newspapers – Jo Ind

I hate public relations (PR)

Jo Ind — Wed, 03 Mar 2010 16:34:28 +0000

Don’t get me wrong, I don’t hate the public relations industry and I certainly don’t hate people who work in it. Some of my best friends…..(Jayne Howarth, Ros Dodd etc). Unlike some journalists I actually feel grateful to good PR firms. Let’s be honest, in recent years working on a newspaper would have been far harder without them.

What I hate is doing PR. That’s all.

I feel the need to say this because since I’ve been a self-employed writer, at least once a week I get a call from somone I’ve featured in the Birmingham Post in the past, who wants me to write about them again. They suppose that now I’m freelance I’m only to happy to tout my work round a range of publications and, they imagine, earn a multiple fee from them.

To which I can only say that I would sooner pickle my head. In fact I DID say exactly that to one hopeful – he still didn’t understand I didn’t want the job.

For those that don’t understand the difference let me explain. It’s about the difference between telling and selling. I love the telling. I’m a writer. I like to communicate, to connect, to build up relationships. I loathe the selling – picking up a phone and saying: ‘I’ve got a great story here. Do you want to publish it?’

That’s why I’m not in PR. It’s why I’m not in double-glazing.

Granted, there is middleground between telling and selling, a place where sales-patter and headline-writing sit. I’m comfortable on one side of that middleground, I’m not on the other.

Next time I’m approached by someone who wants me to both tell and sell their story, I shall put analogies about pickling heads to one side. I shall simply say: ‘The service you require is public relations. £1,500 would be the going commerical rate.’ Let’s see if that works.

Farewell Birmingham Post

Jo Ind — Thu, 07 Jan 2010 12:04:16 +0000

My last day at the Birmingham Post was Tuesday 22 December 2009. I slid out on a farewell blog like Santa on his sleigh. Here is my heart-felt post, with added pictures, which was published in the Birmingham Post that day.

Bye bye Birmingham Post

Bye bye Birmingham Post. I have been with you for more than 21 years. In those years you have been through eight editors, gone from being a broadsheet, to a tabloid, to a broadsheet and back to a tabloid again, only we don’t call you that. You were black and white then, you’re colour now. You were a six day a week publication when I joined. Now you are a multi-media operation of which the newspaper is only a part.

In those 21 years, I have changed too. My mother has died, I’ve been diagnosed with Multiple Sclerosis, I’ve lived in community, I’ve lived on my own and I’ve lived with my family. I’ve married, I’ve had a son, I’ve had two books published and I’ve learnt to sing jazz. I’ve gone from being an angry idealist determined to change the world to someone who is content to change her little bit of it and is happier than I knew was possible – same hairstyle though.

Farewell everyone I have ever interviewed

Farewell everyone I have ever interviewed. I became a journalist because of you. It’s been an honour to hear your stories and to tell them as faithfully as I could, whatever the pressure of my deadlines or the barking of the newsdesk. There are some of you who have touched me so deeply, I will never forget you. Thank you for your trust and for making my work such a privilege.

Adieu colleagues. What can I say to you? Do you know what I respect about you? That whatever we go through – and we have been through one Hell of a lot – still the stories get written, still the deadlines get met, still the newspapers come out. Sometimes I wonder how we do it. We do it because nobody cares about journalism as much as we do. What binds us is our professionalism and our dedication to our trade. By God, I shall miss that camaraderie. Stay in touch.

Farewell to the grubby sensuality of printing

There are other things which ceased to be part of my working life some time ago, but to which I feel the need to say goodbye. Bye bye inky fingers. Ta ra to the increasing clattering of keyboards as the deadlines draw nearer. Adieu to getting on my knees in the library to pull out files of black and white photographs and rub the red crayon marks from them with the sleeve of my jumper. Farewell to the deafening clamour of newspapers rattling along overhead conveyor belts into lorries blocking Printing House Street, so we could not get out of the building. Farewell to the grubby sensuality of printing.

Bye bye, Fort Dunlop. Ta ra M6, or rather the sight of you snaking your way through the estates of Castle Vale. Farewell standing in the bitter-cold opposite Moor Street Station wondering if the Urban Splash shuttle bus will ever turn up. Goodbye ladies loos, the secrets you have heard and the lipstick applications you have witnessed. You never did get those bog brushes did you?

Au revoir journalism

Au revoir journalism. This is the one which brings a tear to my eye as I type. I leave in the hope it is “ta ra a bit” rather than goodbye for good. We will always tell stories. We will always need story-tellers. Bye bye to the traditional ways of doing it – you were great, you really were. Hello wonderfully connected new world.

I’m quitting the Birmingham Post

Jo Ind — Wed, 28 Oct 2009 12:25:57 +0000

I have just volunteered to leave a newspaper I love and a job about which I am passionate.

Last week Trinity Mirror, the company that owns the Birmingham Post, announced 41 journalists in the Midlands are to lose their jobs by the end of the year. I am offering to leave as part of the cull.

Why?

I want to learn digital media

I want to leave so I can become a writer who is as competent in the digital arena as I currently am in print.

I am in a more fortunate position than many of my colleagues in that I have worked for BPM Media, as it is now known, for 21 years and so my pay-off is relatively comfortable. I can buy myself the time to learn.

My plan is to spend the first few months of next year getting to know how websites are made. I want to learn HTML code. I want to understand FTP, SEO and WBMP format. I want to get canny with the back end of the internet so I can be more effective in the way I use it up front.

I love digital

I love the internet for its scope, its flexibility, its speed, its diversity and its potential to create community. I’m excited by the way, in theory at least, it makes it possible for anyone to tell his or her story. I came into journalism because I believe in story-telling. The world wide web has made this possible in ways that were unimaginable just 20 years ago. This is a good thing.

Sadly, it is also bringing about the crisis in the media industries which I and my colleagues are finding so painful at the moment. I have no idea what form the media of the future will take. I don’t know if Murdoch will prove that readers are happy to pay for newspapers online and thereby rescue not only the Times but the whole newspaper industry.

I want to combine story-telling and digital skills

I can’t tell if the Guardian’s response of inviting readers to subscribe to a newspaper-based club will turn out to be the business model that rescues all print from terminal decline. I have a sneaky feeling that Clay Shirky might be right when he says saving newspapers is not the answer and the whole edifice needs to come tumbling down before the new journalism – whatever it is – can emerge.

But I have a hunch that whatever form the media of the future is going to take, whether it will be niche and hyperlocal or multi-tasking in multi-media conglomerates, the people who are going to be really useful are those who combine traditional story-telling skills with both a social and technical understanding of the web.

I want to be one of those people. I’m fortunate in having the opportunity to become one. With moist eyes and tender feelings for the team to which I have belonged for almost all my adult life, I have handed in my form….

*I wrote this post originally for The Birmingham Post.