see this a major concern?
(GC) I actually can't imagine that ever happening. At least not at a news organization that wants to be perceived as unbiased. On the other hand, some might argue that what you describe above isn't any different from, say, including the URL of the ticket purchasing page in the box information at the top of a review, which I did when I wrote reviews for Newsday. Something about having a link in the body of the text, though - a link that makes an ad out of a journalist's supposedly independent, unbiased words - somehow crosses the line for me.
(tS) What are your thoughts on shows advertising to win a TONY award? Do you think this has any effect or do you think the voters have made up their minds?
(GC) Sure, advertising can certainly have some effect, just like any reminder of a show you liked might help. And as Variety can attest, advertising for Oscars is big biz. It's probably not the strongest possible influence, though. Recently I got the soundtrack to one of the nominated shows in the mail, and I was reminded again how extraordinary I found the orchestrations. That had a far stronger effect on me than an ad for that show would have. Do I think most voters have made up their minds already? No, actually. Most of my votes, for instance, are still up in the air. But even taking into account all the votes that are "accounted for" already from the voters who have a stake in a show's success or failure, I think (perhaps too optimistically) that there's still wiggle room, and there are plenty of voters out there who are interested in rewarding what they decide is the greatest achievement in a category.
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