Getting Ink

Did the journalist die out in 2009?

Most journalists have that experience of telling someone at a party that they're a journalist, only to be met with the hilarious riposte: "ooh, better be careful what we say, eh?" Ho flippin' ho.

Except I'm not sure how many journalists I actually know these days - at least in the sense I understood journalism back when I started out.

One of my former editors has given up B2B journalism in favour of publishing sponsored supplements for CIOs. Another former editor from Emap now commissions me for a website about the use of technology in the NHS - the website is sponsored by a vendor. Another former commissioning ed from a national now commissions me for articles in the national press - but they're supplements paid for by major IT vendors.

I write for a couple of magazines published by professional associations, one magazine published by a University, another published by a government department - but at the moment, I only have one regular client that involves actual, independent journalism (insofar as any business journalism is ever independent of course). 

The remainder of my work is split pretty evenly between writing white papers, websites, blogs and other commercial content and taking on PR clients - at the moment I do PR for a women's development social enterprise, for a pre-school activity provider and an acupuncture clinic. Through my PR work, I started a parenting blog and that's translated into a couple of writing gigs and some fiming work  - on websites owned by a travel company and a major consumer brand. I've also expanded my training to include blogs and social media as well as mainstream media.

Honestly, these days when someone asks me at a party what I do for a living I'm more inclined to say that I'm a "writer" than a journalist - it somehow feels more honest. Is it just me? Are there any bona fide freelance journalists still out there?

Would you hire a reporter?

I had a conversation this week with a veteran IT journalist who’s looking for a job in PR. He’s worked in journalism for almost 20 years as a reporter, news editor and editor, and has been freelancing for too long – now he wants a regular salary, a nice office and company during the day.

Honestly? I’m not sure how quickly he’s going to be snapped up.

I think there’s a tendency sometimes to assume that journalists can waltz over to a cushy PR job when it gets too much, but I think there’s always been a lack of understanding about exactly what it is PRs do when you’re not pitching the likes of me (for proof of that, see the roasting this reporter got at Bad Pitch Blog). I’m sure it’s not all about sipping lattes and cutting little articles out of magazines.

I also wonder whether the skills involved in PR in 2009 are such a good match with old-school hacks. The journo in question doesn’t blog, doesn’t have a Twitter account, doesn’t understand the basics of SEO.

Then I saw this NY Times story (which has also been written up on the PR Media blog) about a US sports team hiring its own reporter. I wonder if this isn’t a better career option for the disillusioned, experienced technology journalist? Not to be a sports writer, but to become an on-staff writer for a technology vendor, PR agency or similar.

I reckon there are plenty of mid-market vendors who don’t get the coverage they’d like from their target publications. Bringing on an experienced technology writer to cover their events, products and announcements could reap huge benefits.

The company could have their own blog, which could carry dynamic, independent content that’s written by a professional. The journalist would also be able to submit content to press release and news wires on the vendor’s behalf.

I know that there are obvious questions around objectivity and conflicts of interest, so I think this is a career route to be explored with caution. Contracts and rules would need to be in place to protect all parties. But I wonder if this isn’t a smart way for journalists to market their skills (writing, research, industry knowledge) rather than assuming they’re a dead-cert for that senior PR job? 

Freelance (frē′lans′) noun: idiot; see also: masochist

I blame the recession.

I'm now so completely panicked that the media is going to die next time I pop to the bathroom that I've taken on stupid amounts of work. It's August. It's the school holidays. And so WHY am I having conversations like this?

"So, it's 10 features all together, for 2 weeks today? Sure, no problem."

"Ah, you need the white paper for a customer event in September. Well, I guess I can get the draft to you for Friday. Oh, 5,000 words? Well, sure, no problem."

To be serious, I know that having work in the current economic nuclear winter is a good thing. And I'm grateful and certainly happier than I'd be with the alternative. But I did think to myself, as I was having a work conversation with a toy supplier at 11.30pm last night, why do we do this to ourselves?

