The Voice: my kind of reality TV

I recently re-read a rant of mine about last year's X Factor; specifically, about the number of shameless soundalikes given airtime. Having watched new reality show concept The Voice over the past three weeks, it seems like the BBC read it too, thought, 'that IS uncool' and commissioned a show where having your own, unique voice is the very minimum required.

I love The Voice. I love it for Jessie J singing along and visibly willing people to be amazing, I love it for the ultra-camp WHOOSH as the chairs spin around, I love it for Will.i.am's unbelievable geeky, robotic weirdness and I love it for the almost complete absence of sob stories. I even love Danny ScriptQuiff's unbearable neediness.

While not all of the singers that have got through have my stamp of approval, how boring would life be if there was nothing to shout at the TV about? The potentially spine-tingling moment when an auditionee opens their mouth and the suspense of the chair-turning have me absolutely hooked.

Some people have moaned about Jessie J's loudness (love her), patterned shirt (love it) or interrupting (don't care, still love her), but I think the judges are a nice mix. You've got Tom Jones to soak up all of the naff cruise-shippy singers (who will hopefully go this week in the SING-OFF round!), Jessie to inspire tears and worship from every misfit auditioning, Will to deliver immense and unexpected Michael Jackson impressions, and Danny to silently scream 'LOVE ME!' with his eyes every time someone's picking their mentor.

I can't bloomin' wait for the sing-offs this weekend - way to tap into the Glee audience, BBC - and see how my favourites progress. Here they are, by the way...

J Marie Cooper

Team: Will.i.am

The redhead who absolutely stormed her audition with Mamma Knows Best, arguably Jessie J's hardest song to sing. I liked her style, I liked her attitude and her voice was just different enough from JJ's (a touch of jazzy vibrato for starters). Rumours abound that she's an evil diva, but I don't care. I like my divas evil, demanding and a bit mental.

Ben Kelly

Team: Jessie J

Ben had me at 'She packed her bags last night, pre-flight'. Love Rocket Man as I do, though, it was the risk-taking and piano skills that really sold this one for me. He's quirkier and less marketable than the above, but I'm feeling him from his bow tie to his red skinnies.

Vince Kidd

Team: Jessie J

Vince was a tough-looking platinum blonde with the piercings and the hood. But he showed his talent when he whipped out a funky, grinding cover of Madonna's bubblegum Like a Virgin, and his soft side when he was reduced to wibbly tears by the judges' praise. Can't wait to see what he'll do next.

David Faulkner

Team: Jessie J

The only one smacking of 'underdog' that I liked, David was the Welsh builder who rocked Superstition. If he can apply his crazy vocals to something more contemporary, I'll like him even more. I also liked that other guy with the hat, but since I can't remember his name (and can remember his fiancee was called Twinnielee), he's out.

Becky Hill

Team: Jessie J

I had to pick another girl, had to. I liked this one (although I wasn't enamoured with Jessie J turning her chair so early - seemingly because she'd picked her favourite song). I really wanted an amazing black mama with a huge voice, but didn't get one, or a gorgeous country and western type - and they rejected Harriet Whitehead, who I thought was quite good. So I pick Becky, whose tone I liked and stood out for me among a few cruisey or shouty types.

The judges seemed to put through more females I didn't like than ones I did, which is odd. Loving the blokes though. And let's face it, Jessie's definitely got the best crop of artists. Do comment with who you've loved or hated, or if you totally disagree with me about the show.

Images: BBC

*Apologies for the amount of capitals, reality TV singing shows really bring that out in me.

Work experience moans: are they ever justified?

The Devil Wears Prada: the most famous magazine kiss'n'tell

This afternoon I was recommended (and have been giggling at) this very amusing postmortem of a disappointing work experience placement at a women's weekly on The Vagenda. Everyone who's ever had a media work placement will recognise this - the ennui, the tears, the photocopying.
But amusing accounts aside, isn't it a bit much to bitch retrospectively about your work experience? I've had many a placement, ranging from 'tapping nails on desk waiting for another filing task' to 'sent to a film screening on my first night' on the workie Richter scale. I've moaned to my friends about bland days and snappy colleagues, for sure. But would I publish my dissatisfaction? I'm not sure.

I think people should debate about work experience - are we being taken for a ride? How much compensation, if any, is normal? Whose job is it to make sure you're busy/happy? But there is sort of an unwritten code in journalism that, publicly, we just get on with it, smile and say thank you, and stay quiet about any horrid employers. (I must point out at this juncture that I have blogged about internships, with some reference to my personal experience - but nothing like the roast this Vagenda writer has given her placement.)

The bottom line is, work experience is business. You go along, you put up with whatever they throw at you, grit your teeth when what they throw at you is returns forms and photocopying, and in exchange you get their publication's shiny, recognisable name on your CV. That name could be the thing that gets you your first paid job - especially if the person hiring has worked there and knows it's a nightmare. Sometimes just surviving is all the reference you need.

I think people that go along to work experience expecting a fun, tailor-made experience of the real job are kidding themselves. The publication is very much your choice - of course a women's weekly is going to be 'Kerry Katona's wardrobe' and real life stories. I wouldn't have booked myself in for two weeks at one. Many people go for smaller companies and niche publications, where the teams are inevitably more laid-back and give you lots to do - they could use the free help.

Also, gritting your teeth and getting on with it can be the making of you. My very worst weeks at magazines only made me tougher and appreciate the job I have now every day. Of course it's hard at the time, especially if that time is the Christmas holidays of your very tough journalism MA when you could have gone on a mini break. How so many privileged Tatler-esque girls survive as fashion interns, I'll never know - I found it tough at women's mags when my previous experience was Woolworths stock rooms and rowdy Cardiff pubs. If you feel you're destined for The Economist, don't sign up for three weeks at Heat. Of course you'll hate every One Direction-slathered minute. (If I learned anything on my magazine-specific postgrad course, it was that one person's OK! is another's New Statesman.)

