Subcultural engagement for the 21st Century...
Barbelith is a new kind of community (find out more)...
You can login or register.

Underground > Conversation >

Just Call Me 'Scoop'

Page: (1)2

08:22 / 16.07.02

any of the london barbefolk been to a newish squat venue in stoke newington, called the 'radical dairy'? well it's a great place - political activism, veggie cafe, women's nights - and i've just been commissioned (doesn't that sound grand?) to do an article for diva (uk lesbian mag).

it means, folks, that i'll get paid for something i really want to write about. oh, the novelty!

08:46 / 16.07.02

Woo! Congratulations, sfd!

09:05 / 16.07.02

Way to go, squatscoopdyke!

09:49 / 16.07.02

Wooo hooo!

Always nice when someone asks you to do something! Even better when it's something you actually want to do!

Go Grrrrrl!

09:59 / 16.07.02

awww thanks. actually the place is really good - when i went along, the women were just coming back from a tree climbing workshop in clissold park and about to start the women's 'nuisance radical cafe'. i want them to be more publicised - especially in the gay press - to show other queer women that politics can be fun and that we should all do something constructive and not just get pissed in clubs. came out of the cafe with a few insect bites, too. ah, the squatting experience - i had forgotten how glamourous it can be.

The Return Of Rothkoid

12:32 / 16.07.02

Rock! Congratulations, you - this has to be a real shot in the arm. (Well, a mozzie bite on the arm, but you get the drift...)

Well done!

12:36 / 16.07.02

Congratulations are in order. Nice one!

STOATIE LIEKS CHOCOLATE MILK

21:17 / 16.07.02

Cool!

21:22 / 16.07.02

whereabouts are they? Go on, publicise them here as well.

21:47 / 16.07.02

Faantastic, sfd. Congratulations.

22:42 / 16.07.02

Way to go, SFD.

06:16 / 17.07.02

fridgemagnet - mr gluck's radical dairy is at 47 kynaston road, n16, not far off church street. i'm probably going down there tonight to try and organise a chat with some of the women who run the women's night/queer cafe. they do have a timetable of events in the window, so i'll post as much as i can scribble down. if you type 'radical dairy' into google, you'll get some more info.

thanks for being so sweet, you lot.

07:31 / 17.07.02

SFD, some traditional hackneyed tabloidisms for your piece, my gift to you:

"Mr Gluck - how dairy do that!"

"Where women can talk 'til the cows come home!"

"MOO-ve along, there's room for everyone inside!"

"It's the land of milk and honeyz!"

07:37 / 17.07.02

groan. thanks sax. i think.

actually i was considering calling the piece, "milking the revolution". can't possibly go without making some kind of pun, huh?

07:51 / 17.07.02

Absolutely. Although, like most magazines Diva will have very precious subs who want to come up with their own headlines, so if you have a phrase or pun you're especially proud of, put it in the copy as well as the headline.

14:20 / 17.07.02

Sax, you forgot one (for shame!) : "What an udderly delightful idea!"

And if I start calling you 'Scoop', all of a sudden "shortfatdyke" gets transformed into an Irish last name. I'm not sure exactly why, but black and white movies are involved.

14:39 / 17.07.02

I have a fabulous old board game called Scoop that used to belong to my Dad when he was wee. It involves making up a front page of a paper. When it's your turn you 'dial' on a cardboard phone and get a response from the editor ranging from "three star piece' to 'do it again!'.
I'm sure I'm not explaining it very well but it's great and I'm sure it's responsible for me ending up in this job.
Sorry, that's entirely irrelevant to this thread, except that if you ever see a version of it, SFD, you must get it!

14:43 / 17.07.02

I have that game as well! But I was really crap at it and thought I'd never become a journalist.

Grant: Darn. Okay, how about this one: "Whoever set up the Radical Dairy deserves a pat on the head!"

14:48 / 17.07.02

No way! I've never found anyone who'd even heard of it. Wow. We are now soulmates, you realise.

14:58 / 17.07.02

I must have had the updated version of the game from your dad, though. Mine had a plastic telephone. A red one.

(apologies to SFD for this nonsense, by the way. More crap dairy puns coming soon. (What do you mean, that's not the point of the thread anyway?))

15:02 / 17.07.02

Switching to PMs, Sax. You're about to discover I'm obsessed with this game, and astonished to find there is more than my one battered version in the world.

I'll leave the thread to more sensible cow-pat pun posts

15:17 / 17.07.02

Jesus. I'd forgotten all about Scoop!

15:27 / 17.07.02

another one! bloody hell. we have to start a club....

11:46 / 18.07.02

just call me 'hiding in a corner nervously'.

i just got yelled at. really yelled at, by one of the men who run the radical dairy. i rang the place (after going down there last night and getting nowhere) and began to explain that i was into what they were doing and really wanted to do an article on them. as soon as he heard it was for diva magazine, he launched into this tirade about mardi gras and how the cronos publishing group (which i'm not sure diva even belongs to) was pushing porn as the only thing for gay men to be into. he went BALLISTIC. when he finally paused for breath, i told him i agreed with what he was saying and that i'd been involved with the first queeruption event in london a few years back, that i wouldn't go near mardi gras if you paid me, and that the whole point of me wanting to write the piece for diva was so that the more mainstream dykes got to see that there *was* an alternative to spending vast amounts of money in gay bars and clubs.

phew! he calmed down a bit once he realised my credentials were pretty good and gave me the number of one of the women from the cafe - in fact i spoke to two women this morning, and both of them were totally into the article (although one of them's nervous as hell that i want to talk to her next week when i go back for the cafe evening). i have to say, the three men i've spoken to about this have been either incredibly suspicious, disinterested or very shouty. it's certainly put me off going anywhere near the place except on women's nights. but it's also reminded me to shut my mouth and find out where people are coming from before i launch into angry mode. good job i'm too tough to let something like this bother me.

sniff.