When I started out freelancing in 2001, I'd start every month in a wild panic in case I didn't earn enough to cover the bills. I got to a point, 12 months later, where I'd paid all the bills for a year. But I still started every month with a vague sense of panic about whether I'd be able to pay the bills this month.

I've been freelancing now for eight years and I STILL get the panic. I tell myself that I've never not earned enough to cover the bills before, but it doesn't seem to penetrate the right part of my brain, because I still find myself awake in the wee small hours sometimes thinking "WHAT IF NOBODY HIRES ME THIS MONTH??"

I wonder if that feeling ever goes away, or if that's what drives us to keep pitching?

Take That, 10 Years in Journalism and Trick or Treat...

So, I don’t know if I mentioned it or not (unless you count the multiple posts on Twitter, smug Facebook  status updates and the 5,000 emails I sent about it) but I was invited to go and see Take That last week by some lovely PR people, and I took along a friend.

As we were drinking champagne and swaying to “Back for Good” my companion asked if this was the best job-related perk EVER. I said it was definitely in the top 5 – although that status might be in danger if David at Quest ever gets around to buying me that Fat Rascal he promised…

Anyway, it got me thinking about the nicest things PR people have ever done for me (using their client’s budget, admittedly, but it’s the thought that counts). Since I’ve been a hack for 10 years, here’s my top 5:

1. Eating seafood and drinking Mojitos on a steamboat on the Mississippi. At least, right up until the moment the guy pulled out the A4 ring binder folder and said: “Let me tell you about IBM’s partner strategy…”
2. Driving up from Palo Alto to see the redwoods in California with an executive from a company that had just gone public. We sped up there in a red Porsche, and the exec told me Silicon Valley kids reckoned IPO stood for “instant Porsche owner”. This was in 2000, just before the dotcom crash, obviously.
3. Doing anything in Vegas. Because it’s the sort of place you’d never go of your own free will, but when you’re there, it’s AMAZING. What’s not to love about a fake Venetian canal inside a hotel? Genius.
4. Euro Disney. See previous example. Would never go there by myself but that didn’t stop me going on Space Mountain 10 times in a row.
5. Yeah, seeing Take That. It was pretty cool.

However, wherever there is sunshine, some rain must fall, right? So here, for your enjoyment are the five WORST things I’ve had to do for my job since 1999:

1. Sitting in the back seat of an ancient Skoda in the middle of Finland, with an Irish Wolfhound and an open window. It was minus 20 degrees, and we had to stop every 10 miles for the dog to pee. The car was driven by the PR of a search software company, and we were going to see someone about child porn. After an horrific interview, we discovered the lock of the car had frozen shut and we had to wait two hours in the snow to be rescued.
2. Trying to conduct an interview with an IBM executive in a hotel while there was someone hiding under the table. One of the longest half hours of my life.
3. CeBIT. The memories of those dark days in Hannover haunt me still.
4. Visiting the Yahoo server farm. Ever been to a co-location centre? Imagine a big room with REALLY LOUD fans and lots of black boxes with blinking lights. Now imagine spending 2 hours there, trying to look interested.
5. Being served a whole goat’s head in Marrakech and trying not to offend the hosts while spending the next hour really wishing I could just throw up.

Pitching News - some tips for PRs

I'll start this post by admitting freely that I enjoy coffee as much as the next person, if not more. I am one of those sad people who gets caffeine withdrawal symptoms if I haven't had a double skinny latte by 10am.

Since I took on a gig writing regular news stories for a technology industry website earlier this month, I've been inundated with coffee invitations. I do wholeheartedly believe this is A Good Thing, since it presents me with more opportunities to drink coffee. I've also been given some cracking stories, contacts and interviews, which I'm really grateful for. Honestly.

