She’s certainly got a nose for news, and will sniff out ineptitude and inaccuracy in the media with relentless tenacity. She also loves traditional news media – it’s very comfortable.

Don’t worry though – Freelance Unbound is not about to become another pet blog. Probably…

“I” dominates the writing of students. It’s not long before a third-person news story switches to a first-person reaction to it. Whatever story they write, it’s as if the most important thing about whatever dull piece of writing has been assigned to them (a local news story? Boring!) is their own feelings about it.

It’s understandable. Youth is, by its nature, obsessed with itself and its dealings. And younger writers have a much narrower frame of reference to understand the world than more decrepit ones. It’s an experience thing – which is also about experience in the process of writing, as well as the business of living.

Maybe it’s also about aspiration. Most student journalists are obsessed with music, sport and celebrity, so maybe a lot of the writing reflects a sublimated desire to actually be famous.

Journalism is not about the journalist

But it’s not journalism. Journalism is about reporting and understanding the world – not a forum for a journalist to tell readers what he or she thinks about the world. That would imply that the journalist is as interesting as the story they tell – which is clearly not the case nearly all the time.

Yes, there are exceptions. The writer who first brought the journalist into the story as a participant rather than an observer is probably Hunter S Thompson. But Hunter S Thompson’s personal experiences riding with a California Hell’s Angels chapter are actually worth reading – after all, that’s not something you do every day. Most student journalists (indeed, most journalists) simply don’t have interesting enough experiences to be able to write real gonzo journalism.

It’s a real problem. So what’s to be done?

First – a disclaimer. Freelance Unbound is infested with the first person pronoun. This site reeks with self-important wittering. So the fact that it could feature a blog post complaining about the rampant presence of the first person in journalism is ironic, to say the least. But this is a blog, for heaven’s sake. That’s exactly what blogs are for. So – welcome back, me. At least I’ve carefully avoided using the first person up to now.

My plan was to challenge returning students in October to spend a whole semester without using that personal pronoun in their writing. In solidarity, I would pledge to remove the “I” from Freelance Unbound for the duration. Together, we would walk the path of true journalism, rather than self-promotion.

It was a great plan. But the past few weeks have revealed a key flaw.

The all-seeing I

A recent brush with the weekend supplements has threatened to undermine this worthy project. Article after article featured not only an interview with whatever celeb of the day was deemed newsworthy by the features editor (Kylie, Vidal Sassoon, Girl with the Dragon Tattoo actress Noomi Rapace), but also the relentless presence of the writer themselves.

A recent Saturday Times magazine’s feature on Vidal Sassoon starts with the author in a cab driving to Sassoon’s house in Los Angeles: “As we climb higher and higher up Mulholland Drive into Bel Air”. Further on, the journalist notes: “When I ask why he has so much art on the premises, he looks aghast.” (Probably at the fact that the journalist thinks he’s as important as Vidal himself.)

A few pages further on, Kevin Maher’s interview with Noomi Rapace ticks along quite nicely in the third person until, in response to her account of a dysfunctional adolescence, he writes: “I ask her if she’s traced the roots of this extreme behaviour.” Well, who else would be asking? You’re the journalist for heaven’s sake. And it’s your byline on the feature. So obviously it’s you asking the questions.

It never stops. Sathnam Sanghera’s interview with V.S. Naipaul on the next page reveals that the “prospect of meeting VS Naipaul fills me with a strange combination of excitement and trepidation”. As if anyone cares.

It’s easy to dismiss all this as celebrity froth (even, or especially, when it’s in the Times). Celebrity reportage is always self-indulgent. Surely this cult of journalistic personality can’t have reached the serious business and political coverage of, say, the Financial Times.

Oh dear. It has.

Take “When Hugo met Oliver” – the cover story of the FT weekend magazine for June 19/20 2010. It’s an account of a tour of South America by American film director Oliver Stone and Venezuelan president Hugo Chávez to promote South of the Border – an account of the rise of socialism across the continent. As such, it’s a prime example of a news feature – a feature article that is essentially news-based and should focus on its subject, not its writer.

But no – for some inexplicable reason, author Matthew Garrahan pops up regularly as one of the players in the story. He’s there in the standfirst: “Matthew Garrahan joined them to talk movies, politics – and the death of capitalism”.

Aside from the oddly gleeful reference to the death of capitalism, which is a reflection of the FT’s continuing drift to the left, it’s telling that, even here, Garrahan has been elevated to a player in the drama, not just an observer (note that he’s talking, not just listening). Journalists always “join” their subjects to talk about the story – it’s what journalism does. But in decades past journalists tended to fade into the background with their notebook, letting the subject hog the limelight.

