Hello there! I know it’s been a while since I last updated the blog; my apologies.
I’ve been up to quite a lot in the intervening months – I’ve done work placements at Whistledown and BBC WM, as well as doing some freelance work helping produce some amateur podcasts.
One of the coolest things about my week at Whistledown was that I got to go through a whole bunch of magnetic tapes found in Ernie Wise’s garage, in order to transfer them into a digital format using a Revox machine. These tapes included some unique recordings from live shows in the early fifties and some of the only surviving copies of their earliest radio performances. Perhaps the most special find I made was that of an early recording for an unreleased Christmas single made by the two. Shame I can’t have a copy to share with you here, really. Still, I daresay it’s going to be used at some point in the future…I’ll keep you posted.
I was with the news department at WM. Everyone was incredibly nice and helpful, and even though I had to rely on my own initiative to find stories and offer help with editing work, I was given a supply of tasks to be getting on with, including the dreaded Vox Pop. The experience was slightly disheartening, though. Although, as the Mailbox is the second largest BBC operation in the country, it was quite a professional operation, I often found that my suggestions and ideas for bulls were deemed ‘un-newsworthy’ or too nuanced for the target audience (being regional BBC, we’re looking at 50 +).
To give one example: I’d done a some research into a series of lectures going on at Birmingham University to commemorate the 200th anniversary of Darwin’s death, something which culminated in a “literary rap battle” conducted by a famous American artist over the nature of Darwin’s legacy. Now, rap isn’t generally popular outside a youth audience, but the organiser, Professor Mark Pallen, was a really interesting guy, who had lots to say about Darwin and his connection to the Midlands, and I got some quality material from him – and again, I know I’m an ‘academic’ by some people’’s standards – but this was clear, accessible, and passionately delivered stuff. Anyway, the bull only made it once, as the “and finally” story at the end of the 6 am bulletin. To compare, a (three week old) PR story about the opening of a Halal pizza shop (not the first by a long way, but the first chain of Domino’s to do so) made it to the second or third story at least three or four times during the day.
Other things: I wanted to run a counter-story to what was run on the national news suggesting charity shops were running out of stock because of a new ‘attitude’ created by the Credit Crunch, having phoned up most stores in the region and found that they were fully provided for. However, it was judged too derivative to refer to a previous story as it might make people think the news output of the station was behind the times. Fair enough. I was also asked to look into a story on the front page of the Birmingham Mail, which I couldn’t in all right and conscience begin to consider news. I sent it over to The Enemies of Reason, instead.
Now, I won’t go into a rant here (remember, reader, that one of the aims of this blog is to make me more employable, not to cast me as some sort of unhinged eccentric loony) but I think my experiences are pretty emblematic of some of the greatest problems blighting modern journalism. I’ll say this much: I don’t think we should ever be afraid to promote clever and engaging material for fear of disconnecting with an audience who will see it as too intellectual, and we should never shy away from the reponsibility to cover community campaigns, positive stories and individual endeavour as a counter to a false sense of negativity, gloom and fear brewed up by the circumstances of the times.
On a happier note, then – in the meantime I’ve also been trying my hand at something new; making “Let’s Play” videos and uploading them to YouTube. For those of you of a slightly less geeky disposition, the ideal “Let’s Play” is something between a video walkthough of a computer game and an episode of Mystery Science Theatre 3000. It’s meant that I’ve had to get my head around some more video recording and editing software (namely CamStudio and VirtuaDub if you want to give it a try yourself) and the whole thing has been surprisingly fun. I’ve also bought myself a new mic (rather than relying on my headset) – a Sony ECM-PC50. It’s relatively cheap, as far as commerical omnidirectional mics go, except that it is TINY. Less than two cm long. Thankfully, it doubles as a clip-on mic, which means I can route it through my Edirol when I do some more documentaries.
Hopefully I’ll be able to fill up the blog with some hearty content in the coming weeks. At the very least, I don’t tend to leave it this long again.