Even though my fashion cupboard experience is limited to a few days here and there (I mainly worked with features teams, but volunteered the odd quiet day to do returns for the Red fashion team), it's actually quite a chilled experience. While everyone in the main office frantically chases PRs, conducts phone interviews and files copy way past deadline, the fashion cupboard is a little oasis of calm. You can have the radio on, chat to the other girls and make friends (an advantage the usually-solo features intern rarely enjoys) and bask in the coolly repetitive nature of the returns system.

I didn't have any loftier expectations when I did my postgraduate journalism placements than on my first rookie week as a 19 year old, and, true to form, the work I was given was less challenging than my previous 1-6 month internships. Of course it was. It's hard for a junior entrusted with a workie for a couple of weeks to delegate much responsibility.

I love a snarky post as much as the next girl, but I must defend magazine placements in this case. They provide a simple function; getting you your next placement or (hopefully) job. Take them for what they are or don't book yourself in at all. I know which option will get you further...

Image: Twentieth Century Fox

10 years of Glamour

Whilst on my magazine journalism course, I've been looking at my mag-habit a completely different way. We're told in lectures that women are largely impulse buyers, while men are more brand loyal, but I have basically bought the same magazines for years. A couple of monthlies, a couple of trashy weeklies, and the odd giant, luxurious Vogue or Vanity Fair for fun. The only one I buy practically every month is Glamour, which today celebrated 10 years on our newsstands.


Glamour was launched in 2001 as the smaller-sized magazine "that fits in with your life, as well as your handbag." I'm trying to work out from which point I started reading (I was 14 in 2001), but when I look at the first ever issue, currently published in PDF format on their Facebook page, I feel like I remember the cover. Maybe I had it or my elder sister did. I do know I've been reading it many years before I hit their market age range of 25-35.

So what's so great about Glamour? It has a real mix of subject matter and feature treatments - not Cosmo-sexpert, not Elle or Vogue-fashionista, but friends, single life, relationships, style, beauty, health and culture. I just flicked through that first issue and it was a really good read. Most of the celebrities featured have remained high-profile; Kate Winslet was their coverstar as a fresh-faced new mum, Gwyneth Paltrow's wardrobe was the most desirable and Victoria Beckham wrote a style feature.

It had tips on entertaining, timeless beauty, great reads (I think they would be wise to go back and extend their books content) shocking real-life features and fabulous celebrity access. I still read it every month, but I do think Glamour's upmarket content has slipped from that glossy first go. There used to be a layer of celebs who were Glamour-worthy; Rachel Weisz, Liv Tyler, Halle Berry, Cate Blanchett, Sandra Bullock and Natalie Portman all graced the cover in its first three years. Now, you're more likely to find Katie Price, Lily Allen and even Abbey Clancy staring back at you. Either the 'Glamour woman' has changed, or the team's budget and access has.



Obviously their sales figures must look favourably on La Price, or she wouldn't have popped up multiple times, but putting her there seriously downgraded the escapism and luxury factor for me. Similarly, Abbey Clancey's recent cover was a tie in with The Great British Hairdresser, on which editor Jo Elvin appears. It was trying to make a case for Abbey being misunderstood by the press, and really being a very sweet girl, but I think it missed the mark on what readers so love about Glamour.

Elvin has steered the ship since the launch (and writes a practically perfect first editor's letter in Issue 1.) In a recent lecture, Haymarket publishing veteran Mel Nicholls used Glamour as an example of brilliantly written and designed coverlines. They use bold sans-serif font, different sizes and colours, and highlight numbers, key words and hot lists. They especially know when to push a great offer or competition.

Features wise, Glamour isn't afraid to throw in something a bit political, controversial or uncomfortable. Recently they ran a feature about women in their twenties and thirties getting sick of hearing about other peoples' babies, which I'm sure got a lot of flack. But the team are not afraid of stirring up debate; post-Twitter, I even had a little clash with Elvin last year over their Women of the Year choices. She's very Twitter-active and often responds to reader comments.

I've also done work experience at Glamour, and the team were very lovely (and truly glamorous) in person. It's successful for a reason, and that reason is a good sense of consistency, reader needs and marketing genius. I love their little franchises and would miss them if they went: Hey, it's Ok, the witty lists on the last page, and the more recent Celia Walden lunch interview. I think Glamour deserves some serious applause at its birthday celebrations tonight. I think it's the cream of women's mags, and manages to be universally appealing without trying to please all the people all the time. Bravo.

Here are some of my favourite covers from the last decade (often the month they stopped dialling Britney and took some risks):

November 2004: Renee goes brunette.
The focus is unusually on fair skin and piercing eyes.


July 2003: Charlie's Angels. Glamour
breaks with industry tradition and triples
their cover star. Smokin'.


December 2008: Leona isn't the most exciting of celebrities, but as well as being one of their few mixed-race cover stars, it also looks like they've let her be herself. I also have to give them snaps for putting a cosy jumper on the cover in winter, rather than a skimpy party dress (see also Charlotte Church last December.)

December 2009: Leighton Meester
They also recently put her co-star Blake Lively on the cover, but
this shows a nod to the future of glamorous Hollywood, as a
new generation comes up through the ranks. More Blair and
less Jordan, please!

