Getting Ink

Things Not to do in a Recession

I’ve been hearing about job losses, redundancies and cancelled contracts all over the place in recent weeks, and I’m hoping that my current packed schedule will continue well into 09. But at the same time, I think it’s important to be smart about a recession when you’re self-employed. Here’s some mistakes I’m promising myself I won’t make (again) next year:

• Letting clients pay at the end of a project: This would be fine except 80% of marketing projects over-run and expand to include extra work - so when I send in a (bigger than expected) invoice after three or four months, the client starts querying what I’m charging for, and I’m left scurrying back through emails to try and prove that, yes, they did ask for those extra two days of editing. Far better to agree staged payments in advance, and bill at least once a month.
• Doing lots of free ‘consultancy’ at the start of a project. I’ve always been happy to take one meeting or  a couple of conference call at the start of a potential project, to show clients I know what I’m doing and demonstrate my value, or something. But I recently spent three days providing a potential publishing client with a full features list for a proposed series of supplements, flatplan and detailed competitor analysis, only for the potential client NOT to get the contract. You can bet the execs at the publishing company got paid regardless – but I didn’t. Muppet.
• Payment on publication. This is depressingly common payment practice in magazines. Advertisers don’t generally pay until the magazine hits the newsstands, so it makes sense for magazines to pay writers at that point. Except that with today’s shrinking issue sizes, features can get held over almost indefinitely. I just got paid this morning for a feature that was commissioned almost exactly 12 months ago. I can’t afford to work extensively for clients who might not pay me until a year after I’ve done the work.
• Forgetting to pitch. When you’re busy it can seem impossible to find the time to keep selling – and stupid, too – why pitch when you don’t have time to take on more work. But this isn’t a market where a “wait and see what turns up” attitude is likely to work all that well, so I’m determined to set aside at least one or two days a month for marketing, ideas generation and pitching to new clients.

What have I missed?

How to Pitch a Journalist

Bit later than promised, this one, but here's some thoughts on email pitching:

Subject line: At the risk of coming over all Giles Coren, try and make it like a little headline. Don't include long client names, don't write PRESS RELEASE in caps, don't include exclamation marks unless you want me to think you're prone to getting over-excited at inappropriate things.

Dear: Try and address a release to me specifically, not just to "Hi" and the 300 people on your BCC list. At least, not if I'm working on a tier one title and you really want coverage. Don't bother asking about my weekend until you've met me twice. At least.

Content: I find a brief sentence about the story (this may not be the story your client thinks it is) and why it's relevant to me is a fine place to start. Something like: "I have a story about a new employee benefits scheme that saved Company X £2 million."

Next: Tell me about your client, in terms I'll understand. Don't assume I have experience in anything in particular, don't use terminology or acronyms. Include a URL so I can easily find out more if I want to.

The offer: Have a point to a pitch, apart from telling me your client is lovely. Are you offering me an interview, a trip to meet someone, a phoner, a product to review? State clearly what you're looking for here.

The details: Rather than having reams of detail about the visit, interview, product etc, try to think of 2 or 3 bullet points highlighting the best parts of the story. It's easy to scan, it's easy to personalise for different publications and pitches, and it looks less dull than a pile of text.

Follow up: Ensure your contact details are included, with a mobile number and ideally also a colleague's number. Hacks following up stories aren't keen on leaving messages in the ether - they'd rather leave a message with a real person, if necessary.

Did I miss anything?

Peaches. Is there anyone more annoying?

Tipped off by a fellow hack on Journobiz, I spent an hour of my life last night watching Peaches Geldof become a magazine editor. Holy Christ, I think I've just seen the only person on the planet more annoying than David Blaine. And I don't say that lightly.

When she wasn't telling her team of writers that they weren't allowed to contact any agents or managers without her consent, Peaches was busy ripping apart their foolish ideas of wanting her magazine to be commercially viable (cos, like, her vision was for it to be, like, totally underground and niche, yeah).

Unsurprisingly, the ad team didn't sell any ads, Peaches hated all the copy and told everyone that AS A WRITER she, like, expected everyone to be brilliant and funny but also inaccessible and underground. And also - crucially - they must agree that the Kooks are f*cking sh*t, okay?

