By George McQuade
West Coast Correspondent

"We rely on you a lot, because we have four pages to fill," Rachel Dowd, assistant editor, Variety's V Life Weekend. Dowd, who writes about the luxury lifestyle and culture, was among a panel of entertainment editors and writers at an Oct. 25 Marketwire-sponsored media breakfast in Los Angeles.

Rachel Dowd, assistant editor for Variety's V Life Weekend

"You must know that I have to cover Los Angeles, and we have a New York Variety publication if you're pitching from New York," she said. "Over the last four months we've notice that our stories are shorter averaging 450 words. There is no room for that colossal story. We do love the trendy stories and we have an array of topics to cover for our readers who average $400,000 in annual salary. I do look for exclusives and luxurious and stories that deal with the high end angle."

Variety V Life Weekend accepts publicity material (no photos), music/movie reviews, industry news and financial news.

"Know our publication is not written for everyone. Also, realize there are only two of us putting things out on the fly," she said. "We love short teasers. I also love it when a publicist makes a concept for me, not just pitching their client's product, but helping me develop story ideas."

She prefers email pitches at:
Rachel.Dowd@reedbusiness.com.

News from all over

"Where is the news release coming from? London, Hong Kong or New York? We get news releases from all over the world, and if we get something in another country when everyone is sleeping we can not expand on the story," said John Burman, international general manager at Hollywood Reporter. He is also executive director of Star Power and Director Power, publications about the film business.

John Burman, int'l GM for the Hollywood Reporter

"People are downloading our site 24 hours a day, and when I walk in the door I want to be able to see 10 new stories from all over the world," said Burman.

Burman accepts publicity material, new product news, personnel news, music/movie reviews, letters-to-the-editor, industry news, financial news, color photos, calendar of events, and book reviews. He can be reached at: jburman@hollywoodreporter.com.

Burman told the crowd of mostly entertainment publicists that if your content gets published it also gets picked up in a deal the publication has with Reuters, Billboard and Backstage publications, amounting to 20 million readers per-day.

I've been in business for 16 years and I thought I had see it all," Burman, who recounted a PR horror story. "A publicist called me back after an interview and asked 'Would you mind rewriting the news release, send it back to me and we'll send it out again.' Even in 2005 some people still don't get it," Burman explained.

Cathy Lawhon, features editor, the Orange County Register

"The Orange County Register is a large niche newspaper," said Cathy Lawhon, features editor, who has worked at The Register for nearly three decades and has covered everything from fashion to human behavior as a reporter to a wide variety of beats as an editor. "We have a circulation of 300,000 in area of three million people. The reader and consumer are younger and they are getting their news from everywhere, cell phones, iPods and newspapers like the OCR have to change with the times."

Lawhon offered several inside tips to get on the various publications and website radar. "Understanding the different vehicles the OCR has. Our website needs more visual stuff, like streaming video, photos and short audio snippets,, which is a huge plus if you can email it to me." Lawhon prefers email pitches at: news@ocregister.com.

The OCR also puts out the New Squeeze OC, which has a higher income and younger target audience and a completely different market. "We need quick short stories here and how to spice up your marriage or angles that are kind of edgy. I remember running a story about an exotic danger in the OCR Life Section and we were the talk of the PTA Society.. That story would not be unusual in some of our publications like the New Squeeze," she said.

Natalie Windsor, entertainment reporter for Associated Press Radio

Lawhon is the editor for family, aging, religion and health at the OCR and also is editor of the three-day-a-week feature section, Life. She supervises eight reporters and one other editor who write local stories on those topics. Lawhon also is responsible for advising the A-section leaders about what national or international wire stories on those topics deserve prominence in the paper on a daily basis

"Know what time it is when pitching," said Natalie Windsor, entertainment reporter for Associated Press Radio, Los Angeles Bureau.

"If I'm working on Grammy nominations, don't pitch a cook book author who's arriving in three weeks. Ask yourself one question. 'Would you be interested if you weren't being paid to care about this person?"

Natalie prefers email pitches weeks in advance, except breaking news at Nwindsor@ap.org.