― Izzie, Friday, 22 June 2001 00:00 (twenty-three years ago) link
― Patrick, Friday, 22 June 2001 00:00 (twenty-three years ago) link
― DG, Monday, 25 June 2001 00:00 (twenty-three years ago) link
― Tom, Tuesday, 26 June 2001 00:00 (twenty-three years ago) link
NME freelancers are being told to sign these horrible new agreements. Say, for example, someone gets to do a feature with Destiny's Child. The writer turns in a pretty good interview but has some material left over. The LA Weekly or someone asks for that writer to file a piece on same. Under the terms of the NME's new agreement, they wouldn't be able to because the NME would own, forever, the TAPE of the interview and any other out-takes.
Any freelance who doesn't sign does not get any more work from the paper/website. They are paid something like 15p a word for work they do, which is a lot less than you can get for selling interviews to the American market or a British newspaper, and they have none of the benefits of being on staff, usually no retainer even. It's patently unfair to ask those without job security to agree to such terms, and 20 writers are looking into a potential case against IPC for restraint of trade/intellectual property rights etc. If you want to know more, Tom, ask Angus Batey to fill you in. I think he was the one who went to the Guardian in the first place.
The best part of the story DG's quoting? 'Mr Sutherland was unavailable for comment.' Now there's a great big fuckin' first!
― suzy, Tuesday, 26 June 2001 00:00 (twenty-three years ago) link
― Robin Carmody, Tuesday, 26 June 2001 00:00 (twenty-three years ago) link
― DG, Tuesday, 26 June 2001 00:00 (twenty-three years ago) link
Source Media Guardian Feb 2001
I would think that if the NME dropped below 50,000 a week then questions would be asked about its future.
Sounds closed at around around 39,000 sales in 1991, Melody Maker closed at 32,500 sales in Dec 2000.
However much I dislike NME's music direction in 2001 To lose 20,000 sales from Feb 2001 to the end of the year, is unlikely.
― DJ Martian, Tuesday, 26 June 2001 00:00 (twenty-three years ago) link
― Andrew L, Tuesday, 26 June 2001 00:00 (twenty-three years ago) link
When the Guardian went online it sent around a fait accompli letter to anyone submitting freelance work that said The Guardian owned the reprint rights on each piece submitted; notification of this fact equalled an expectation of compliance. A lot of people stopped dealing with them afterward because the freelance rate did not rise one jot. What's going on at the NME is about a million times worse, and might be one reason the thing appears to be written by monkeys and Muppets these days - good writers often have annoying characteristics like principles and the tendency to disagree with the logic of their 'superiors' at work.
I don't think the NME will go down the pan because the site gets a gazillion hits every week. Brand manager is the perfect job for an Oxbridge, sexist skinhead Muppet like Sutherland, the job can do itself.
Do the freelancers laugh at the Travis, Stereophonics, The Strokes and Linkin Park front covers ..like the rest of us?
Who decides on the NME front covers Sutherland or Knowles or 16 year old work experience kids on a focus market research panel? I want to identify blame.
Also I noticed that Mojo are seeking a new editor at the mo Advert
― masonic boom, Tuesday, 26 June 2001 00:00 (twenty-three years ago) link
But did you see the piece Keith Cameron wrote on Travis for the Guardian Weekend? I found it frighteningly ambivalent, as though he was just *describing* the situation where they have got so big, and he just didn't seem motivated to speak out against it. Maybe age has hit him where it hurts, but his pro-Oasis rhetoric wasn't what I wanted to read from the NME *at all* in 1995.
Mark Sutherland - a pompey fan - well that is suprising.
Definitely the editor, after feedback in editorial meetings, with pressure from upstairs. Yes, the freelancers do often laugh themselves sick at the choices made by the above. I actually don't think they're focus groupies at the NME (and anyway, no focus group I've ever been privy to asks for specifics about content, more general areas or should the spine be book-bound rather than stapled, yada yada). That's Emap's department: a pal of mine who once edited one of their music mags was rung on Boxing Day by the big cheese to be told if his cover choice didn't pan out, heads would roll.
Also, access is controlled by PR's who grant exclusives based on the promise of A Cover ('my client will not get out of bed for less than 5000 words') and how arsey the paper's tone has been to the other artists they represent. NME will generally be in the same queue for coverage as Mixmag, The Face, Q, Mojo. Dazed and Confused. i-D and Sleazenation choose who to cover based on sneakier means; getting early access to photographs because one of their people, say Wolfgang Tillmans or Juergen Teller or Corinne Day, has done a shoot (photographers have much, much better phone books than most editors). If style mags have the photos, then they have a powerful bargaining tool with the PRs who represent the artiste. No PR company would get angry at a 'cool' photographer for this kind of scoop, as they lend the artiste cred and in many cases get commissions from the record company direct.
Hate to be all insider/media ho' about this, but I think it's my duty, after 10 years' experience of these matters, to put that to use demystifying the media's methods.
That was the eye-opening thing inside books like _Powder_ - not the "Oh my god, rock stars are perverted, and singer/songwriters are ego-ridden gits" bit of it, but the insider (manager) information on how things like "cover articles" get handed out.
Then again, I suppose knowing too much can really leave a distaste in the mouth. If someone chose to do a Popstars style expose on how even the "indie"s are completely mechanised, I think I would move to Alaska with ProTools and never leave the house again.