12:49 / 18.07.02

Yikes. Horrible. Glad it turned out okay and you managed to talk him round but that's never fun.
Be good to read the article when it comes out.

15:00 / 18.07.02

sfd, PLEASE don't take it personally. 90% of ALL squatters are ultraparanoid about and nasty to journalists, and the remaining 10% are journalists themselves. Often the paranoia is for a good reason, but it does make for problems when the occasional sensible person working for the semi-mainstream walks in. Hang in there, I'm sure the article will be great.

16:36 / 18.07.02

i understand your point, biodynamo, but this bloke today should've sussed me out a bit more. yelling rarely gets people anywhere anyway. i'm thinking about tactics here - he had every right to assert himself and he was obviously angry but he got his facts wrong (diva is not part of cronos publishing, although it does have an interest in mardi gras) and his attitude stank. as i say, i had two very constructive and friendly conversations with women from the centre who felt the same way but their approach was entirely different.

anyway, i'm looking forward to going along next week.

18:46 / 18.07.02

Yelling at people who are interested in what you're doing is really stupid. This guy should obviously only be allowed at squats during eviction time, when he should be let loose on random police as a secret weapon of obnoxiousness.

I looked up the Radical Dairy and figured out why it sounded so familiar... I read about the police raid before Mayday this year. So they're still up? Good.. You lucky Brit bastards with your squatting legalisation and everything... So, are there any other (squatted or not, nice or nasty) political places one can visit in London?

06:37 / 31.07.02

should change the abstract here to 'blatant temper tantrum'.

the woman i spoke to at the dairy - who knew my deadline - has only just got back to me; too late to do any good. a snotty email saying how i maybe shouldn't mention the wombles at all (why not? the police know all about them being there, and it's mentioned both on the net and in leaflets at the dairy - hardly a fucking secret), or should ask at the dairy before i do (like i'm gonna talk to them again after both being shouted at and treated like a time waster), and that i 'should've written more about the other women'. since i'd emailed her the piece asking her to correct any inaccuracies, i'm pissed off, big time, that she should try and tell me how to write it.

no one else has read this article. so there, is, of course, the possibility that it's not very good. writing's the one area of my life where i'm confident - to the point of arrogance, and i was happy with the piece. but that's irrelevent really - it's not what i asked this woman - i only wanted to know if i'd been accurate with her quotes (i was - but she's now not sure about what she was talking about) and the facts and figures. i have to say, i am Not Happy At All with the attitude of the people at that place. maybe they would be happier just sending out press releases so they can have the total control they obviously want.

this happened once before - i interviewed lucy thane, director of she's real, worse than queer, for the pink paper, and she practically re wrote the damn article, to put in loads of stuff she thought she should've said and a huge list of thank you's - like a fucking oscar speech it was. it's not the way i work, dammit!

i will now storm off, stage left. and i'm going to have to get someone else to read the article, to see if it's really that bad.

STOATIE LIEKS CHOCOLATE MILK

07:04 / 31.07.02

Don't let it get to you... I'm sure it doesn't suck. Sounds like misplaced paranoia on their part.

12:08 / 31.07.02

dont let them shake your confidence. try not to take it personally - they might be genuinely and understandably paranoid, or just generally unpleasant and shouty people. if its the former, maybe this is their (admittedly not very helpful) way of protecting their interests. maybe you need some time to get in there, make yourself known - some people make you sweat for their trust!

13:02 / 31.07.02

sfd, never EVER let anyone you've interviewed read your article before you submit it for publication. You are a writer, goddammit, and should have ultimate faith in your own abilities. If you fuck up factually then take the shit post-publication; it's your fault and you have to put your hand up. Giving people the chance to look at copy before you submit it for publication is essentially giving them right of veto. All journalism is a gamble in this way, you've just got to balls it out. And from what I know of you on here, you can.

13:26 / 31.07.02

oh! that's interesting, sax. i suppose i'm not a real journalist at all - because i only interview people or do articles on stuff i'm really into. so the articles tend to be pretty sympathetic. i always send a copy to the subject, to check for innaccuracies - i thought it was pretty common to do this, and also courteous - which is why i was so angry that this person had criticised the style of the piece. it was rude of her, i thought. you're right - it's my work and i'm quite happy to deal with any consequences post-publication of anything i may have got wrong. i won't be sending copy out again. thanks!

14:23 / 31.07.02

Ditto to what Sax said, sfd, don't ever show people copy.
Refusing to do so is standard practice in journalism and so people do tend to accept it. They might moan a bit, but tough.
Good luck with it, I'm sure it's a good piece.

20:55 / 31.07.02

I have to echo what they said above. Sources who want approval of copy are always, *ALWAYS* more trouble than the story is worth. OK, maybe not that "always," but 49 times out of 50.
It's simply not done - the source is generally part of a story (that is, something interesting to readers) because they've got an agenda of some sort, whether it's building monuments out of cheese, or designing spacecraft engines. And they don't care about *story*, they care about *agenda*, and they don't know good writing (or good PR) if it bit them.
Never volunteer for the hassle. And if they ask to approve their quotes (and the editor thinks you need to do it), send 'em your notes - with the quotes you're using verbatim, but with no context. That's my advice.

Page: (1)2