I think my favourite moment was when she spent 10 minutes in a meeting telling a writer that he had lovely deep blue eyes and an Abercrombie bod, but he wasn't cut out to be, like, a writer. Because she, AS A WRITER, knows what it takes and he, like, doesn't have IT. So she made him the "office monkey", a job that apparently involves "dressing him up as a baby and sending him out in drag, and stuff". Then she went on a 6 day press trip to a music festival.

With leadership skills like this, it can only be a matter of time before a newspaper snaps the girl up.

Get your shop-soiled journalists here...

Ever fancied owning your very own technology journalist?

Here's your chance. Peter Kirwan and TWL are flogging journalists on eBay as part of the Flackenhack Awards. I think strictly speaking you're bidding on the chance to drag the journalist to the ceremony, but I'm sure there's some wiggle room in there.

At the moment, Martin Veitch is leading the pack, closely followed by Phil Muncaster. Rupert Goodwins only has one bid, which looks sad until you realise NOBODY has bid on Mark Samuels, Andy McCue, Bryan Glick or Michael Dempsey. Madness - I've worked with Mark, Andy and Bryan and they're thoroughly lovely chaps and so long as you don't mind the endless rabbitting about football, they're all charming company.

Half the proceeds of the auctions go to Byte Night, so I urge you all to go forth with your company credit cards and make a bid!

One question chaps: where are the impoverished freelancers on your auction list? Don't you know there's a recession on? Are we to buy our own tickets? (Not that I'm attending, but I feel there's a point of principle to be made).

Freelance Journalists: what you should know

As the credit crunch* bites, there's going to be a swelling of the freelance population, as newspapers and magazines look to reduce those pesky staff overheads. With that in mind, here's some advice on getting the very best out of freelance contacts:

1. No, for the last time, we don't know when the article is going to be published. We're freelancers. Nobody tells us ANYTHING. And for most of us, it doesn't matter when the article runs. We care about when we get paid. For this sort of information go to the features editor that commissioned us, or the editorial assistant on the publication. It's their job to know that sort of thing.

2. We tend to work on lots of projects simultaneously. To make a living as a freelance, you're constantly juggling. As you're filing one piece, you're already lining up interviews for a second, dealing with editing queries on a third and pitching a fourth. So when contacting a freelancer, make it easy for them to put your message in context: "I'm ringing about the Guardian feature on child safety," for example. Messages like: "Hi, it's Cath, just ringing to see if 10am is okay for the interview with my client" are not very helpful.

3. We can't sell in stories if you've already sent them to all our clients. As a freelancer, a big part of my job is convincing the editor at Personnel Today that I have something he can't get by himself, because of my amazing contacts and industry knowledge. It's made harder when I do my pitch only to get the reply, "Oh yes, I saw that press release, too." He's not going to pay me for anything he can get one of his own staff to do for no extra budget. So if you want to pitch a freelancer, it's probably better to pitch them first.

* Does anyone else wonder if the current blanket coverage of the dire financial situation is mostly a result of a snappy name and alliteration? Would the headline writers be so keen to cover a "Libor rate increase" or "fall in liquidity"? How many headlines have you seen lately about credit default swaps?

Corporate Writing: it was always thus

Does this sort of thing happen to anyone else, or just me?

I was asked by a corporate client to write a website about (say) swimming. I did the interviews with the relevant people, asking them about swimming, wrote the website.

The client felt there was too much about swimming. Could we make it more general?

I wrote a second draft, it was more general and included a chapter on swimming. Now the client felt there should be more things in there, like perhaps (say) rugby and tennis. I write a third draft, with a chapter about rugby, and a chapter about tennis.

Conference call to discuss the project, the client thinks the swimming and tennis are great, but perhaps we don't need rugby in there. 

So I write draft four. It's still quite general, with a chapter about tennis and a chapter about swimming. No rugby.

Except now the client doesn't like any of it. What happened to the rugby, he says? And this stuff on tennis, where did that come from? And why isn't this a website about swimming? There's almost no detail in here about swimming. I mean, I like the swimming chapter but the rest of it is just far too generic.