RIP GMTV

Last Friday early morning classic GMTV was laid to rest in favour of a dire new concept called Daybreak, and like so many things (Opal Fruits, Woolworths, my youth), I just didn’t realise how much I’d miss it until it was gone. It’s a good thing of course, lifestyle-wise; I used to chop and change between BBC Breakfast and GMTV during my toast-munching time, thus missing out on valuable current affairs snippets in favour of red carpet gossip and stories about heroic pets. It’s a new dawn, and that dawn will be filled entirely with disheartening news about house prices and graduate jobs. But I forced myself to watch a good six minutes of the first Daybreak this morning, just to see if it had any of GMTV’s trashy warmth, silliness or unintentional hilarity.

Reader, it did not. Even if you can stomach the toxic combination of Bleakley and Chiles (really?), they are wedged in far too close to the camera in an uncomfortable ‘we get on great!’ proximity. Her rubbery spitting-image smile and his melting caveman expression make it difficult to decide which side of the screen is less painful to focus on, and while today’s weather probably wasn’t a production decision, the vast greyness behind their heads just added to the notion that this was a dark, dark day for breakfast television. The news (and I know no-one ever watched GMTV for the NEWS) was like any other third-rate channel’s news – dull, read by an attractive but nondescript woman and with the same terrible 80s-looking graphics as the rest of the show. Purple and yellow? Outside of an Easter Hat Parade these colours have no business appearing side by side. It’s hard to believe this is the big shift in ITV’s morning schedule, months in the planning. It looks like they had to come up with something in 24 hours, planned using only post its, purple crayons and a perpetual soundtrack of James Blunt in the background.

'I'm gonna punch you in the ovary, that's what I'm gonna do. A straight shot. Right to the babymaker.'

It’s not that GMTV was a sensational piece of topical television; it simply stood for a time when I had options. Bleak day, hungover day, can’t-bear-to-hear-another-economic-reason-my-life-is-about-to-suck day? Ben Shephard’s boy-scout charm and the ramblings of their (clearly on crack) TV guy Richard Arnold would momentarily disperse the challenges of the day ahead. Bad satellite links, verbal stumblings and crying babies drowning out interviews were all part of its wayward charm. Transparent timewasting – during their World Cup coverage, Shephard had a troupe of vuvuzela players competing with an English brass band for a number of minutes I will never comprehend – provided a good opportunity to flick over to the real world, aka BBC Breakfast. But while I know many of you were always exclusively Breakfast watchers, there is a small part of my brain, the same part that enjoys reading Cosmo in the bath, that just doesn’t know how it will get through some segments of a purely-BBC morning. The other day one of their correspondents was wedging himself through small tunnels in a cave for what seemed like hours, as some sort of topical nod to a big cave-related story. I can’t even remember what the point of it was, so traumatic was the coverage. It also doesn't help that the hosts are as forgettable as they are professional, and the business and sports presenters are snoozeworthy even when sipping your first caffeine fix of the day.

So farewell, GMTV: farewell to the interchangeable blondeness of Penny, Kate and Emma, farewell to the Pussycat-Doll-esque weathergirl, farewell to Real People interviews marred by grizzling babies, to Andrew Castle’s valiant stabs at being ‘cool’ and ‘hip’, to Fiona Phillips’ inability to be remotely likeable, to Richard Arnold’s pun-a-minute, ‘ooh matron’ TV coverage, and to many other little moments of lightness in my weekday mornings.

Miss Write: Unplugged

This article made me so sad. And not just a brief moment of tut-tut-what-is-the-world-coming-to sad, but strong-desire-to-throw-my-laptop-out-of-the-window-and-drown-my-mobile-in-the-nearest-beverage sort of sad. Technology has been a part of my entire adult life – I got my first brick-like Nokia 3110 at about 13, way behind most teens at my streetwise school, and joined the dark cult of texting, instant messaging and constant miscommunication. I suppose when we flippantly say ‘technology’ we suppose it to be internet and mobile phone based ‘extras’, when of course the original landline phone is a piece of technology in itself. But it is the extras, seemingly endless, that are causing problems in my social sphere. Blackberries, iPhones, laptops and Wifi mean everyone is online everywhere they go; it is incredibly liberating in the sense that if you send someone a query via Facebook, Twitter, Blackberry messaging, voicemail or a good old fashioned text, you are pretty much guaranteed a response within minutes or hours. But on the other hand, it is incredibly frustrating if people don't or can't use one of these nifty mediums to get back to you. The basic assumption is that everyone is connected now, 24-7. No one is out of touch. Re-read that sentence. Is it a positive one? Are we even allowed to be out of touch?

I would describe myself as a technophobe, yet I am a Tweeter, a Facebooker, I have both webmail and Outlook accounts, an abandoned MySpace page, a Blackberry and a touchscreen phone. I had to be bullied into the latter as I was solemnly told by the 3Mobile goblins that only the touchscreens, Blackberries and ‘smartphones’ (the basic Nokia evidently the D student of the class) were compatible with the best contract deals. I stubbornly resisted for some time, until being coerced into purchasing a touchscreen LG this summer. This phone and I haven’t really settled into a honeymoon period yet; it sends blank and unfinished texts, its predictive dictionary is bizarrely devoid of any useable words and most unsettlingly, the display flips over into landscape from portrait if you so much as tilt the handset. I am clearly not as smart as my smartphone. If it even qualifies as a smartphone, which I suspect it does not. iPhones make me slightly queasy, and although I have a freebie BlackBerry which is very useful for free instant messaging and things like the GoogleMap application, it still has roughly four thousand logos standing for functions I can’t even begin to comprehend. So maybe I am just a technophobe by my generation’s standards.

I often come home from work to find three or four family members and friends perched on our sofas, each engrossed in the laptop in front of them. This remarkable combination of companionship and isolation is surreal to look at, but I know I have joined in on more than one occasion. My own laptop is no longer with us, having hung on admirably through six years, several knocks and drops, and resurrected itself more than once. It lasted its final months with the screen half hanging off, lots of amateur sellotape surgery holding it together and a tendency to simply switch off mid task. So now I watch people’s close relationships with their laptops with a certain detachment, before I rejoin their ranks in a month or so with a much-needed replacement for my impending student year. This woman’s description of her text and email-based relationship with her sons was a bit of a wake-up call, although it’s something I’ve been gradually coming round to for a while. How on earth do you break the cycle of cyber communication?