Not here though. Matthew Garrahan can’t seem to keep himself out of the frame of the story. He kicks off:

I am sitting on the floor, back against the wall, of a cramped, stuffy room of a Caracas hotel, waiting for Oliver Stone.

Well, that’s all very well for scene-setting. But it goes on and on. “I’m in Venezuela to follow Stone on the first two legs of his grand tour across South America”; “I have been promised a rare interview with Chavez”; “I will also see Rafael Correa, the president of Ecuador” etc etc.

It’s as if Garrahan can’t keep his focus away from himself. “Why shouldn’t Venezuela follow its own path under a leader who was democratically elected?” asks the article, reasonably enough. But the response is “Under graying skies, I pondered this on the drive from the airport”, as if the writer is a kind of modern De Tocqueville, whose thoughts are as weighty as the leaden skies that colour his prose.

No incident is too trivial for the gonzo touch: “While I wait for the call from the presidential palace, [political fixer] Fernando Sulichin and I drink coffee in the hotel”. In fact, quite a lot of coffee seems to be drunk:

The meeting with Chávez is scheduled for 4pm, but by early evening we still haven’t heard anything. I order a double espresso…

Finally, the meeting with Chavez happens. And to prove it, there’s a riveting account of the first words exchanged between El Presidente and the intrepid journalist:

“What is your name?” Chávez says in faltering English, his voice strong and deep.

“Matthew,” I reply.

“Machu?”

“Matthew. Like Matteo.”

“Si, si. OK, Matteo.”

This is beyond banal. Why on earth should anyone care about this stuff? Why is it infecting the journalism that used to pride itself on its rigorous ability to stay outside the picture?

We are all diarists now

One reason could well be the medium you are reading now. The rise of online writing and the blog format has driven the diarisation of journalism. And while some journalists have not easily embraced the informal personalisation of their craft (see, for example, the impeccably journalistic ‘blog’ of former Press Gazette deputy editor Jon Slattery), it seems others have plunged right in – allowing informal blog style to shape the rest of their work.

Age and experience will play their part. The longer you’ve spent writing old-school reportage, the harder it will be to break those habits. But, as noted here often enough, journalists are getting younger as older and more expensive hacks are pensioned off to cut costs. That means a generation of journalists whose experience of writing has been conditioned by the easy informality of web forms.

Everything’s a cuttings job

But there’s another, even more important reason. Easy access to online information and the reluctance of publishers to finance primary reporting means that all many, many journalists do is sit in front of the computer rehashing other people’s work. It’s a lot cheaper and, crucially, it’s a lot easier. It actually comes as something of a shock to many journalism students that they can’t just write a feature about their favourite celebrity or England’s prospects in the World Cup from internet snippets and their own, all-important opinions.

In fairness to them, however, if they ever manage to find work in this business, a lot of their day-to-day activity might be exactly that – rehashing and filtering the slew of existing online information.

This is exactly why many journalists must be so keen to insert themselves into genuine reportage – it’s so rare nowadays. To have actually been in South America, meeting Hugo Chavez and speaking with him in person, is so far removed from the usual journalistic experience that it’s worth reporting on as well. “Look, I’m actually here, not cutting and pasting this from Google! This is fantastic!”

My audience knows me

There’s also a certain inevitability about the slipping of the journalistic mask. In the old days (even just a decade ago), a journalist could spend much of a working life barely interacting with their audience. Letters to the editor, depending on the publication, could be few and far between. Journalists spewed out their words into a void.

Today, however, journalists exist in a relationship with readers that has been transformed by digital technology. We are bombarded with reader response in a way that was unimaginable not so long ago.

And that means we are exposed in a way that was also unknown to previous hacks. We are accountable and visible in ways that mean it is much more natural to write as individuals talking to individuals.

Stand out in the crowd

Finally, it’s worth noting that newspapers are competing with a slew of online news sources and have to use whatever means they can to stand out in the market.

One tactic is personality. If news is something you see on Google or Yahoo in snatched headlines, how can newspapers respond? By filling themselves and their supplements chockful of personal opinion and diary columns – ironically mimicking the blogosphere that traditional journalism so derides.

Will this cult of personality spread even further to the news reporting that was always at the core of journalism? Probably – this correspondent suspects the days of distant, third-party reportage will soon seem as quaint as newspapers themselves. Not that you should care what I think…

Mitch Winehouse has gallstones

(Though, to be honest, I’m more intrigued by the news that “Paris Hilton is being sued for allegedly wearing someone else’s hair.” What is the world coming to?)