And so right now, I'm working on draft 5 of a website about swimming that isn't "too" swimming-y, which includes a chapter on rugby but no tennis. Oh, and of course they need it for close of business today.

When a younger hack asks why we charge more for corporate writing than for journalism, this is the kind of story I tell them. Also, over the years, I've learned a few tips for making the process a little bit less painful:

• never write a full draft. Always write a skeleton script with lots of square brackets saying things like [detailed description of the seven stages of swimming to go here] and [detailed market spend stats go here]. That way, when they strike out entire chapters, you're less likely to cry.
• charge by the day. I try never to charge by the word these days for corporate writing, because the bigger the company,  the more iterations you'll have to go through. I recently wrote an (allegedly) straightforward case study where the client's customer wanted me to interview 18 executives. And - bizarrely - to write a draft of the case study before doing any interviews, to help the executives prepare for the calls. So I wrote a draft and then did 18 interviews where executives told me my draft was terrible and riddled with inaccuracy. At times like those, you're glad for a day rate.
• always clarify conversations immediately by email. So when they ask for a website on swimming, send an email saying "can't wait to write that website on swimming". It gives you something to refer to later when they will blame you for failing to realise what they really wanted was a website about frogs.

I see where the problem comes from, I really do. Large companies, not everyone has the same agenda, people don't always communicate the brief clearly, and if a document is created over an extended period of time, things change.

But I still always start a corporate project thinking, "Ooh, lots of money" and end it thinking, "Good grief, I earned every penny of that."

Finding a freelancer made easier

I loved this idea when John Thompson first mentioned it, and now it's here I think it's genius.

A Google Map showing all the freelance journalists registered with Journalism.co.uk. Perfect when you need someone on the ground to cover a local issue, or if you're a journalist looking for a photographer to accompany you on a story.

When Journos Attack

Further to yesterday's post on Chris Green's bitch-slap of 3 Monkeys I found another journo blog gripe this morning.

Except this one is a classic of the genre. Let's face it, if you're going to go to the effort of virtually bitch-slapping someone, you don't want to pussy foot around, do you? I think a proper bitch-slap demands swearing, profanity and careful use of keywords.

Just because you're paranoid...

So it seems that Cision has been emailing hacks today, trying to get them to sign up for its media database.

All very admirable, but they've inadvertently kicked off a paranoid frenzy in some circles with the wording of their request, which seems to suggest that a Cision client has requested the journalist's details be included in the database. Except when a hack asked Cision which client had requested the information, they were told it was a secret (Data Protection, obviously). Much alarm has ensued, with various hacks complaining about shady practices and complaining they've never heard of this mob before.

Media databases can be, as I may have mentioned before,  a bit rubbish. Especially if they rely on hacks themselves to sign up for the service. And why use some shady-looking mass email to try and recruit them?  Because most hacks have no idea what Cision or Vocus are, and what they are used for. Better surely to be totally transparent and say: "This is to help PRs send you relevant info, and to invite you to the nice parties."

Personally, I think Cision et al should take a leaf out of Gorkana's book and require hacks to update/confirm their details every time they log in to  the site. So, if a journalist wants to use Gorkana's media alert service or view the jobs on the site, they have to provide some up to date details. Seems fair enough to me.

* I'll also just point out how much I adore the fact that a Google search for "Cision media database" this afternoon brought up an advertisement for rival service Features Exec. Very nifty, Mr Willcox.

I'm not cut out for PR

In a slightly odd turn of events, I have been doing some PR and copywriting for a business in recent months (nothing to do with what I cover as a journalist), and I have to say:  journalists suck.

I pitched a story idea to one nationals journalist who rather snootily sent a reply saying: "That's not a story."   

Next, I pitched the story to a hack who told me that my story was rubbish, but then came back saying her editor liked it, and could I write up 800 words for her to customise slightly, which then ran in a paper under her byline. Huh.

Another journalist asked me to arrange an interview with my client but also to schedule calls with two or three of its competitors, and also provided a list of statistics, facts and figures she'd require for the article. Normal practice, apparently.

I've provided canned comment on request to half a dozen journalists, only one of whom bothered to say thankyou. That's just rude.

How do you do this stuff for months on end? Seriously, some journalists are just REALLY obnoxious.