A couple of my friends have managed it; I may have to call them up via the alien device that is the landline phone and ask them if there is some sort of nirvana at the end of the process. The unfortunate fact is, for those who can’t bear to be out of the loop (and by the loop I mean recent photos of great days and nights out, invitations to future ones, and the general stream of wit and banter that Facebook has to offer) it is a huge step to remove oneself from a social networking site. I fear for my monastic ambitions to really take root, all of my favourite people would have to similarly shun the good ‘book and make a profound pact to call each other or, in a maverick twist, actually MEET UP to share conversation or pictures. There are people I haven’t seen for actual plural years who I consider myself ‘in touch’ with. Would the removal of myself from social cyberspace encourage more real-life contact and more tangible memories? Once something moves down the endless feed of Facebook debate and exhibitionism, it is forgotten. I’m just not sure what these endless options for instant communication are doing for our friendships.

Of course, there are so many advantages, logically speaking. With a Facebook message I can put out an idea of an outing, get everyone’s feedback (visible to all other guests) and summarise with the actual plan. Events are a fine way to get a head count and for people to RSVP easily, and I can’t say seeing people’s feedback on your photos is entirely disagreeable. But it brings out the worst in me and so many others. Trying to get over a break up in dignified silence? The temptation to make him feel bad and elicit sympathy from your friends will prove too much to resist. Getting married/having a baby/moving house? Boring people with the daily details is always a risk. Enraged by an acquaintance? Why not passive-aggressively bash out a generalized rant about ‘certain people’? Because if you drag your gaze away from the screen and glance in the mirror, you will see the distinct glaze of crazy in your eyes, that’s why.

So I’m considering the neo-Luddite route; Lily Allen’s done it twice (or thrice, it’s hard to keep track) but however much she tries, La Allen finds it just too damn simple to announce something like a pregnancy or a ‘retirement’ through a press release or an interview alone. Where’s the fanfare? There’s something deliciously controlling about reporting constantly on your own movements and actions. Even our parents are getting in on the act, if not seamlessly (my mum still asks us to ‘send’ her photos on Facebook, the tagging process continuing to elude her). The UK’s eldest Twitterer, Ivy Bean, recently passed away at the age of 103; greatly missed, if only for the quaint concept of being on Twitter at such a grand age. But I don’t like the fact that if someone’s busy, they can still be ‘in touch’ without having to actually see you. It is harder than it should be to explain why twelve texts and a funny wall post doesn’t constitute having seen someone, but maybe we don’t feel who is really there for us with this bizarre set-up of communication from all angles. Equally, maybe we are not really being there for a friend if we ask them what’s up on Facebook chat or respond to their Tweet. My biggest problems with the world of technology at the moment are the misunderstandings, the unread messages, and the odd frustration at those who are not as communicatively wired up as we are. It is easy to ‘overhear’ other friends planning or discussing a recent meet up on these mediums, and be offended at your exclusion. And in the event of heartbreak, the breaker is maddeningly visible to the breakee if they are not strong enough to hit that ‘remove’ button. Perhaps if we signed off, retired the mobiles and returned to a traditional phone call at least, we might get on a little better, move on a little faster, and say what actually needs to be said.

Of course, the major flaw is that I wouldn't be able to blog (or promote it in any way.) But I also wouldn't care who was reading, what they thought or if I was offending anybody. Today it feels infuriating that I want to do something so entangled in communication and self-marketing. In another life, or maybe a few years down the line, I would unplug everything, get away somewhere less polluted with the buzzing of phones and the pinging of emails, and do something very simple with my time. And maybe have clearer relationships as a result.

Twitter gets bitter

A few people have asked me lately about Twitter, and why people bother using it in the Facebook-dominated world of social networking. A year ago I probably would have agreed that it was a pointless addition to our modern obsession with constant communication and self-exhibition, but I became curious after I began reading the Tweet Beat posts on the brilliant blog Jezebel. These bizarre and funny snippets from people in the public eye were very entertaining, and I thought I’d give it a go. So I joined in September, following the few people I was interested in: some journalists, publications, news feeds, comedians and the odd celebrity. Twitter for me is not for connecting with friends, but a tailored feed of witty banter, breaking news and insider information. If you’re into theatre or music, you can follow venues and artists and get the earliest offers and news of gigs and shows. If you’re an avid reader of Heat, you can follow drunk, indiscreet and scandalous celebrities and chart their highs and lows. If you’re a journalist you can follow a variety of news sources, PRs and public figures to get the speediest and most accurate information. I don’t tweet my own thoughts and movements that much, often just re-posting great links and recommending people to follow, but I go on to catch up on things once in a while and end up reading articles and finding out about things I never would have via standard print or online news. Plus, most people tend to be quite witty. And unlike Facebook, you can cull your ‘following’ list guilt-free and pare it down to only the very best tweeters. However, unlike Facebook, when too many people converge on the Twitterverse one is often confronted with the Whale of Doom – meaning ‘come back later’, but an image both irritating and distressing.

