Glastonbury, twittering and a documentary short course (contains audio)

Rather looking forward to this whole Twittering-from-Glastonbury endeavour for 4Talent with Oxfam. I’m actually geekily excited about it on its own terms (because I haven’t consistently microblogged from a big event for four days before - what if my phone dies/is lost/breaks?), but also pleased that we’ve tied it into a decent competition i.e. to win a ticket to Bestival and help present a podcast from said festival with my good self. Hope the winner is a personable type. There’s certainly a risk I might end up having to supervise a complete tool.

In anticipation of all this, I did a practice live Twitterfeed from a documentary pitching course last Friday to the main 4Talent Twitterfeed, which seemed to go well, so fingers crossed for this one. The documentary course was a good ‘un too; held at the Oxford Film and Video Makers place on Catherine Street in Oxford, near where I used to live - packed with useful stuff.

I’ve uploaded many of said tips to 4Talent in bite-sized audio file chunks, for anyone who’s interested in the wonderful world of documentary making.

Here’s a sample. Your speaker is tutor Sally Webb of BBC and NFTS credentials - click the link to hear her talking about the need to know your market before you pitch:
know-your-market

Well then, off to Glastonbury. Haven’t been since 2005.
I plan to be more sober this time around. Not hard:

There is no “versus”

I wonder if this post (featuring - ooh - an audio extract from a speech I gave today; scroll down if you can’t be bothered with all this “text” nonsense) will seem like it’s contradicting a previous entry about old media vs new media? It isn’t though; that was about the contrast in working practices behind the scenes within the old/new media, rather than the ever-increasing equality in content value between the two, and hence my argument today: there is no “versus”.

Reading that opening paragraph back, I’m not sure it’s exactly a candidate for zingy openers of our times. Let’s start again: PRINT VS ONLINE: THE SMACKDOWN! Place your bets now and book a ringside seat, for one of the most FICTIONAL BATTLES in moderrrrrn public relaaaaaaations!

I spent this morning speechifying at a Regional Press Network gathering of press officers at the Hippodrome, where I was asked to be this month’s guest speaker. The topic was online journalism, and I covered a range of things from basic practice for press officers not used to engaging with online outlets, to a couple of bits of search engine optimization trickery.

The one thing I really hoped the assembled PRs would take on board was my contention that press officers (and journalists) need to stop thinking of online and print as competing models in which online is a second class citizen. To use a dietary metaphor, it’s like suggesting that protein and carbohydrate are in competition. People consume both, but they work in different ways; consuming a mixture is best, and one isn’t “better” than the other, unless you’re deluded enough the think the Atkins Diet is a good idea.

This is, of course, speaking from a content point of view; if you bring revenue streams, be it ad sales, cover price, or whatever, into the equation, competition is undeniably a factor. But that’s not something writers - or press officers - need to be thinking about in the context of placing their work with the right outlets. The mindset I’m arguing against here is the press officer who says to the editor “why is this article only going online?”, meaning “isn’t it good enough to go in the magazine?” Presumably this mindset is in turn driven by out of touch clients who are more impressed by print campaigns than online.

On that note, here’s a short (under two minute) audio extract from my speech, where I explain why we put some content online and some in the magazine, and why that has nothing to do with the “status” of said content. (Incidentally, I’m not keen on the word “content”, but until someone comes up with a better umbrella term for text, audio, video and images, I think we’re stuck with it):

AUDIO
Regional Press Networks meeting speech extract, ‘Online Or Print?’, © Catherine Bray, 2008
Clicky clicky:
onlineprintcath
(Do let me know if this link isn’t working)

“You’re fired”

Yesterday, the second of two school visits I’ve now done for the Trading Places scheme organised by Oxford University took place. It involved going to talk to and do a bit of a workshop on media careers with a class of teenagers (13 - 14 yrs), alongside Syed Ahmed from The Apprentice in Birmingham (yesterday), and with Nabil Elouahabi (Tariq from Eastenders), in Manchester last month.

Trading Places is one of those schemes which probably risks coming across as patronising, but in lieu of any better ideas or wider changes in society is a well-meant and necessary attempt to bridge gaps created and maintained by tradition.
The specific aim of Trading Places is to attract the brightest ethnic minority students to apply to Oxford University, and the broader goal (one with which it’s hard to quibble) is to simply encourage bright students from backgrounds which have little tradition of applying to top universities in general to consider where a degree might take them.
I found out about the scheme in an email from the Oxford Careers Service which said that they were looking for alumni who ideally fulfilled the following three criteria:

1) That they had been state-school educated
2) That they had gone on from Oxford to an “interesting” career to which 14 year olds might relate
3) That they be from an ethnicity currently under-represented at Oxford University (from what I recall of my time there, this would include anyone who wasn’t white)

I got in touch to say I’d be happy to help, but warning them that I didn’t fulfill all the criteria. Since they did pick me, a white journalist, I’m presuming they weren’t flooded with offers of help from ethnic minority state-school educated rockstars and astronauts. I wonder whether this is because the state-school educated ethnic minorities of Oxford, an already smallish group, a) never heard about the scheme, b) don’t actually fancy being the poster child for state-schooled ethnic minority success (fair enough), or c) are too busy flying to the moon and interviewing superstars for MTV.
The day was a success, I think. I tried to convey that you don’t have to have it all worked out at 14, 18 or even 21; I hadn’t realised I wanted to work as a writer or editor until the summer I graduated. I’m pretty sure they understood what I was trying to say: university buys you time in this respect, rather than wastes it. And I tried to dispel the idea that if you do go to a well-respected university, it means you’ll be slaving away nine to five, 24/7 studying non-stop for three years. Erm, unless you take a science degree. I also talked to them about 4Talent Central and good ol’ Hotdog magazine.
Syed presented what I guess might be called the flip-side, stressing his years of hard graft in places like McDonalds (trivia of the day: he earned five stars at Maccy Ds) and suggesting they begin planning their lives now in order not to be left behind. Horses for courses, I suppose.

I didn’t have the balls to tell him I’ve never seen any of The Apprentice.