Showreel

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PnGIzGInKVM&feature=youtu.be

Innovation in magazine Journalism

Since the Internet has established itself as a more convenient way to receive news all forms of print Journalism i.e Newspapers and Magazines have had to adjust to the changes in the times and make sure that they are still competing with the online mediums. A magazine I believe has managed to acclimatize well is the NME (New Musical Express) which was first published in 1952. Since its formation it has undergone many transitions in order to keep itself up to date. It originally started as a Music newspaper and took on a generic tabloid format until it gradually took on the role of a Music magazine. Even in its early days the NME showed  innovation in order to keep itself circulating by shaking off the rigid type of reporting people were used to and introducing a more Gonzo inspired writing style which back in the 70’s not only stopped its closure but also established the NME as the dominant Music magazine in the U.K. Bringing in writers of this ilk was a fresh change and came at the right time as the general public at the time were starting to become a little more outspoken themselves and consequently appreciated the edgier style of writing the NME were offering.

                In my opinion the NME has shown innovation throughout its existence and has now managed to establish itself as more of a brand than just a magazine. It has managed to diversify itself to great effect which is why it can now sit on its throne at the top of the British music scenes hierarchy. Aside from its primary focus which is of course to keep people up to date with the goings on in the music industry; it now has many other strings to its bow. The NME now has a stage at Reading and Leeds festivals, two of the biggest music festivals in the country which signifies its standing in the music industry. It also has an annual tour which promotes upcoming bands and has been a valuable starting point for bands such as The Killers, Arctic Monkeys and Kaiser Chiefs to name a few. The NME also hosts an Awards ceremony each year which commends artists for their contribution to music and is considered a prestigious event to people in the Music industry all whilst carrying on the spirit of the NME. The winners are voted for by the readers of the magazine

                In 1996 the NME jumped on the bandwagon and launched the online version of their magazine NME.com and it now sits as the world's largest standalone music site, with over 7 million people using the site every month. That in itself is a phenomenal achievement as it is a very competitive market with lots of big websites competing with them. NME has managed to reach this position as the pre-eminent place for music due to its long standing reputation but also with its innovative ideas that constantly attract new readers/viewers. It has added a film and tv section to the magazine that would have naturally attracted new readers and also has a large online merchandise department. Nowadays the magazine sales have dropped but that isn’t necessarily the end of the world as it is still profitable but also the website is what generates the most outcome. The store sells a large collection of music memorabilia including band T-shirts, old magazine editions and records amongst many other products. The site also receives a lot of money through advertisement and as it has a large online presence with not only its main site but others scattered around the world.

                I believe in order for a magazine to show innovation the best way for them to do that is to make sure that they stay relevant to contemporary culture. The NME has spanned several generations and seen many cultural changes it has had to adapt to. Many different movements it has to cater for but also all the changes in technology that a business like NME have to take into account. When the internet came along it introduced lots of opportunities for companies and with the introduction of their sites the NME adapted quickly and since then has also managed to successfully take advantage of the benefits social networking has to offer. They have several Twitter accounts which they use to regularly tweet their newest articles with links to their site. They also tweet competitions to win tickets to concerts and exclusive tracks all of which get seen by their thousands of follows and draw in interest for their site. They also have an equally strong Facebook page which is regularly updated with the latest news which users can then share amongst their friends and generate more views that way. Another benefit of using social media in this way is that it gives the readers and audience a chance to interact and give their opinions on stories or whatever the particular topic might be. Having a good social media department is an important job as any for today’s journalism outlets as they are an invaluable way of communicating with the audience but also finding out information from them. It also makes it a lot easier for the audience to get involved with competitions and polls and obviously this is appealing to today’s society as everything is made easier and efficient and takes minimal effort from someone to apply for a competition or leave their opinion in a comment. A big advance they made more recently came when they made a digital version of the magazine which people get online or on their Ipads as oppose to the hard copy of the magazine. This change came about in 2011 a time when smartphones had just taken over the telephone market and Ipad’s were the must have gadget. The same year it also launched a Festival app that gave festival goers information on the weekends itinerary and that summer was downloaded over 30,000 times.

Obviously some people would say that the changes the NME have made in its 50 plus years in operation were just natural progressions that they would have had to have made anyway to stay competitive. However I think that the way they have gone about it and the extra perks they offer e.g all the exclusive interviews, free downloads and vast amounts of content make them superior to magazines of their ilk. They have managed to dominate their market because of this and diversify into many other fields and become a very healthy profitable business whilst managing to keep the company ethos that attracted so many people to the magazine in the first place. Innovation is quite a loose, subjective term in my opinion but I feel that as far as magazine journalism is concerned NME magazine has shown large amounts of this in its time and continues to today. The main aim of any business in reality is to make money and the fact that the magazine itself still manages to be profitable despite large parts of the companies attentions having turned elsewhere and is the leading website for music speaks for itself. To be able to do this shows that the people working there are showing great amounts of innovation in order to keep them in this position. In terms of content the magazine still offers edgy writing reminiscent of the gonzo writers of their past and as one of the most well respected music magazines in the world they manage to get the best interviews with the best people making for the best read.

