For those of you unfamiliar with the “Streisand Effect”, the term is based on the online phenomenon in which attempting to censor or remove a piece of information has the unintended consequence of causing the information to be publicised widely, …

Last week, the Hair Spin Team aka Press Department taught us all a lesson in how to get attention for our shows.

Hair announced that they were having an open call audition for future replacements in the show. They didn’t care if you were from Washington, DC or Akron, Ohio. They didn’t care if you were repped by William Morris or your Uncle William. They were going to give you the chance to audition for a place in the tribe.

When Facebook drew up its original business plan, do you think it factored in ‘customer-service’ as an expense that had to increase in time? Their number of subscribers grow by thousands daily – do you think behind the scenes they …

Hereís an interesting story of someone who just went through this with Facebook.

Imagine suing customers who give your show bad reviews? Well, there are companies doing just that as I type. Wow! According to the story that profiled the review website Yelp, “In the last two years, at least five lawsuits–and possibly …

Click here to read the article.

Imagine the top ranked listing in Google for someone searching for your show is a direct pan from a critic or consumer blog. Imagine it’s a Michael Riedel rant that your show could be in big trouble. Don’t think that …

Read more about consumer reviews here.

A new study was released that attempts to calculate the rate at which the number of people who read news stories on the web decays with time, and have found that most news becomes dated and unread after approximately a …

Click here to read more.

Here is a story
published in 1996 relating to online journalism ethics.  This is
over ten years old and it amazingly addresses many of the most
basic principles in journalism being questioned today.

The following is an excerpt from the article:

“Following those deeper and broader definitions of our
principles can certainly improve journalism as we know it today. And
it’s obvious that in the unlimited newshole of new media, we can
practice those values like never before.

So it’s tempting to say we’ll just transfer the values into cyberspace, and get on with it.

But it may be early to say that: online media can take us
and our readers to places journalism hasn’t been before. And in those
places, our values may be obstacles or antiques.”

What a prediction!

We sat down with Michael Hartman of Barlow Hartman Public Relations to get his take on the current state of Broadway publicity.

(theSITUATION): Has the change in the speed of information changed the way publications cover the theatre world?

(MICHAEL HARTMAN): The speed of information has
changed the way publications cover the theatre world as well as every
other area of interest.  When Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes
were married, People.com broke the story, not People Magazine. 
It

Publicity is one of the key drivers to Broadway ticket sales.  Good press could equate to big sales.  Bad press could be devastating.

Elements from your overall publicity live in Google, get spread through blogs, run on syndication networks and are ultimately read by millions.  They are talked about on message boards, chat rooms and make their way into every day

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