Journalism. It’s all awards ceremonies, hanging out backstage with celebs and blagging free stuff, right? Er, not really. Kay Weston shares her experiences with Shefbase readers…
When I turned up to uni in freshers week, I was expecting to be plunged straight into an exciting world of investigative reporting, exposing wrongdoers and making lots of important contacts. Two years on, it appears to have gone pear-shaped somewhere down the line. So I’ve decided to trample all over your dreams and tell you what being a journalist is really like.
As features editor of this section, I often have to arrange interviews with bands and other well-known people. This means I have to deal with PRs, who handle all their press. For the most part, these people are very nice, helpful people who can see the mutual benefit in giving me an interview; after all, their client gets publicity. Usually, with bands, they agree to do the interview if you put advance notice of their show on the site. So everyone is, theoretically at least, a winner.
I had an interesting experience last week when I arranged an interview with a band playing a gig. Their PR arranged to put me on the guestlist, and their tour manager told me that I had a slot to interview them after they’d finished their performance and he said he would call to take me up to their dressing room. No backstage pass for me; I didn’t even get a VIP lanyard. Any illusions I had of being whisked backstage to hang out with rock stars and steal from their rider was swiftly crushed.
I watched the band play their set, then wandered out into the corridor to wait for my call, which was to be at 8.30pm. By 9.00pm there was still no call, so I text their manager to check everything was OK. I still hadn’t had a reply fifteen minutes later. Because I was waiting for him to contact me, I had to stand in the corridor, freezing cold, because that was the only place in the venue that I could receive signal. I decided to ring him. He told me that they were a bit behind schedule and that he’d ring me when they were done. Fair enough.
So imagine my surprise when, straight after I hung up, paramedics emerged, holding up an extremely drunk bass player. The bass player from the band I was meant to be interviewing. To be fair, the poor girl looked really ill and I did feel sorry for her. She was taken outside, and when she returned to the venue after a few minutes, I naively thought that the show would be back on the road. After all, I could always interview the other members if she wasn’t up to it.
But no. Still no word from the tour manager, and I was still in the corridor. The main act had begun to play and, thanks to Vodafone, I couldn’t even watch them. I was feeling like a bit of a loser as I could see people wondering why I was sitting on a windowledge for the duration of a concert. In fact, a photographer from another magazine came up to me and asked me that exact question. When I explained, he told me that some of the photographers hadn’t been able to get access either and said there had been an ‘incident’ backstage. He recommended I go and knock on their tour bus door and generally make a nuisance of myself until they relented and gave me an interview.
I was considering doing this when I saw several of the band members wandering around the venue. The band members meant to be caught up in interviews. Or more specifically, my interview. I was going to go up to them, but by this time it was now after ten 0’clock- even if they agreed to an interview, I wouldn’t have time to do it because I had to be on the last train back to Sheffield.
So, after two hours of waiting, I finally decided to throw in the towel. I left the venue and went in search of a taxi back to the station. As I was on my way there, the tour manager text me, apologising and saying they ran out of time. I told him it was no problem, and that these things happen. As a journalist, this kind of thing is surprisingly- or maybe unsurprisingly- common. Two hours is nothing. I had paid to travel to a gig, which I spent most of in the corridor. But I know of worse situations.
Student media doesn’t figure highly on most big band’s lists of priorties and precedence is given to bigger publications. You have to be nice even when things don’t go your way. Throwing diva strops is not a good way to go. You never know when you may need that person again in a professional capacity. It’s never a good idea to make an enemy out of a PR. If you do, you can guarantee you will have difficulty trying to get stories or interviews out of them. They won’t make life easy for you. So, no matter how much you want to scream in frustration or turn the air blue with obscenities- don’t. And if you do, journalism may not be for you. And at least when I start my placement on a magazine in Germany in October, I’ll come prepared…