It’s impossible to pull out any extracts from the story that make any real sense. Go and have a look and see if – from the story – you can figure out:

• What happened
• Where it happened
• Why it happened
• When it happened

A choice example of journalism that only makes sense to the journalist…

The compensation is the new view from my online editor’s office – welcome to the sunny South West. Count on more from the world of local Bath and Bristol media in due course…

Today I received an email from Andy Wang of Newz-China.org – “a leading internet solutions organization in Asia” – who warns me that another company is trying to register itself as Freelance Unbound .

Dear CEO – We have something urgent to confirm with you. Yesterday we received a formal application from a company called ” Meller Investment Co., Ltd “. They were trying to apply for “ freelanceunbound” as Brand Name and following Domain Names through our organization:

• freelanceunbound.asia
• freelanceunbound.cn
• freelanceunbound.com.cn
• freelanceunbound.com.hk
• freelanceunbound.com.tw
• freelanceunbound.hk
• freelanceunbound.in
• freelanceunbound.net.cn
• freelanceunbound.org.cn
• freelanceunbound.tw

After our initial examination, we found that the Brand Name and Domain Names above are similar to yours. These days we have been dealing with it. Now we hope to get your affirmation. If your company did not authorize the aforesaid company to register these, please contact us as soon as possible. In addition, we hereby declare that time limit for this issue is 7 workdays. If your company don’t respond within the time limit, we will unconditionally approve the application submitted by Meller Investment Co., Ltd.

Wow – I’d better grab all those domain names as soon as possible so I can protect my brand! How can I do that? Oh – Andy Wang’s company is actually a domain registration company, how handy. I’ll give him a load of money immediately to protect my web identity.

Or not. given that “Mellor Investment Co” probably doesn’t exist (it’s got one reference online, with no actual company details), and it’s Mr Wang himself who may buy up my domain for multiple territories, I think I’ll pass.

And if he can find a way to make a killing by passing himself off as Freelance Unbound – good luck to him. I suspect he’ll be sitting on those names for a long time to come…

.

WordPress has gone all version 3.0 recently, and plug-in authors have been busily updating their software.

This has been fine so far, but yesterday I updated the fine Query Posts plug-in by high-profile WordPress author Justin Tadlock. And it has screwed up.

Query Posts is a super useful and well-produced plug-in that allows you to call up posts from your database of content using a whole range of criteria – from date and category to keyword tag or author name.

But as soon as it had updated to version 0.3, my sidebar list of posts turned from an orderly list of post titles in a neat, widget-style box (above left) to giant H2 headlines with full-blown excerpts underneath (above right). And I’m blowed if I can find out how to make them revert to the way they were.

In fact, when I tried to change the giant H2 headline to a smaller typeface, it seemed to screw up the other sidebar headlines too, so I’ve had to deactivate it.

Has any other WordPress user had this trouble? I’d be interested to know if it’s just me being more stupid than usual…

[UPDATE: Via the themehybrid support site (actually worth the $25 annual membership, I've found), I am informed that if you just need a list, you can select the blank option for entry_title, and then don't forget to select ul from the pulldown menu for entry_container]

It was picked up by Jim Romenesko of journalism university the Poynter Institute, who wrote a news brief about the story. Cue a tsunami of traffic (by Freelance Unbound’s modest standards) and a wealth of comments.

There are a few lessons here if you’d like to boost your own traffic and comment threads:

• Write about big brands (companies, celebrities)
• Have a nice, snarky story to tell
• Reveal yourself to be an incompetent fool (see the comments section)
• Get your post picked up by a bigger publication that will reach out to a much wider audience

Only the last is in the lap of the gods. I immediately suspected Twitter to be the prime mover, but couldn’t find an appropriately smoking gun in terms of retweets and inbound links. According to Jim Romenesko, the story was sent to Poynter.org by “a reader” – but where he or she picked it up remains a mystery.

So – out of curiosity, if you were that reader (and thanks!), where did you see the post? Was it via Twitter, or are you one of Freelance Unbound’s tiny legion of loyal readers? I’d love to know

The comments fell into two camps. One group was simply quite amused by the story; the other took me to task for, basically, not doing my job. “All you had to do was Google the company to find a phone number, you moron,” could roughly summarise this group’s view.

In response, I’d say you are absolutely right. I was totally rubbish in following up my 10pm press office registration and basically did nothing to track down the relevant contact. I am an abject failure as a journalist. I crawl in the dirt in front of my proper, professional peers. I, simply, suck.