BTW my first job in London was, you guessed it, NME freelancer. I ran away to join the Riot Grrrls, as any sensible female would.
Anjali
― gareth, Wednesday, 27 June 2001 00:00 (twenty-three years ago) link
I would be interested in hearing your experiences of Riot Grrl, and whether you think it and its daughters have accomplished anything, but that's probably another thread.
Funny thing about "The Press" is... most musicians are unable to separate "The Press" (a faceless, corporate entity controlled by Brand Directors in IPC Towers) from the individual, badly paid, often cynical freelancers that are sent to review and/or interview them. Remember that musicians have been as badly burned by the Suits Upstairs as the freelancers have been, they just don't know it. (And vice versa)
― masonic boom, Wednesday, 27 June 2001 00:00 (twenty-three years ago) link
― mark s, Wednesday, 27 June 2001 00:00 (twenty-three years ago) link
― Tom, Wednesday, 27 June 2001 00:00 (twenty-three years ago) link
ht tp://news.independent.co.uk/uk/media/story.jsp?story=80594
Upmarket? Rolling Stone? What the blinkin' 'eck?
― masonic boom, Thursday, 28 June 2001 00:00 (twenty-three years ago) link
― suzy, Thursday, 28 June 2001 00:00 (twenty-three years ago) link
It's all games.
Anyone got anything on David Lister? Name = familiar. Every time I read that Zappa quote (always quoted by eeevil sold-out pea- brains like Simon Hoggart) I find I despise FZ more.
― mark s, Thursday, 28 June 2001 00:00 (twenty-three years ago) link
http://www.mediaguardian.co.uk/presspublishing/story/ 0,7495,513257,00.html
Circulation is dropping, but the website is increasing... so why the heck don't they take advantage of the nature of the internet to increase it even further beyond just a print version of the reviews, and a live news feed? Oh, I'm going to start ranting again, see remarks on the "what do you want from the press" thread.
― DJ Martian, Friday, 13 July 2001 00:00 (twenty-three years ago) link
NME's editor Ben Knowles will be online to answer your questions from 4pm next Thursday. Should be interesting. So if you want to know why Elbow haven't been on the cover yet or why he persists with a bobbed hairdo log on and all will be revealed!
thats Thursday 19h July @ 4pm - if you want to grill Ben Knowles.
― DJ Martian, Saturday, 14 July 2001 00:00 (twenty-three years ago) link
― DG, Sunday, 15 July 2001 00:00 (twenty-three years ago) link
― Marcello Carlin, Thursday, 17 January 2002 01:00 (twenty-two years ago) link
One still gets the feeling that this is the usual stage in the NME cycle when nothing much is happening in whiteboy guitar land and black music and non-music issues get reasonably good cover until the next Roses/Mondays/Oasis comes along. -- Marcello Carlin, Wednesday, 4 April 2001 00:00 (6 years ago) Bookmark Link
This dude knows what's popping
― Dom Passantino, Wednesday, 12 December 2007 11:45 (sixteen years ago) link
I'm still wondering why he persisted with a bobbed hair log on!
― Mark G, Wednesday, 12 December 2007 11:47 (sixteen years ago) link
(Ben Knowles, that is, not Marcello)
If I had 50p for every sneering comment I've had off the recording artists I know re. The Press I'd be very wealthy indeed.
― Noodle Vague, Wednesday, 12 December 2007 11:48 (sixteen years ago) link
Suzy gives good wealthy.
― Dingbod Kesterson, Wednesday, 12 December 2007 11:56 (sixteen years ago) link
I love how Dom is now grinding Suzy's axe six years on.
― Matt DC, Wednesday, 12 December 2007 11:58 (sixteen years ago) link
guys, how do i meet "cougars"?
― Dom Passantino, Wednesday, 12 December 2007 11:58 (sixteen years ago) link
I AM NOT DOM'S SOCK-PUPPET
― Noodle Vague, Wednesday, 12 December 2007 11:59 (sixteen years ago) link
right
― electricsound, Wednesday, 12 December 2007 12:03 (sixteen years ago) link
-- Matt DC, Wednesday, 12 December 2007 11:58 (9 minutes ago) Bookmark Link
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
-- Dom Passantino, Wednesday, 12 December 2007 11:58 (8 minutes ago) Bookmark Link
^^^this is the funniest ilm post in a while
― Dom Passantino, Wednesday, 12 December 2007 12:07 (sixteen years ago) link
http://images.wikia.com/uncyclopedia/images/thumb/3/32/KennethWilliams.jpg/300px-KennethWilliams.jpg
― DJ Mencap, Wednesday, 12 December 2007 12:07 (sixteen years ago) link
NME doesn't get good until it gives up trying to appeal to the kids and instead starts writing about the same kind of stuff that Mojo does.
― Geir Hongro, Wednesday, 12 December 2007 12:45 (sixteen years ago) link
The Beano doesn't get good until it gives up trying to appeal to the kids and instead starts writing about the same kind of stuff that Angling Times does.
― Dingbod Kesterson, Wednesday, 12 December 2007 12:49 (sixteen years ago) link
http://pics.amres.com/p_thm/w4317.jpg
― That one guy that hit it and quit it, Wednesday, 12 December 2007 12:50 (sixteen years ago) link
Hey, "Dingbod"!
― Pashmina, Wednesday, 12 December 2007 12:57 (sixteen years ago) link