Confessional interview with Neil White

There is a scene from porridge in which the Judge says ‘you are an habitual criminal, who accepts arrest as an occupational hazard’  meaning that if you choose to live the criminal life then you must accept that one day the chances of having the Police turn up your door is something that you have to take in to account. Yet when you live your life as an honest man, paying your taxes, child support etc. and still end up having your front door pounded down by several Police officers something is going horribly against you. This was unfortunately the case for me. My whole life, at least working life has been spent working on a passion of mine which happens to be Scooters. I’m not talking about the mopeds you see 17 and 18 year olds ripping around in over summer I mean the finely crafted Italian Lambrettas and Vespas. I got my first scooter at the age of sixteen which was when the love affair started and since then I have managed to establish myself as a well-respected member of the scooter community. Over the years I have helped repair hundreds of bikes and have managed to make my living buying old scooters restoring them and then selling them on. I have made documentaries on the bikes I love and in the scootering world have secured my place now as a trustworthy and reliable person that is very knowledgeable on scooters. Therefore naturally no one was more surprised than I when after a routine trip to Italy I had my life turned upside down.

                I had set off in my van to Modena Italy, home of the finest balsamic vinegar Italy has to offer and also Mary of Modena a former Queen of England. I was travelling over to Italy to go to a scooter jumble which I tend to do several times a year to buy scooters in need of some tender love and care and experience had taught me that these jumbles were where you can pick up some of the best bargains. Obviously travelling to Italy isn’t the most ideal of situations especially when you’re in an old post office van that has seen much better days, but as a great lover of Italian culture and primarily scooters I had grown very fond of these trips. It is hard to describe one of these jumbles and to the untrained eye it probably looks no different to any event of this nature, lots of people stood round trying to sell their rubbish. A lot of times this is the case, you can walk round for hours at a time and not find anything that is remotely useful, however this time in particular I came across a beautiful bike, a Lambretta Silver Special. The bike itself wasn’t in the greatest condition but I knew that once I had spent a bit of time on it in my workshop back home that I would be able to do it up lovely and make myself a bit of money on it. It really is luck of the draw at these markets I’ve travelled down to Italy before and returned empty handed and you get a few ‘marketeers’ like myself travelling over from the U.K for the same reason so it’s competitive as everyone wants to get their hands on the best stuff. I managed to pay for the Lambretta get it at a reasonable price and I thought that was it, I’ll move on and see what else there is to offer. This trip was unfortunately a nightmare from start to finish, there was an ongoing problem with a few people of the people I had travelled with regarding some stolen money, my van blew up whilst driving through some French mountains and I personally was returning somewhat empty handed as I hadn’t managed to buy as much as I had hoped for. All this was just the calm before the storm however as it wasn’t until I got home that the real problems had started.

After what can only be described as a torrid journey back home I finally got back home and was looking forward to a few days of relaxing after the draining trip. I remember thinking at the time ‘thank god I’m home’ and for a few weeks this was the case. I was able to work on the Silver Special and had put the bike on ebay as it was ready to be sold. It wasn’t for a few days later that I had my life turned upside down when I received a knock at the door from Interpol claiming I was selling stolen bikes. When buying bikes abroad it is always customary and in your best interests to get all documentation you need on the scooters you are purchasing which I always made sure I did, so to see two uniformed police officers at the front door of my house came as a massive shock. The officers had been ‘made aware’ that I was selling stolen bikes that I had picked up on the cheap in Italy. This came totally out the blue during the summer period, a time when I do the most of my business as people like to take advantage of the summer weather and get out on their scooters. Yet I had Interpol on my doorstep telling me that I was under arrest for a crime I hadn’t committed, that all my other bikes were to be confiscated and that I was believed to be part of some sort of stolen scooter ring. The following few months I was treated like a criminal, I was constantly being harassed by the Police. They were asking me all sorts of questions and trying to pin me to several bike thefts. I lost all my custom that summer so couldn’t provide for my family. My wife turned to drinking and we were arguing non-stop and consequently divorced, all for nothing. I have always felt that as a human the biggest achievement you can have in your life is to find love, I had that as well as a successful business and it was taken from me. I spent the next few months dumbfounded by the position I had been put in; I was penniless, wifeless and it didn’t look like showing any signs of coming to a favourable resolution for me. I found myself in the worst state of my life until one day I had all my bikes returned to me minus the Silver Special and all the charges against me dropped. It was like a brief fleeting visit from a tornado that just passed through my life and left it in tatters. I was never given any explanation by the police as to why they had reason to suspect me or if they even had any evidence for that matter. I was the victim of sheer Police incompetence and in such a short space of time they had made me lose so much. Other scooter enthusiast’s that might have considered my business as competition started to publish articles in magazines slandering my name so my business and reputation had to be rebuilt from scratch. It was a truly horrible period in my life, one that I still have many of unanswered questions about like; Why did the Police think the bike was stolen? What happened to it?  And why me? But I have now moved on from it and it’s a chapter of my life that I will not remember fondly.

