READ ALL ABOUT IT. PLEASE.
Before I can move forward into my (not so) brave future there’s a few things I need to get off my chest. As I am unable to pay for any sort of meaningful or worthwhile therapy (assuming such a thing even exists – with apologies to my brilliant psychology graduate girlfriend, for whom I should make an interesting case study) this may turn out to be the best tool I have at my disposal. We’ll see about that. I graduated a little over a year ago. First class honours in journalism, if you will, the only person to achieve that from my year (and nobody managed it the year before which makes me double great). I don’t mention this as a way of making myself sound clever (although I bloody well am) but instead as a device to throw my present situation into some relief.
(I promise that once this is done with we can return to the old ways of caustic cultural comment, stuff from the news and ham-fisted reviews of whatever crosses my radar. Humour me for now.)
Straight after university, I was in need of money – not a unique position for a recent graduate to find themselves in, I know – and took the path of least resistance back into the job I had studied so hard to escape from. A mistake, although clearly not the first, nor the last in this sorry little tale (fear not: it won’t end with me blowing my brains out. We’d lose the deposit on the flat and that would not be good). In my final year of study I should have been throwing myself manfully into finding out what I was going to do when I got out into the job market. Instead I got my head down and worked like a maniac to milk whatever I could out of the last months of the course. I digress. It’s often said that it’s easier to find a job when you’re working but that’s never panned out for me, particularly when you spend most of the week holed-up in some grotty B&B counting the minutes until Friday. Having said that, looking for a job when it’s all I have to focus my energies on has yet to yield much either.
Anyway, I put an end to that in December 2005 and took what I believe is called a hiatus. This lasted a tad longer than I had anticipated and consumed my meagre savings. Not to worry, as the arrival of spring heralded a new start (yes, another one but I say you’re allowed as many as you need to get these things right) and a new job with a local newspaper group based in lovely Winchester. The money wasn’t great (I was on a four day week) but that was more than made up for in terms of enjoying the job immensely. The papers may have been free and dominated by adverts, the office held together with Sellotape and the staff as dysfunctional a bunch as you could hope to meet but none of this mattered. I quickly carved myself a niche, taking responsibility for 80 per cent of the content (also known as – for CV purposes – running the news desk) as well as producing adverts as well as what they euphemistically called ‘editorial’ (much like the ‘advertisement features’ you see in most publications these days). And bloody good they were too, considering it wasn’t something I’d ever tried my hand at before.
I spent most of my days in the office wrestling with a load of Macs on the world’s most fragile network (don’t believe the hype about Macs not crashing. Not for a minute. There's more crashing than a banger race) and had enough freedom to get myself out and around the county hunting down stories, being conned into dubious photo opportunities and steadily raising the profile of our humble newspapers (three editions for ‘serving’ different parts of the area).
That I achieved so much in such a short time was even more impressive (again, humour me) considering the role had become vacant due to the tragic death of the papers’ previous reporter, one of the singularly most popular characters in the whole of Hampshire (that’s what it felt like). Big shoes to fill and no mistake, whichever way you looked at it. But I was getting good feedback from all over the place (not just my mum, before you ask) and building relationships – no, friendships - with my colleagues.
R (as we’ll call him) the deputy editor was a quiet man with impeccable taste in music and books, a musician of some note, gig promoter, top-drawer graphic designer, smoker of roll-ups and good guy to boot. Before long I was dropping him home every night, never minding for a minute that it added 20 minutes to my own journey home. We were in this together (sign post alert: this will become significant in time), teamwork and all that.
I landed the job in the first place through P (as he shall be known), something of a local celebrity (I did say ‘something of’) in my hometown of Southampton. Another musician of pedigree (the appeal here being that I am no mean guitarist myself), the eldest brother of a chap I went to middle school with and obscenely well connected. Before long I was driving him to and from work on a daily basis and discussing how to move the papers forward.
Of course, it wasn’t all sweetness and light. There were many late nights I didn’t get paid for and another colleague (B, for the record) who found me ‘annoying’. But you get that in any job (and I can be annoying, make no mistake) and as soon as the individual in question realised it was her problem the wrinkles ironed themselves out. But there were other cracks that I’d started to notice. Conversations between the directors that I was supposed to overhear (besides, I wouldn’t be much of a journo if I didn’t do my share of ‘listening in’) regarding big changes on the horizon, grumbling about R using work resources to forward his outside business interests, accusations of ‘blagging’ (missing the point that it forms the glue that binds PR and journalists, a topic for some other time) and more.
By this point, some six weeks in, I had a good handle on how the whole production was put together from the ground up. I surprised even myself with a hitherto unrealised Herculean capacity to soak up the mechanics of it all, all the while improving the content, the ‘voice’ and getting our brand out there (that sounds a bit like PR talk but we’ll let that go for now. Bill Hicks would have me shot like a dog in the street).
So, there we were, this newly-formed team of four, bruised and besieged but belligerent, never failing to get an issue out. It wasn’t to last. One Tuesday morning late in the summer the straw man began to unravel.
