12/02/2014

Magazine Lecture #5

Confessional Interviews

It should be something emotional, accidental, medical, coincidental.
It gives the reader a response, with a confessional interview you want them to have a physical reaction. If you can crack confessional interviews, you’ll be ok in freelance journalism. 


It’s a real true life experience, it’s not a confession to a crime. 
It has to be extraordinary. 

Ghosts
Confessionals are usually ghost written rather than first person.
There are two styles of this: 

  • You write it in subject/victims voice (use slang, colloquial terms, pauses, etc) this is seen in more down market publications
  • House style (publications such as The Guardian) no by-line

    *if you are doing it in the house style, you were need to state this with the publication. If you are writing for a publication that doesn’t give you a by-line, keep the commission to prove this. 

The down side of writing confessional interviews is that you get no by-line. If you are starting out sometimes this isn’t brilliant.

Trashier titles will give you a by-line most of the time, stating: ‘as told to ....’ 


A good confessional interview you would need to do 3/4 of an hour to an hour interview. You won’t use all of this but it needs to be this long to get good enough quotes.You want to ask questions such as ‘what did you feel’, ‘what did you say after this’. --> it means the actual interview is fast and pacey. You also need to get precise points, timing is important - ‘how much time went by?’, etc. 

What differentiates this interview with a feature interview? - you are writing an interview in 3rd person but in this interview it will be in 1st person. it’s all ‘i’ ‘i’ ‘i’ ‘i’, subjects. 

Showing copy
  • If you are doing a first person interview, it’s only right someone should look at it, not for style but in terms of libel, it’s important for someone to check. People may want to see it for accuracy. 
  • It’s not copy approval it’s using correct facts. 
  • Your responsibility is to your readers, not the person your interviewing. However you need to keep a good relationship to that person you interviewed (maybe). 

Womens magazines
  • Confessional articles are very common in women’s magazines
  • Not pegged to news
  • When pitching to magazines you need to be sure about what magazine you are pitching too and the style they use. 
  • Often in weekly magazines such as Take a break but also in monthlies such as Cosmo
  • My battle with ... cancer/drink/drugs/breakups 
Celebrity Confessionals
  • Anne Robinson - drink
  • Michael Barrymore - everything
  • Jordan/Peter Andre

Intellectual Confessional
  • ‘Guardian Weekend’ In their weekend magazine they do an intellectual experience confessional interview. Same style each week. Wrote in a modest and measured style. You are have to transform your interviewees speech etc in the style of the Guardian. 

Journalist Confessional (new genre, started about 10 years ago)
  • Tim Dowling (Columnist in the Guardian. Talks about how rubbish of a husband he is.)
  • William Leith 
  • Tanya Gold (Used to be on the guardian, now on the mail. Confessionals on weight and size.)
  • Liz Jones (Before Big Brother you wouldn’t of known who she was. She is a Daily Mail fashion editor - her claim to fame was she was the Marie Clare fashion editor. She then started writing a column for the Mail on Sunday about her boyfriend and very mean stuff. Made a fortune out of being a confessional journalist.) 
  • Liz Jones’ husband

Critics 
- Hadley Freeman is a Guardian columnist.

Newspapers

- Classic confessional journalism - headline, stand-first, then into chronologically (telling the story) then a good end - dramatic. 
  • Pegged to news 
  • You get confessionals as a part of a big package of a big news event
  • Train crash: survival stories etc

Trade Titles
  • They are normally far less dramatic
  • They are still needed to balance dull stuff within the title
  • First person but not confessional

Freelance Opportunities
  • Celebrities are controlled by agents
  • News agencies/PR agencies 
  • Useful to do up and coming people

How to find a subject
Look for ‘victims’
  • Medical
  • Social
  • Support Groups
  • Charity
  • Internet
  • Phone Book (use yellow pages to look up support groups etc)

Case Studies
  • Good turn of phrase
  • Great pictures/collects
  • Attractive/ugly
  • Happy ending
  • Open, honest, realistic 

If when you go to talk to someone, if they are not a good talker it won’t turn out well. The subject is so important. If that person is engaging or a good talker, it will benefit. If its a good story but they don’t say it well enough it won’t work. 


Who to avoid
  • Too vulnerable
  • Hoaxers, mental health problems i.e. anorexia (unless they are recovered), people with Munchaudsen syndrome by proxy (claims things have happened but they haven’t), confessing crimes. 
  • Always check out
  • People you know - malice/vested interest

Have a descriptive opening!


Joint confessional - story that affects them both. For example - 70% one of them in first person, 30% at the side of the other. 

Magazine Lecture #4

The New Journalism

Gonzo Journalism = Performance, Observational and Literary

Performance Journalism (another way of describing the Gonzo concept) 

(all factual features are performance journalism) 

Most factual entertainment is all presenter led. Examples of these are chat shows are the TV version of confessional interviews i.e Jonathan Ross.

Solopcism in print journalism - using ‘I’. 


Rough lecture notes of the New Journalism (Wolfe and Thompson)
1960’s/70s - popular culture in the USA. Theres a generational change.

Anti-Vietnam war, anti-consumerism, feminism, black power, popular existentialism, rock music, the beatles, post-expressionism etc. Also 1968- Paris Events, LSD, Marajuana and Zen. The beat poets, the new left, alternative society. Prague spring etc.


Radical Chic and Mau-Mauing the flak-catchers - Tom Wolfe

Radical Chic - the black panthers at Leonard Bernstein’s penthouse residence on Park Avenue (Jan 1970) - two grand pianos, 13 rooms. New York magazine article ‘radical chic’. 

In Journalism - a literary movement - The New Journalism.