Crucially though, this isn’t really the point of the story. I am just bewildered at the PR strategy of a big consumer brand, which apparently doesn’t want to reveal the phone number of its press office, nor the details of any of its media contacts, until it has pre-vetted the person who’s asking for it. And only gets around to it after two weeks.

It reminds me of a feature I wrote many years ago about the promotional use of electrical goods (I know, I know, how you envy my media life). I called up one of the big warehouse electrical retailers to get some information on the subject.

There was no press contact available anywhere I looked online, so I called the main consumer number and asked if the company had a press office. It had, apparently, but the person I spoke to at the call centre couldn’t give me, a member of the media, the number for the media centre because it was “confidential”. That sort of response is, frankly, bonkers.

As for my lack of follow-up to my Clinique endeavours, the answer is simple. I followed the characteristic decision tree of the freelance writer.

Do I have enough relevant information for my feature?

• [A] Yes – write the feature and put in your invoice
• [B] No – make more effort to find relevant contacts and ask them for input

The answer that week was “Yes” – which is why I forgot all about Clinique and got on with the rest of it. At least they didn’t seem that bothered…

Regular readers will know something of the trials of the freelance trade press journalist. Here’s another instalment, which gives an interesting insight into how some brands see the idea of “communication”.

The past couple of weeks of my scintillating media life have been taken up with writing a business-to-business (b2b) feature on male grooming for The Grocer – that fine trade press newspaper for the retail trade from William Reed Business Media.

As briefs go, it followed the usual path. Retail buyers (among the magazine’s core constituency) were not interested at all in talking to me. Male grooming brands (which all wanted to reach and inform the retail buyers) were falling over themselves to send me information and more-or-less relevant commentary.

Except one. When I tried to reach Clinique – arguably the brand that made skin care-type products acceptable to men in the first place back in the 1980s – I drew a blank.

Go to the media relations page on the Clinique web site and it asks you to register as a member of the press to get access to media contact information. Yes, that’s right, you must register as a member of the press before you can actually bother the super-busy and important media relations team with your media enquiry.

Well – it’s a big brand. Maybe they get inundated with time-wasters. No problem – I’ll fill out the form and wait for the, hopefully, quick and automated notification of my login details. There we go – an automated message saying:

Thank you for applying for a Press Pass. Your application is now being processed and you will be contacted shortly by a member of the team.

“Shortly”. That’s good, because my deadline is a week on Thursday and I don’t have as much time as I’d like to get all the information together. Let’s hope a member of Clinique’s “team” gets back to me in a day or two. I hope they’re not too busy.

That was two weeks ago. Yesterday morning – several days too late – I finally got an email from “Camilla”. Did she have confirmation of my registration with the press office? Was she full of apologies for taking bloody weeks to bother to reply to my enquiry? No. She wanted to know a bit more about me:

Thank you for your recent (sic) application to Clinique’s online press office.  It would be great to find out some more information about the publications that you work for.  We would just like to get a bit more information as I don’t believe we’ve worked together before.

No, Camilla, we haven’t. Gosh – that’s because this is my first time trying to write about your brand. Which you are making quite difficult. Especially as my deadline has already been and gone. So, you know, thanks for nothing.

And why is it that Clinique is so reluctant to embrace my press enquiry with open arms?

Our corporate policy is that we request a media pack or hard copy of any new publications that we haven’t worked with before, in order to gain brand approval. As you’re freelance, we require information on the publications that you work for.  We are more than happy to help out with your queries if you are happy to respond with this information.

Oh, gee – thanks. I’m so happy you need to vet me to even let me ask you a sodding question.

And “brand approval” to let a journalist talk to a press office? Get over yourselves. A press office exists to talk to journalists. If you are putting obstacles in their way, you’re just a waste of space.

And remember – journalists are consumers too. I think I won’t be putting any business Clinique’s way from now on…

[UPDATE: I've just had a lovely email from Amy in the Clinique press office, who is terribly apologetic and, more importantly, has updated the Clinique press office web site with a general contact number for journalists (and, presumably, time-wasters). Hurrah]

Just found out that Harvey Pekar – arguably the father of autobiographical comics – has died aged 70.

He wrote about his brush with lymphatic cancer in the award-winning graphic novel Our Cancer Year in 1994 and chronicled his everyday life in Cleveland from the 1980s onward in American Splendour. Inexplicably, given its un-Hollywood nature, he got a film made about his life in 2003, starring the great Paul Giamatti.

It’s a great shame – his work stands up with any of the best social reportage.