P was summoned to a meeting with the three directors (theirs is a profile for another day, perhaps another life). He hadn’t been expecting it and my former nemesis saw it as a Very Bad Thing, having some experience in this area. When P returned about an hour later he looked like a man in shock. He’d been suspended pending an investigation into alleged gross misconduct and left immediately, under instruction to discuss the matter with nobody. As an aside here, it worth noting that the directors were seriously under-qualified to carry out any form of investigation, unaware as they were as to the contents of their own desk drawers.
Next into the room of judgement was R, who faced the same fate and left with the same shocked expression. Quickly followed by B, who followed in tears. I went in too, only to be told that I wasn’t under the spotlight for any sort of breach of contract and I should go about my day as usual. I was quick to inform this kangaroo court that I had not been given - let alone signed – a contract. It was a small victory on a grim day.
It slowly dawned on me that there was a bigger plan in motion. I set about the task of putting the production in motion, somewhat bewildered myself and facing a huge task. We took it to the wire every week with a full team and here I was expected to do it alone. Within an hour of their departure, a hired hand arrived. All very pre-planned. I have airbrushed that particular prick out of my memory, but suffice to say had his contribution matched his self-regard we would have walked it. I ended up redoing everything he’d touched the following day.
I was very uneasy about the whole situation, to say the least. These people were my friends and here I was taking over their desks. I kept my professional head on and knuckled down to two long days of page-bashing, as we liked to call it. The fact that it all got done by deadline didn’t feel like the great achievement I’d hoped given the circumstances. After a couple of sleepless nights (well, not completely) I made the decision to not continue working there, on principle if you will. It was clear to me that this was a sort of coup by the directors. They’d worked out that they could still get their ad revenue and save themselves the trouble of shelling-out the combined wage bill of my three suspended colleagues (upwards of £60,000). I appreciate the financial imperative as much as anyone but this was back door shenanigans of the lowest kind. P had helped to found this corrupt little media empire and his treatment (based on rather trumped-up charges, as it transpired) troubled me greatly. On the following Monday I went in as usual, surreptitiously cleared my things into the car (McNae’s Law for Journalist, Essential English, dictionary, CDs, contacts book) went through the motions and resolved not to return the following day. That Monday was also notable for me sitting in on one the hearings. B had asked me to take notes for her and I saw this as a fitting way to bury our previous animosity for good. I even went home and produced a legal-style transcript for her. What a nice boy I am.
The powers accepted my resignation the following day with some disappointment. Hardly surprising: there went the best cheap labour they’d ever seen. But I’d done it: I’d quit the first job I’d ever really liked, finally having had the chance to work with creative, outgoing people then having it quickly ripped away.
I didn’t hear much from anyone for a week or so. P was still shell-shocked and seeking legal advice. I think he appreciated the stand I’d made and after much thought I certainly felt it was the right thing to do. I figured it would be a bloody nose to the tune of huge revenue lost if there was nobody to get that week’s editions out. Besides, by staying I would have been validating the treatment of my fallen comrades. What happened next would test my notion of solidarity to breaking point.
R got in touch a couple of days later. He’d gone in for his hearing the day I decided not to turn up. As it was, I hated the idea of him coming in for this final judgement and seeing me there, so I made sure I wasn’t. After agreeing that the whole saga was highly distasteful he casually mentioned that when he’d arrived in the office (ostensibly to resign with his reputation unblemished rather than stained by the coven of grasping directors) they had changed their minds and instead reinstated him immediately on a freelance basis and at a hugely increased hourly rate (the sort of money I would have gladly stayed for had I known – as I eventually discovered - that I was the only one making a stand).
Careful readers will at this point have realised that I had inadvertently engineered the position R had found himself in. Ce la bloody vie. Within a few of days the old team (minus me) were back at work. It seems unnecessary to mention that the only person not facing disciplinary action (no matter how specious) was the one out of a job. Yeah, it was my decision but I’d secretly harboured the notion that my display of solidarity would work in reverse. Wrong again.
A few days later and I’m picking through the wreckage over a pint with a friend. The same friend who had suggested that I shouldn’t act too rashly, look out for number one, you know the spiel. A pal of his joins us and recounts the tale of some idiot she’d heard about who quit his job on principle and ‘How very last century’ it all was. Definitely one of those moments where you don’t rush to claim ownership of the story. Still, nice to know it was a source of amusement. I pride myself on that last little twist.
There are so many lessons to be extracted from this saga that it’s hard to know where to start, but rattling this little lot out has been a good exercise in making some sense of it. If you think I should move on and ‘fuggetaboutit’ (adopting Sopranos tone) you’re right. But the legacy of this story is I now find my bouncing between depressing temp jobs, biting my nails and feeling sick every morning. And occasionally it’s not even a hangover that’s to blame. But I will be back. And better.
WHEN there's such a long gap between posts, the writer exposes himself (or herself, but in this case himself, as I am a gentleman rather than a lady) to the risk of losing what little audience they once had. That's where we are. But I refuse to be daunted. Actually what's more daunting is the thought that I should probably use this platform to fill everyone in about what I've been up to all these months. I don't kid myself that anyone cares but that's the beauty of a blog. You don't have to explain yourself. As far as my life so far... probably best to take baby steps, as they say. If I am lucky enough to have anyone out there who cares enough to even cast an eye over this small blob on the internet then it's likely they'll know me well enough to understand my slackness.