However, it does have a nasty side. Once you’re used to people getting sucked into rows it becomes merely boring, but the impersonal side of this sort of blind networking means that people find it very easy to hit out at others. A while back a friend of mine made a benign comment about a flavour-of-the-month popstar, and some deranged fans started hurling very explicit abuse at her and anyone who tried to defuse the situation. This was my first encounter with the saddos that use the site for stalkery and mischief; before then it was all Stephen Fry musings and Ed Byrne chuckles. There is a lot of Outrage on Twitter as well, which can become wearisome – usually Jan Moir related (chill out and stop reading the Mail, people!), at one point leading to people trying to post the writer’s personal details and home address so people could admonish her directly. This is the kind of mob mentality that has started to show a nastier side to the innocent-birdie-fronted website. Obsessive fans gather and start huge campaigns against people; Stephen Fry - one of the site’s most popular celebs - once mentioned that a user had referred to his tweets as boring, and it wasn’t long before his followers were baying for blood. Fry had to swiftly follow up his comment by asking people not to harass the poor guy.

Today Dom Joly, usually fairly jovial or at most a little acerbic, started a row when he dropped in a casual allusion to Keith Chegwin’s joke-stealing ways to his Independent column last Sunday. From the look of Joly’s war of words with his unimpressed followers since then, Chegwin has a crazed army of tweeting fans ready to take down anyone who makes him the butt of their (original) joke. Instead of maintaining a dignified silence, Joly has argued with, insulted and re-tweeted his least literate and most indignant followers, despite constant claims of being ‘bored’ with the furore. This is the fascinating thing about a constant stream of activity available for all to see; reading Joly’s tweets back, it is evident that he is more than a little riled by the negative reaction, not finding it ‘hilarious’ as insisted. Obviously I’m team Dom here – Cheggers is an pilfering little twerp who would clearly sell his granny or sleep with Susan Boyle to cling on to his waning fame. But the ensuing row showed an ugly side of a funny guy for a while there. Perhaps the Twitter backlash is beginning as celebs begin to see the dark side of the public having unfettered access to them. Equally, if you slag someone off on Twitter, you’ll likely use their ‘@’ identity to refer to them, and thus send the criticism in their direction as well as your followers’. This makes every bit of negative feeling public and aggressive, rather than privately aired in frustration.

There are moments of genius though; after Jeremy Clarkson’s book came out with the testosterone-packed tagline ‘Read Clarkson. Think Clarkson. Act Clarkson’, writer Caitlin Moran poked fun at the PR machine by inviting her followers to ACT CLARKSON that day and tell her about. The resulting hashtag (creating a separate feed of tweets on that subject) was pure brilliance. When a large event is happening – the world cup for example, or the final of a reality show – Twitter is filled by witty commentary on the events unfolding. When the BP spill happened, someone took the name ‘BPGlobalPR’ (since taken down) and tweeted tongue-in-cheek ‘official’ comment from the corporation’s HQ. Some genius is posing as the Queen, and flits between describing their gin-induced hangovers, Prince Edward’s cross-dressing and changing song lyrics to include the word ‘one’ (One wants to ride one’s bicycle, one wants to ride one’s bike…)

It’s a funny old invention, really – excellent for raising awareness (my sister’s charity have had their messages and links re-tweeted by the likes of Bill Bailey, Sarah Brown and Lorraine Kelly to their thousands of followers), PR, arts & culture recommendations and instant reviews, as well as just making your daily reading material more diverse. But I don’t enjoy the speed at which criticism of one person can build up and spread, resulting in a sort of grown-up cyber bullying of an individual. I hope anyone who becomes a Twitter convert uses it to educate and entertain themselves, rather than combating their own insecurity and frustration by belittling others (I wonder if my own Anonymous is on there?) But I think it’s essentially A Good Thing as it’s put people’s PR into their own hands and sped up things for the media and communications industries. Let me know if you are pro or anti-Twitter, I find it to be a bit of a cultural Marmite.

Easy, Breezy, Beautiful

I do love this September ELLE cover, tweeted earlier by their Executive Editor, Tom Macklin. Not only do I adore Miss Blunt (for her style, for her Brit cool, for her show-stealing character in The Devil Wears Prada, for having dated everyone's guilty-pleasure crush, Michael Bublé... the list is endless.) I like that ELLE don't just stick the current face of L'Oreal in a jewel-coloured frock and make her laugh next to a wind machine. The pose is striking, the lace is chic and autumnal, the kohl-smudged eyes grab your attention and she looks porcelain yet very real. And not to get too curvy-girl crusader-y, but they notably haven't emaciated her shapely thighs with an overzealous airbrush. Big thumbs up to ELLE; this will no doubt shine out on a shelf full of cluttered, psychadelic covers. Can't wait to read the star interview.

Internships: heaven or hell?

At the weekend The Guardian brought this issue to my attention, and it's quite nice to see a range of opinions on it in the piece itself and the fervent web comments below. For a long time the topic depressed me because I was living it; for the eighteen months following my degree, I flitted between internships and unpaid work experience placements, drifting around London on the airy high that comes from being (albeit superficially) in the industry you desperately want to work in. To the credit of the UK's major publishing companies, I was rarely out of ‘work’ – it just so happened that the work was challenging, unpaid and with no guarantee of progesssion.

Being an intern is a giddy sensation at first. You’re in the big city, in my case in the chic West London HQs of the glossy magazines you’ve been reading for years, everyone’s very glam and you’re walking past Stella McCartney, Selfridges, McQueen and admiring the displays before work (while worrying about forking out for that essential H&M purchase in your lunch hour). You don’t even think about the money to start with, you just feel lucky to be there. Then a few months go by, you learn some skills and gain confidence, you feel qualified to comment on things and contribute ideas and you start to feel the hours and the poverty kicking your ass a bit. I have always been very fortunate to work at places that are reasonably grateful to have interns, that pay expenses (bar one or two publications) and crucially, that give you exciting things to do.

