People have to be aware of how the ecosystem of the media is changing. I can’t see how any working-class kid would be able to become a full-time journalist now, because there just aren’t jobs available. You would just be told to go away and blog instead. And then, that horrible thing of, “It should be a privilege to have people read your stuff for free.” Well, no. That’s like when people [ask me], “Wouldn’t you rather work for the Guardian so 86 million people can read your work?” [The Times famously instituted a paywall in 2010.] But what’s the point of having 86 million people read my stuff who don’t care about me enough to pay me to write and pay my mortgage? That’s like having someone say they really, really love you and then stand by while you’re drowning. If you love me, you have to pay me or I can’t afford to do this anymore. I’m very much in favor of the press charging for what it does. I despair of newspapers that think they can give their content away for free online, because they can’t. The statistics already prove that they can’t.
You’ve interviewed a lot of icons—Keith Richards, Paul McCartney. How do you keep from getting starstruck?
I’ve been through every possible way you could react to a famous person. In the beginning, I would tell them loads of personal anecdotes about myself in hopes they’d go, “I like you! I wanna be your friend! I’m gonna tell you about my suicide attempt that I never told anyone before!” That never happened. Then I went through a phase of trying to have sex with people I was interviewing—I didn’t really come up with any good interviews there, but I got some great anecdotes. Then I went through a phase of being really icy and cold. It took 18 years of being around famous people before I stopped being a dick around them.
The other thing is, the first 20 questions you think to ask someone famous? They will have been asked that already. I’ve done so many interviews promoting How to Be a Woman, and I literally have not been asked more than 15 questions in the last two years. So the best way to honor your hero if you go and interview them is by coming up with very intelligent questions that they haven’t been asked before. Give them a chance to talk about something else. And usually whatever your editor asks you to talk about—don’t do that. They’ll go, “Talk about the marriages and the drugs bust and the most famous album and at least two famous outrageous things that they did, those are all the quotes that we want.” Well, that’s what everybody will have talked to them about, so that will be a bit of balls, really. So you ask them something completely different instead and you end up talking about politics with Lady Gaga at 4 in the morning in a sex club in Berlin and you’re kind of like, “This is what I want, yes.”
That Lady Gaga piece appears in the book. How did you keep tabs on the story over the course of an all-nighter?
A proper journalist, I guess, would’ve pretended to be drinking all night but would’ve been pouring their gin and tonics into a plant pot, but I regret to say I’m not a proper journalist—I got completely fucking hammered! So I just ended up dancing with Gaga, trod on her cloak a few times, smoked some fags, ended up in the bathroom with her … What I always try to explain to the people I’m interviewing is, I don’t want an exclusive. I don’t want them to break down and tell me something enormous. My horror is I would get something out of someone and it’s worldwide news the next day. I just want to report what it’s like to be around them, and I only ever interview people I like as well.
Humor is your trademark, but in this collection you also do serious, insightful, and heartbreaking. Is it hard to change gears between these voices?
Caitlin Moran is correct in saying the "ecosystem of the media is changing." But there are some new digital business models, including our Montreal-based BestStory.ca, which is the only ad-free, long-form journalism site in the world with original stories and multiple photos.
Every article is professionally edited and laid out by an experienced graphic designer. It is a venue for writers who might not otherwise have a professionally-edited marketplace for long-form literary pieces with striking visuals.
Writers maintain copyright and moral rights, while earning 25% royalties on sales which they can track worldwide by chronology and geography, another unique aspect of our site. Our only source of revenue is the sale of each story to a reader for 40 cents via credit card on PayPal.
Once a story is bought, it can be read and re-read at any time from any web-enabled device in the world, including tablets and smart phones. Updates to stories bought by readers are free. Articles stay on the site forever and can be updated at any time, meaning they can continue to earn revenue indefinitely as new readers discover the site.
Like any new business model, this one will take time to develop in terms of fulfilling its potential as a revenue source for writers. Charging pennies per story is not a quick way to make money, but as the number of readers grows, so do the revenues.
And it is attractive to readers because it gives them the freedom to decide which articles they wish to purchase at a modest price without being tied to a subscription.
So instead of giving up because they can't find full-time media jobs which, as Caitlin points out, are difficult to come by, perhaps young journalists should consider themselves entrepreneurs, manufacturing (writing) an intellectual product (stories) which they can sell directly to members of the public on a story-by-story basis.
Although it is only cents per story, the potential paying audience is in the millions if journalists can produce high-quality, original articles that readers cannot find elsewhere.
The initial price of 40 cents could be increased once the site has proved its value equation to enough readers. But the first order of business is to gain market share by providing readers with an original, enjoyable literary experience.
I believe that good writers will eventually be rewarded financially on such a site, which emphasizes high quality journalism and graphics. It takes talent and patience, but there is a market for ad-free, long-form journalism among a growing readership with mobile devices.
#1 Posted by warren perley, CJR on Thu 8 Nov 2012 at 09:21 AM