Main Point: Shift in form of narration from Diegetic to Mimetic


Plimton - Chicago Sun Times. Gonzo sport journalism. Wrote about the sport subjectively after spending some time with them. 

Seeing not telling.

Objectivity is junked in favour of subjective experience. 


Ultimate New Journalism piece is FEAR AND LOATHING - ‘Gonzo Journalism’ 

Impact of psychology and theories of subjectivity and truth (‘honestly’ and ‘authentic’ experience rather than boring old objective scientific truth). 

Ultimately ‘Performance Journalism’ e.g. SUPERSIZE ME. This appears to be heading towards ‘Roman Circus Journalism’ where the journalist is tortured and murdered live on TV, or possibly eaten alive by lions or crocodiles to get ratings.

But ‘Gonzo’ is now the default format for almost all TV journalism, and also for feature writing and magazine work.

This is an age which is dominated by visual images amid declining literacy.

Gonzo type documentary - fly on the wall

Tom Wolfe’s Rules

Use the convention of 19th and 20th century realist literature (especially Zola and Dickens, Steinbeck, Orwell. 

The four ‘tools’ for story telling in this way. (The New Journalism)
1. Scene by Scene construction (with jump cuts or punctuation)

  1. Phonetic dialogue/actual speech (wild track)
  2. Third person restricted point of view (no ‘I’ see, used ‘it is’)
  3. Concentration on symbolic ‘status life’ 


03/02/2014

Magazine Lecture #3

Jackie Thornton's Rules of Pitching to an Editor

  • You need to persuade the editor that you can deliver all that you are promising within
  • your pitch. For example, explain in detail evidence that a particular interview has taken/ will take place.
  • Focuses on accuracy, no mistakes are allowed.
  • Ensure that the style of you pitch matches the magazine/ newspaper that you are pitching to. 
  • Gather as much information as possible to ensure that all areas and angles of your idea are covered.
  • It is mportant to look at formats and decide what section of a publication your feature would go into.
  • You need a killer first paragraph to prove that you are capable of writing in a compelling way. Try and summarise your entire work into this first paragraph.
  • ‘The nut grab’ or the ‘say what factor’ needs to be described in your second paragraph. 
  • Discuss why this story affects people. Why would people want to read this?
  • Your third paragraph should include plans that you have for interviews.
  • At the end of your pitch, write one sentence about yourself (biographical) and give references. This is a good way of getting back up support from other reporters.
  • Always send the pitch in the body of an email; editors don’t want to waste time opening attachments.
  • Use 7 words max in the subject field of an email.
  • Get someone else to read through you pitch besides yourself as they will have more chance of spotting any errors.
  • You should follow up your email the next day for newspapers and 1-2 weeks for magazines.
  • There is a fine line between being keen to write for a particular publication and appearing desperate. Show gratitude but don’t appear desperate.


Magazine Lecture #2

Generic feature types

In features people consume the generic type of feature.


Types of features
Confessional Interview

Consumer Review
Pictures/Fashion
Comment/Analysis
Feature Interview
Documentaries
News Features
Profiles
Art Reviews
Investigations
Observational
Response

There is no such things as a feature. You can do a feature interview with current issues in the news such as floods.
Examples of how you would write all the different features on the same story about floods.

Confessional interview with a victim of the floods 
Comment piece - ‘flooding is good ...’
Comment has to be a strong piece about something. - that’s what gets you the readers e.g. fox news. In a comment piece it is good to have both sides - for and against
Documentary about flooding *fly on the wall*. 
News feature - not done in features but done in news. when a story isn’t standing out you make a feature. PEG - when your trying to sell a news feature which is a link to a real news story. the peg would be a comment piece, or a profile with someone. It links the feature to a particular news issue. Arts review on flooding. 
Observational - Gonzo journalism - I try to tackle the floods 
Reader response - valued by magazine editors as it proves to advertisers that people are actually reading and writing in. Competitions etc 
Consumer reviews - helpful information, rights etc
Picture spread
Feature Interview - local official, sit down interview 
Profile - (difference between this and a feature interview) Profile is a living obituary/pen portrait. These are seen in the Sunday broadsheets. Facts instead of thoughts of the person. It tells you all about the person, however there is no interview apart from maybe before it to just check the facts. A feature interview is an actual interview with someone about their thoughts etc. 
‘10 things you never knew’ - often types of profiles. 

Investigations - we initiate the story rather than like in news when we are covering things that are happening in the news. We decide we are going to go look at something. 



News
Features/Documentaries
Telling Seeing (inc ‘word pictures on radio)
Brief/Summary Lengthy/detailed
Aimed at the whole audience Aimed at ‘niche’ sections of the readership
Length varies (importance) Length fixed by editorial structure/TV/Radio/news agenda
Defined Styles Many styles/generic types
Pictures useful Pictures essential/graphics
Published instantly Published according to schedule
Done by staff reporters Done by production staff/freelancers
Event-led (‘the news agenda’) Production-led (fitting schedule/structure of magazine/newspaper)



The feature content of the guardian to the the daily star is radically different. The way they do their interviews etc are very different. The features define the tone of the publication. 

They come for the news but they stay for the features. 

Print journalism is very headline driven. Often they only discuss the front page at meetings. 


Barkers - hooks to make people stay longer on the site. On the front page of big magazines they use barkers constantly also. They value engagement from the audience with the product. Features bulk out the site, make it sticky - stay on the site. 

Features are not time sensitive. Newspapers and Broadcast journalism are extremely time sensitive, a newspaper (most) is released daily and the news is 

It is important to understand the formats of specific publications to be able to work for one. By having knowledge about each type of feature done in a certain publication is allows you to find out where you could fit, what ideas you have to improve a certain aspect or even create a new part. 

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