Working at top magazines, you do see that the fashion interns have it harder. There are more of them, usually 6-8 girls - all tall, slim and stylish with a hungry look of ambition in their eyes (that might actually just be hunger). They get the everyday mundaneities of sending out and calling in merchandise, keeping records and tidying the fashion cupboard – but once in a while there’ll be a chance to go to an incredible shoot, personally assist a fashion Ed or contribute to the style pages, and thus competition is fierce. And all while looking chic and on trend with hardly any bank balance to work with. It’s a bit like an episode of America’s Next Top Model, but without the big mansion and the raw sexual magnetism of Nigel Barker. So I do appreciate that fashion interning can be a thankless task. If I hadn’t had the fairly frequent boost of seeing my words in print, I don’t know if I would have hung in there as long as I did.

Features is different; I think you learn a lot quite quickly because you’re constantly having ideas knocked back, writing picked apart and being sent on wild goose chases in your research – you have to get tough and work harder. I think if I hadn’t had those eighteen months I wouldn’t be as resilient and as sure as I am that it’s still worth it. Going straight into a salary would put more pressure on you – Am I earning this? What if I don’t know what I’m doing? What if this isn’t right for me and I need to get out? – with an internship, you are allowed to get things wrong, try again, and leave with zero guilt if it’s not for you. You also learn useful things for your career decisions, such as there are no straight men (I've maybe met three in total in the magazine world), some women are just allowed to act like Mariah on a daily basis, and there are a lot of fun freebies and invitations to keep you going on even the bleakest day. People forget to mention that internships can be fun - and if they're not fun at all, maybe you're in the wrong work environment.

But I do agree that you shouldn’t have to do it forever. Unfortunately all my enthusiasm went into my first few months of whirlwind unpaid work experience, and by the time I was a paid features intern at Elle, I was feeling the grind a bit. It was still the best work experience I’ve ever had, responsibility and opportunities-wise, but being the young not-quite-staff-member amongst all the regulars was hard. So this is where the sheer length of interning time at the moment is a drawback – there is the potential to become jaded before you’ve even found your first job. In the media no-one seems to have moved up since I started doing work experience back in 2007. The people I met as juniors and assistants back then are for the most part still in those roles, and as no one is getting pay rises or promotions, and people are fearful of leaving because of the recession, there is no natural movement up the ladder. I’m staying focused in the hope that this will change. What is true in the Guardian piece comments is that there is an elite club of media hopefuls being bankrolled by their parents, who can of course afford to be in London on zero pay, mingling with the hot new faces in the hot new clubs, and drifting home to a comfortably central flat paid for by Daddy. Lucky them - but surely this doesn't make for an ideal range of young writers and trendsetters? As suggested by Caitlin Moran recently, we don't want to end up with a media industry filled with braying Hatties, Fenellas and Sheherazades - so there have to be opportunities for the less-than-minted state school brains to come through. Internships are a way of doing that, and if you're savvy enough you can do one, work for a bit and save, do another, and so on. It may take longer but it will feel much sweeter when you do break through the wall of blonde hair and jodhpurs.

What many people point out in their comments on the Guardian article is that many artistic and creative industries are frivolous, expensive and not essential to our economy. Why shouldn’t it be a little harder than getting into them? In my bohemian-wannabe generation everyone seems to want to be an actor or an artist, but equally want the money and the lifestyle they are used to – as such people end up pursuing their dream for a few years after studying, then slipping into a more corporate role as they realise bills must be paid and actors are often little more than auditioning waiters. Industry placements help you weigh up what’s worth sacrificing and what’s not – a bad experience can turn into something wonderful for your career perspective. But this doesn’t mean I want to hit 26 or 27 and still have gotten no further than being a student and an intern. Especially without having had gap years or long periods of unemployment. That would be taking the biscuit, and I wouldn’t hesitate to find a more attainable role. I do think fashion and art should be harder to get into than being a nurse or a teacher, as they’re often better paid (and with a lot more perks) at the top than those socially vital roles.

In relation to this article, I must contradict commenter TaylorHarrison when they suggest that Guardian News & Media themselves are just as bad as the cutthroat high-fashion industry. I have only had two weeks in their delightful Kings Place building (at the lovely Observer Culture section), but I found them to be flexible with my hours, a suitably buzzy and creative environment and somewhere that kept me very occupied, including getting a couple of bylines. That may not sound like a lot, but for two weeks - which is really the maximum you should do completely unpaid – it actually did more for me than many of my month-long placements. From lunch and walks round the canal with the team, to the fact that when people google me now the Observer pages will come up, it was beneficial and exactly what it said on the tin – an experience of the job. The bad thing with being so ethically organised is that they won’t have people back after the appropriately short unpaid placements, for fear of exploiting them, when I would dearly love to be exploited by the Observer for a more sustained period. So magazines have it right in terms of lengthier intern opportunities – special mention must go to Elle here, who regularly employ multiple interns on a modest but significant salary, as well as being generous with exciting opportunities, invitations and assignments. Others could do better, but everyone’s just watching their costs at the moment, and that can’t be helped. It can’t be any nicer to work for 20 years in the industry, get to the top and have your pay and budget frozen for the same economic reasons.

There is a real camaraderie in an industry where pretty much everyone has been an unpaid lackie, and thus know what they’re looking for in a newbie but want to help them grow as a writer, designer or stylist. Internships can be bliss and they can be hell, but I think you can lose sight of their value if you constantly think about the money or the time. There is no better time to be out of pocket and rich in life experiences than your early twenties, so try and make the best of it.

Image: mises.org

You get what you pay for

A man walks into a bar and orders a pint. The barman carefully pours it, puts it on the bar and walks to the till to ring it up. While he does this, the customer downs the pint and casually strolls out of the bar, refreshed and happy.