However, with some invitations, there are some teeny downsides. If you're kind enough to invite me to meet with your client, you might like to bear some of these points in mind:

• No, I don't want to schlep all the way out to Heathrow to meet your US client, thanks. I'd rather not feel like I'm something slotted into a gap in his schedule in between Frankfurt and Stockholm. Especially because Heathrow? Is about 300 miles from where I live.
• I love meetings in Central London, so I can bundle lots of meetings into one day in town. Dragging myself from Euston to Paddington then out to Heathrow and back again is a whole day out of my life. Athough it will feel like longer.
• If you're inviting me to meet with your client, it's a good idea to give me an indication of what your client wants to talk about. When I was a junior reporter on staff, I often met people over coffee for a general introduction to SANs or their company's software widget - as a freelance, I need to know I'll get something I can write about out of every single meeting. Yes, to an extent, it's my job to dig that information out of your client, but a little hint in advance is always helpful.
• Don't invite me to something you've already invited my commissioning editor to without telling me. If they've accepted the invitation, my pitch becomes redundant. If they've declined the invitation, I look like the loser who picks up stories they deemed to boring to bother with.
• If I'm writing news, send me news. Don't send me an invitation to talk to your client about their last press release, which was issued 'recently'. I know 'recently' is code for "about three weeks ago". In the web world, something is news if it happened (or at the very least it was announced) in the last 48 hours. Ideally, it's something that will happen in the NEXT 48 hours and you're sending it to me early or exclusively.
• I mention this a lot in my 101 training courses, but when you're pitching news it's a HUGE help if you know the analysts who have been briefed on your client's product. I might get the 'yes' on a news story at 11am, and I have to file by 2pm. That gives me three hours to contact analyst press offices, find someone who knows the product, and track them down for an interview. Anything which makes this process easier is a good thing. 
• With this in mind, it's always good to send over a news release as early in the day as possible, or even the evening before. Big papers and websites will set their news agenda by 11am, and if you miss out, tomorrow might be too late for your story to be considered fresh news.

Movie project: March update

So, some of you will know already that I'm on a mission this year to watch 100 new movies. (I was going to get fit, but really, how common is that?)

Since my last update, I've been really busy with some work stuff and some life stuff, so movie watching has taken a bit of a dip, but this month I've managed to see Man on Wire (the first film in a long time that made me shout HOLY MOSES out loud. Seriously, it's jaw-dropping), Etre et Avoir, Spellbound (those two are both cheats because I've seen them before and they are much loved old favourites).

Next, I watched Persepolis (stunning, really much better than I expected) and half of A Complete History of My Sexual Failures, which was really interesting but actually became so completely excruciating about two thirds of the way through that I had to turn it off, and haven't been able to make myself watch the end yet, not even through my fingers. I know, I'm a complete wuss.

I'm really keen for some British film recommendations - my viewing so far has been pretty skewed towards French and American cinema.

So, any ideas?

So, you want to be a journalist?

I'm kind of fascinated to learn that tech PR Alexandra Pullin (author of the Wages of Spin blog) has left PR to try her hand at journalism. She says that since she likes writing and editing copy more than anything else, journalism seems like a logical next step. I wish her lots of luck, and I'm confident she'll make a great success of her new career.

It made me think about a conversation I had recently with a friend. Her daughter is about to head off to University, and would like to become a journalist. She asked my advice on what her daughter should do to increase her chances of getting into the media. And it made me wonder - hand on heart, would I recommend anyone embark on a career in journalism today?

Of course, I'm basically not qualified to do anything apart from journalism, and also - I sort of hate most jobs - so journalism and me are pretty much stuck with each other. But what about people who have other options? This is a time when journalists are being laid off left, right and centre; newspapers are apparently on their last legs and freelance rates are dropping off a cliff. Indeed, one magazine editor said someone looking to break into journalism should expect to work for free for two years. Yes, you read that right - TWO YEARS. Jesus.

I told my friend's daughter that journalism wasn't a career for people who love writing - because your precious words will get chopped and butchered by subs and editors, ripped apart by an editor, mangled by some ad sales guy, and will eventually be scorned by thousands of readers. And that's on a good day.