Interview with a senior journalist

An interview with Adrian Drummond, Deputy Sports Editor at The Times

How did your career in Journalism originally come about?

I started in journalism in 1980 after applying and being accepted onto the trainee programme at The News centre Portsmouth where I worked as a trainee for two years. Whilst working as a trainee reporter at The News I also enrolled on a 3 month course at Highbury College which focused on the practical skills I would need as a journalist e.g shorthand and media law. I only did a 3 month course as I was on a graduate trainee programme. I had been to university and was the only trainee there that had to been to university as in those days a lot of people got into the industry after doing a course similar to the block release course I had done at Highbury. After two years or so working as a trainee reporter I took a proficiency test which was administered by the NCTJ and once you had passed this you were considered ready to become a senior journalist and you would get a pay rise and then you could really start your career. The proficiency test itself was a series of practical tests one of them being that you had to be able to write a 100 words a minute in shorthand. As a trainee reporter though you are still given a lot of responsibility and I did still find myself covering some interesting stories.

So do you think shorthand is still an essential tool for a Journalist?

Well, yes I do because firstly technology can fail so I think it’s always helpful to have your shorthand notes as security but also I find that when you are taking notes in shorthand you are paying more attention to the answers of the people you are speaking to. It’s a good skill to develop because once you do manage to get a grasp of it and start increasing your hand speed, even If you find you don’t use it very often it’s the sort of skill like riding a bike that you never really forget. A lot of the younger journalists I work with don’t have shorthand and much prefer to use a Dictaphone etc so really it is down to personal preference but it is a something that most employers will be looking for when recruiting graduates. In a practical sense though I have always found it easier to flick back through my shorthand notes rather than having to keep fast forward or rewinding through an interview that’s been recorded on a Dictaphone to find good quotes.

What would you say the significant differences are for someone trying to make it as a reporter today compared to when you were younger?

I would say that first and foremost there isn’t as much opportunity nowadays as when I was younger for paid work. There has been a proliferation of websites and journalism activity online but a lot of that isn’t generating any income. A newspaper I worked for used to sell a 100,000 copies a night and had 7 editions, nowadays that paper sells less than 30,000 copies and only releases one issue. The paper used to have a much larger workforce but now probably has a quarter of what it used to and this is the case for a lot of companies so there isn’t as many opportunities. There is an awful lot of citizen journalism going on and it is relatively easily to get your output on to the web but that doesn’t mean that anybody is reading it or that its really fulfilling a useful function. So I’d say the biggest pitfalls for someone trying to get there foot in the door nowadays is that people aren’t really given the opportunity to learn their trade, like I did, in a controlled environment a lot of people have to resort to the online free for all to get their work out there.  

What would you say are essential traits to have in order to become a successful journalist?

I would say there are a lot of things that are essential and they’re not always the things that people would think of straight away. A lot of parents have spoken to me in the past about their kids who want to be Journalists and how good they are at English, and whilst they might be very good at English that’s only a fraction of the skills required to be successful in this industry. Much more important is that the person is an outgoing character that has people as that will enable people to get the stories in the first place after building up a good rapport with those you want to interview and then any prowess in English will help them develop from there. The English side of things in my opinion isn’t necessarily as important as being able to think on your feet and react to what is happening in front of you. A lot of the time whilst interviewing you might find something very interesting out and decide that the new information you have received will make for a better story so you have to adapt quickly to this. Not everybody has the ability to operate in these circumstances and it doesn’t really matter if you are fantastic at English if you don’t have the self-confidence or the ability to do so then you will struggle.

So you’ve had a few years in the industry now, what does your current role entail?

At the moment I am currently employed as the Deputy Sports editor at The Times so my job involves editing the Sport in the absence of the Sports Editor and helping to organise the content of the sport on a daily basis. I speak to the writers every day in order to discuss what stories they have and how they want to go about writing it and I advise them and together we put together the best story we can. There is a lot of emphasis put on the pictures so I help select the best ones that I feel are lively and interesting enough for publishing. At the other end of production I also have to make sure that the headlines and captions for the pictures are up to standard and that they are clear in telling the story, so there’s quite a lot of revision in my job, looking at peoples work and making sure that it’s good enough to go out. I also have to be involved in conferences with the editor and other members of senior staff which set the agenda for the day’s paper.

Where do you see Journalism heading in ten or so years’ time?

I think there will be fewer newspapers, I think that that form of news is in rapid potentially turmoil decline. People consume there news today using various other devices and platforms so therefor in say 10 years’ time I don’t think many national newspapers will be selling their product in print form in great numbers.  With the impact technology has on society I can see them moving online and to whatever new devices are engineered in the future, I think this will be the main way people consume their news. That is one of the problems with the industry today and I don’t believe that the content online is being translated as well as it would in print form as articles online tend to be compact and bitesize which suits the audience of today. Articles like the thousand word columns don’t really seem to work very well with these new devices which I think is a problem for society as we need that breadth of opinion rather than just seeing the news displayed in its simplest form.