Seven Questions for ... Chris Wheal

Chris Wheal is perhaps the:101's most grown-up trainer. He's written about insurance, for example. Chris is also an expert in everything to do with podcasts and 2.0 technologies,as well as writing features on business and personal finance.

Chris will be attending the:101 Meet the Media event on February 13th (details here) but in the meantime, we asked him our seven burning questions, and here's what he told us:

What’s your current job?
My most interesting current job is to write, edit, and produce sound and video for a new website project called Creative News. It is for the Creative Industries Observatory and the first few assignments included interviewing former culture minister Chris Smith (now Lord) and a trip to Disneyland Paris to talk to their head Imagineer.

What did you do before?
I have regular stuff for Insurance Times, have done some editing for Engaged Investor, produce Healthcare Finance and written for Building. It's a mixed bag really. I have edited a couple of weekly magazines and was editing a monthly called Service Management before Christmas. I have been freelance for 12 years and run my own company so I get to do a lot of different things at different times.

Did you always want to be a journalist?
I wrote a letter to the Independent in 1987 about Albania. It got published and had four replies, including the London School of Economics, and they all agreed with me (many years later the government later did what I had suggested, though I doubt my letter tipped the scales). I decided if what I wrote was good enough to 
print then I ought to be paid for it, so I became a journalist.

What’s the best thing a PR could do for you?
These days think about video and audio as well as just the words. The angle of the sun can cause havoc, interviews in rooms with lots of background noise are a common feature and so on. So much will be for 
the web and will involve audio and video that PRs need to learn new skills in terms of setting up interviews and events that will allow for good video and audio to be easily and quickly produced.

When did a PR person last annoy you?
When they commissioned me to ghost write an article and I was paid late. Being paid late is the bane of any freelance's life and I hate it.

When did you last annoy a PR person?
On a press trip to Germany when the German PR chief insisted he was in charge, not the Brits. The trade press in Germany show their copy to the PRs before running it. The Brits do not. He assumed that because they were always happy with everything they saw from the German trade press (there's no point sending stuff you know they will want to change) they could speak just as freely to the UK trade press.

They slagged off three major companies, who went ballistic when they read it, and agreed they could afford to buy a major UK company, causing a run on the stock exchange and their shares being suspended. The German PR lost his job and no UK journalist went to the headquarters for five years as a result.

Can you tell us something we don’t know?
A rugby referee can run up to nine miles while refereeing a match. Yes I have been known to referee rugby matches since giving up playing. You have to be very fit.