If you want to be a journalist, my advice is: understand it's a business not an artistic enterprise (seriously, outside of Vanity Fair, nobody gives a toss if you can write beautifully) and prepare for a future that isn't on paper.

Customer service even applies in journalism, you know?

Sometimes when you're a journo, it's tempting to imagine we don't need to sully ourselves with commercial concerns like quoting for business, providing good customer service and managing our suppliers.

But when times are lean, it's all about providing good customer service to the clients you have. After all, I've written enough articles to know it costs a lot more to find a new customer than it costs to keep an old customer happy.  Happily, in journalism, good customer service is easy:

• Don't call your editor an idiot. Even if they are. (I once did refer to an editor as an idiot in an email to a sub-editor. She forwarded the email to the editor. I lost the gig. Lesson learned: Don't call the editor an idiot, especially if it's true. Also: never trust a sub.
• Don't blow the deadline. And if you're going to bust the deadline, let the editor know as soon as you possibly can. As an editor (a hat I wear briefly rarely) I'd always prefer to have 24 hours to plug a gap than 20 minutes.
• Be flexible on prices. Not everyone can afford to keep paying the rates they paid 2 years ago. Smaller companies and charities don't have the same resources as multinationals. If your client's supplier cuts rates, your client will cut rates. Deal with it.

So basically, you know, be a reasonable person, do the job, try to provide good value. I'd have thought this was a no-brainer, until I saw Nick's post about a freelancer who responded to a job opportunity with a one-line email saying "What are the rates?" Not smart. Read the full post here.

Friends don't let friends Tweet when cross.

One of the best lessons I ever learned is that the crosser you are, the more vital it is you should step away from the computer. Or any other Internet-enabled device. To be fair, I learned the lesson the hard way by sending a profane, insulting email referring to someone's personal life to a random PR person (it was meant for someone else, but the Outlook address auto-complete thing didn't know that), but it's a good lesson to learn before completely humiliating yourself like I did.

So learn from this experience - a National Post reporter completely losing it on Twitter with an interviewee complete with three uses of 'f*ck u' and a couple of other random insults. The reporter in question, David George-Cosh, deleted the exchange, but as Twitter users know, deleted posts are archived by Google, and also available using the Twitter search tool.

The important thing to remember about Twitter is you never know who's reading - for starters, someone doesn't have to be on your follower list to see your posts. Even if they are, who remembers all their followers? Once I got past 50 or so, I couldn't have told you who most of my followers are, except the 20 or so I regularly get into conversations with online. (incidentally, I'm on Twitter here)

Thanks to Ed Lee for pointing out the story.

NUJ has its ass whooped: the joys of the reverse IP lookup

Two posts this week have reminded me of the joy that is the reverse IP lookup. (For the uninitiated, when you post a comment on a blog, the blogger can identify your computer by looking up its unique IP address - often this will tell us what organisation you work for, and your location).

The post has now been taken down, but one of my favourite bloggers recently posted a guide to PR for redundant journos. Which you'd think was pretty uncontroversial, but someone commenting on the guide saw fit to call the author a "cock". The blogger then posted a comment revealing the commenter's IP revealed them as working with Trinity Mirror - his former employers. Nice work.

Then today I found this incredible thread on Adam Tinworth's blog (hat tip goes to Antony). Basically, someone at the NUJ sent an email with the subject line "effing bloggers" containing a link to Adam's blog. That information was captured by the blog when someone called Linda K clicked on the link in the email. Oops. See, it's already funny, isn't it? But it gets better.

The author of the email (Chris Wheal, a very respected journalist and chair of the NUJ's Professional Training Committee) then popped up to decry journalistic standards on blogs (because the Daily Mail does such a sterling job of maintaining those standards in print, right?) with comments such as "The NUJ fails to maintain standards in blogs because bloggers themselves rejoice in having lower standards" and (my personal favourite) "I am sorry if bloggers are such delicate petals that they, in the words of corporal Jones, don't like it up 'em."

Well worth reading the full comment thread here.