Farhad Manjoo’s Slate article about the end of voicemail got me thinking about the art of pitching. According to Majoo, voicemail is one of the most inefficient forms of communication and services like Google Voice will eventually drive it to extinction. Agents certainly email pitch letters more often than they do call. (I know I’m grateful to have been pitched that history of ketchup electronically!) But some people still prefer an old fashioned conversation. In fact, one of Tom Peter’s nuggets of business advice is to “work the damn phones.” So, which is a more effective way to pitch: via phone or email?

A friend recently sent me David Simon’s original proposal to HBO for ‘The Wire.” I can’t for the life of me imagine pitching this cop show over the phone, can you?