Wherein Pete's latest gig is mentioned... 

At the end of the summer, R3 got a frantic call from the Dean of the Conservatory where she's the music librarian. The Dean had been tasked by one of the entertainment editors at The Record to find someone to review the upcoming season of the Stockton Symphony. The Dean thought she might be interested or know of someone who was, and she thought I'd be interested, and so now we both do it, alternating performances.

It's been a challenging project adapting my writing experience to the style expected of a local newspaper. For one, everything is short. It's a real test of compact writing, and I'm still not used to writing one-sentence "paragraphs." I'm also not quite fast enough yet, and so reviews that have to be in my editor's inbox by 9 am the next day result in some late nights following a performance.

I'm also handling the monthly symphony preview article for the special weekend entertainment section. That actually involves interviewing people and writing up a feature that's at once short and engaging as well as cheery enough to encourage people to attend the performance. It's a weird mixture of journalism and civic boosterism and only confirms the "role-playing" aspect of publicity interviews that I've been writing about historiographically for years.

In all, it seems to be going well even if what appears under your byline is sometimes a paraphrase of what you sent in (space considerations are still a complete mystery to me).

Some examples of the writing are here, here, and here.