Where's the punchline, you ask? Nowhere to be seen - it's not a joke, it's stealing. Stealing liquid, mind, of which there are thousands more barrels, and which the innocent barman did not create, brew and transport all by himself. But a service and a product were provided, and not paid for. Most people wouldn't dream of doing this (although my friend did see someone steal a 6-inch Subway the other day) but thieving isn't such a crisply defined concept anymore. Partly because people feel so disillusioned by prices, recessions and authority in general, but mainly because of the big playground of freebies that is the internet. Young people were the first to hop on the cyber bandwagon in the naughties, and they quickly learnt about the joys of file-sharing, downloading and online trading, before the elders who had established businesses and copyrights had figured out how to stop them. In print media, publishers were delighted at the prospect of reaching a wider audience and providing up-to-the-minute news reporting, and soon most publications were available, gratis, online.

The Times has taken a lot of flack over the past month for deciding to put a paywall up (a week's subscription working out to around 28p per day), with experts predicting the venture will fail and the Guardian in particular taking the opportunity to filch their unimpressed readers. My favourite Times columnist (and general legend) Caitlin Moran wrote a wonderful article a couple of days before the wall went up, defending their decision against a lot of very public outrage and Murdoch-bashing. Of course, if you don't believe in paying for online news, you won't be able to access the article. But she made a good case for the change, which perhaps I am more sensitive to as a would-be journalist, as well as driving home the basic and excellent point that 'Bitch gotta make rent.' The perks of creative jobs are falling fast with the rise of the net, as people can access music, literature, journalism, film and photography without paying a penny to their creator. Moran simply stated, amongst other rational business reasons, that it is hard enough to be a working journalist without your pay diminishing even further. It is a hard business to get into, not at all well paid and almost impossible to live on as a freelancer, and thus more and more financially privileged young writers who can afford to do the job as a hobby are seeping into the industry. No more feisty lasses like Caitlin, who hails from a Wolverhampton council estate and the comprehensive system, writing in one of Britain's oldest and most prestigious rags. An exclusively privileged comment and editorial team would make for a much more conservative and monotonous tone, undoing all the good work the paper has done in recent years in becoming more balanced with diverse comment writers and a wider perspective than, say, the Mail or the Telegraph. Also, I agree with Caitlin that writers deserve to get paid - we read their work most days, they work challenging hours and with tough deadlines, and get nothing like the salaries of the ankers and politicians whose deviance they so often expose. Many would argue that it's too late to start putting up paywalls; the internet has been free to read for years now. But the Times does have a certain caché, and as such many rely on it for firm facts and expert analysis. So I think they'll keep some audience, but more liberal fence sitters and those likely to list the Guardian as 'their' paper (myself included) will just stop reading online, perhaps grabbing the paper itself once in a while. I'm just saying I don't think it's that controversial to put a price on something a lot of people work hard on, especially when that price is under 30p per day.

This discussion had gone on for a while when I followed a link on Twitter that led to the website of the great musical theatre composer & lyricist Jason Robert Brown, where he had posted a very similar discussion about sheet music. Brown, who is a bit of a hero in the niche world of musical theatre, decided enough was enough and went online to try and stem the tide of sheet music 'trading' online and defend his work and copyright. So he sent maybe 400 people advertising the sheet music for his songs online a polite message asking them to take their ad down, including his email address in case they had any questions. Many did, but one tenacious teen emailed back demanding to know what his problem was and questioning his identity and motives. What followed is a very interesting back-and-forth between two generations; the older artist that has worked hard for many years to build his reputation and career, and the young, confident teenager with a strong feeling of entitlement. The teen who argued with him, Eleanor, is fairly articulate and makes a very forceful case that many teens 'can't afford' sheet music, mp3 files and movies legally, and the big 'jerks' who created them shouldn't make a fuss about what is surely a drop in the ocean to them. The thing is, why should they let it go? JRB spent years writing beautiful, witty, perceptive songs that are sung in most musical theatre cabarets here and in the US. They are popular for a reason; his genius and effort. The fact that he is successful shouldn't mean he deserves to lose a massive cut of his potential salary from sneaky sharing and illegal downloads.

Perhaps because money has become less tangible over the years, with plastic, paypal, online banking and standing orders, it’s harder to teach your kids about value and saving. I remember having a solid concept of pocket money; if you saved it up for a few weeks you could hit Woolworths and splurge on that coveted toy (or later, Tammy Girl for that lusted-after shiny lycra top), and at school fetes and bring’n’buy sales myself and my sisters had a couple of pounds to spend wisely on treats. I remember clubbing together with my sister to the tune of £1.50 each for a Barbie Dream House and feeling the first high of a business partnership. Later, we would spend our hard-saved, if not earned, cash on CD singles and albums (back when the CD was still a futuristic novelty.) Jointly we bought All Saints’ first album, and I eyed her Britney Spears Baby One More Time single with envy, knowing instinctively that it was a landmark musical moment. Even now, I find loans, credit cards and overdrafts hugely daunting; not being fiscally minded, I don’t understand and therefore fear laying down money I don’t have. I am saving to self-fund a postgraduate course and money is on my mind most days. I do hope that is not the case my whole life, but with the media nosediving and people refusing to pay, who knows?

The point with Brown and Moran’s defence of their work is, while it may be a bit of a hassle or a dent in your pocket to fork out for their writing or composing skills, tough luck – they provided a product and completed a task which you are now reading/learning from/playing/singing. Cough up. The paywall will continue to be controversial (largely because of Rupert Murdoch’s unpopularity rather than the paper itself) as there are other strong print media options, but I do think at the very least people should buy their music, films and sheet music legally - and come on, an iTunes mp3 is around 79p, sometimes Amazon’s are as little as 29p. Those singles we scraped together for as starstruck teens were £1.99 including packaging – now we can whisk them on to our laptops seconds after they are released for less than a pound. If everyone stopped supporting musicians and writers, only the wealthy self-funders or the Katie Price-style overexposed could afford or would bother to put out their work. The message from the creative industries is clear – we’ve had enough, pay for your stuff.

