Morning Brief — May 1, 2008

Social networking guru Chris Brogan posts about how to pitch bloggers.  Among the differences with traditional media: bloggers are passionate — read “obsessed” — with what they do (yours truly included), bloggers don’t have to be polite.  Similarities: bloggers like exclusives too, and freebies.  Brogan elaborates on how he likes to be pitched (and his Twitter friends chime in as well) so check out the complete post.

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Word on the street — for those of you who haven’t already heard this directly – is that Kim Hubbard at People does not want us to check in on the review status of books.  She says she will contact us if interested.  Kim joins the ranks of media folk who have specifically asked us not to follow up in *any* way: Pat Towers at O, Lev Grossman at TIME, Erich Eichmann at the WSJ, Benjamin Ivry.  (Needless to say, I expect exceptions will be made for people they know well / in cases of breaking news if that’s appropriate for that particular publication.)

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Ben from Viking Penguin reports that Karen Casto is no longer the book editor at the San Jose Mercury News.  Her replacement (for now) is Acting Features Editor Katharine Fong.