But I want it NOW!

Thin Skin

I came across this piece today about Mariella Frostrup's apology to the editors of Radio 4's Today programme for calling them misogynists. Another hot-headed woman, I thought briefly and unconsciously, before looking into the story behind her accusation (like you've never fleetingly cursed 'Bloody woman driver', girls!) Turns out Today editor Ceri Thomas had hinted in an interview that the reason there weren't more female presenters in his line of work is simply that men have the thicker skin and therefore the employable edge to deal with the pressures of the job. What he said was this, essentially that women should have a place on the BBC but probably not on the Today programme, as it's really scary and tough and they might cry. Now, I can see how this was very tactless, especially as he works in the media, but perhaps the exceptional thickness of his very manly skin has numbed any sensitivity to such matters.

Here's a surprise though: I agree with him a bit. Not with the 'all women', but with the 'why not as many women appear on confrontational current affairs shows' bit. I'm a woman, and as a very tiny percentage of the population (and a small percentage of the media-career-inclined) I can tell you with no hesitation that I'd be too fragile and emotional for that kind of full-on daily environment. Most women I know are not ambitious enough, or conversely they're smart enough, to avoid any job where they may end up in rehab, heart-attack territory or simply hiding in the toilets in tears. That isn't necessarily to say we have thinner skin, although I secretly agree with that too - of which more later.

Jennie Bond, who apart from the curious 'ie' choice of name spelling has the hardy air of an ex-Olympian about her anyway, dismissed Thomas's comments as "complete bollocks" (interestingly gendered choice of words there) and quite correctly stated:

"I reported extensively for the Today programme and presented it for three years. It's tough, it's hard and it's challenging but of coursewomen can present it."

The point, I feel, is not that they physically can, but that they aren't. Most of the gals are going for cushy daytime sofas and entertainment reporting because it's fun, full of perks and they are less likely to be depicted as a stone-cold harridan in the media. Who wants that sort of pressure that early in the day anyway? Men, in my humble experience, seem more inclined to go for such 'challenging' (read: often unbearable) positions - they are less likely than women to weigh up home and work life, personal and professional happiness, and health and success before taking a promotion or new job.

"Women have a different way of having a thick skin," said presenting veteran Joan Bakewell when asked her views by The Guardian. Bakewell was dubbed the original 'thinking man's crumpet' after daring to be both a talented journalist and a regulation hottie (it's a bit of a sexist industry, in case you're not up to speed.)

"It's amazing how you can get your own way without being confrontational. Women are good at analysing how to tell a story. Don't you get tired of all those clashes [on the Today programme]? Look at Prime Minister's Questions. I think it's probably intolerable for any woman to watch that without hating all politicians. Women are bad at it [shouting at the dispatch box] basically because they don't like doing it, and it isn't the only way to do things, it genuinely isn't."

I quote Bakewell so heavily here because, crumpet or not, it's the sanest viewpoint I've read on the subject so far. Not wildly defensive, a la Frostrup (even when retracting her misogynists comment, she mainly conceded that the Today editors were 'not demons') and not blithely in agreement either. She simply iterates that women have a different approach that is valuably used elsewhere; I think, for example, that women make better interviewers for print. I dislike Jeremy Paxman but can appreciate his battering-ram function in the media sphere. Sometimes 'thin skin' makes for wonderfully perceptive journalism. My very first work experience placement was on the late Richard and Judy show, which I loved - live and packed with crazy segments, debate and guests of all backgrounds, the reason it worked was the combination of Madeley's rhino-skin pushiness and Finnigan's more patient and paced interview style. From this and many other media encounters, I learnt the valuable difference between trying to be a man in a man's world and using your innate femininity to get that bit more out of a situation. Would a male interviewer have boldly gone far as Caitlin Moran in her recent sensational profile of Lady Gaga, or would he have sat opposite her, barking questions and jotting down notes on the size of her thighs while half-listening to her answers?

I fear we may have become so fixated on total gender equality that the facts of our (sometimes wonderful) differences must be hushed up. Men and women are different, not in terms of either being harder, better, faster or stronger, but in having different skills and strengths. Nearly all stem logically from primal instincts (compassion, aggression, patience) and although there are always individual exceptions, look around in any workplace and you will see a lot of male focus and drive at work alongside a lot of female negotiation and diplomacy.

I am always eager to be proved wrong though, so if you are a woman who is ferociously determined to get to the front line (of journalism, management, politics, Afghanistan) please do comment with your thoughts.

The heart of the matter

Stephen Fry recently tweeted a link to this letter to a local Vermont newspaper. The Valley News apparently receives regular letters from Vermont's aggressively Christian/conservative residents about the 'homosexual menace' they perceive to be infecting their fine community. Eventually a local mother of a gay man wrote this passionate missive to contradict - and reason with - the prejudiced group. It is very striking (Fry admitted it made him cry) and well written; not necessarily because the writer is superbly educated, gifted or has a better point - although she does - but because it is simply and logically expressed and comes straight from deeply-felt personal experience.

I just thought I'd pass it on as it is a perfect example of how to express your point without resorting to overly emotional or defensive tactics - this is the kind of writing I'd be proud to produce. I know mine isn't flawless (as some readers kindly remind me on a weekly basis) but I'm still learning and developing my opinions, and I hope that in time I can get somewhere near this level of eloquence.

It also put me in mind of this post, and the fact that tolerance does work both ways. I wouldn't want someone to have to hide their sexuality in the workplace (although like religion, I believe your business is your business) so even I learned something important reading it. A good link to pass on to any anti-gay acquaintances you might have, religious or not - sometimes people have to see a human example to make a move towards acceptance.