Learning on the job…
I love audiobooks. I’ve recently been listening to a biography of motorcyclist Joey Dunlop by Stuart Barker. It sent my mind winging back to the first half of the nineties, when I worked on the Sunday-evening results team for Motor Cycle News and Joey Dunlop was road-racing royalty, including twice being voted MCN’s Man of the Year. As I listened, the familiar place names like Dundrod, Mondello and Brands Hatch thudded back from the recesses of my memory, along with the names of other star riders like Carl Fogarty and Wayne Rainey. In the book, as in the MCN office, the Isle of Man (home of the TT races) was referred to simply as ‘The Island’.
I loved the atmosphere of motorsports journalists arriving during the evening from meetings all over UK and Europe to write their copy. Their black humour, clumping motorcycle boots and prolific swearing formed a fascinating contrast to my previous life in a bank. I even got trips to the British Motorcycle Grand Prix at Donnington Park and an awards event at Alexandra Palace. Working Sunday evenings did affect family time, especially as I often worked bank holidays and Boxing Day as well, but it could be nice to leave my husband wrangling two tired kids while I set off for six to eight hours of not-being-Mum. Headset on, I’d take copy often into the early hours of Monday. I’d eventually get home hungry but with my mind too busy for sleep. The baby usually woke up just as I dropped off, but I was young, life was fun, and our household needed the income.
My job title was copytaker, and I was one of several. The paper employed an army of casual correspondents who attended events throughout the UK and Ireland and then phoned in the report and results to be typed up. Between them, the staff writers and the freelancers covered off-road meetings such as trials, enduro and motorcross, as well as road race and circuits. Although my favourite motor sport was and still is Formula One, I liked motorbikes, and all I really needed to know about them was how to spell their names.
I’d never used a computer for anything other than obtaining a bank balance or details of County Court Judgements. I’d been trained to type on . . . a typewriter!
As I listened to the Joey Dunlop story, in which Motor Cycle News is often mentioned, I reflected on how much my time as a copytaker helped my first steps into writing short stories and other material for magazines – which eventually led to my career as a novelist. Until I joined MCN’s colourful Sunday-evening team, I’d never used a computer for anything other than obtaining a bank balance or details of County Court Judgements. I’d been trained to type on . . . a typewriter. And not even an electric! MCN educated me out of typewriter habits such as including two spaces after a full stop, because the QUARK system the sub-editors worked on interpreted two spaces as a paragraph. Using space-hyphen-space for a dash wasn’t too popular either. I discovered what ‘house style’ is, and how it keeps page-appearance consistent regardless of which contributor filed the copy.
I learnt to type quickly and insert style coding as I went because that was fastest way to work. Copy could be tidied up after the correspondent was off the phone. I was taught about organising folders and sub-folders though, for some reason, they were called ‘baskets’. Saving frequently became second nature after I found out the hard way that one wrong operation could wipe a screen clean in a way that had never happened to a paper page. I learnt to remain professional even when a caller lost his cool. He’d been standing in a big muddy field all day and having to wait for a copytaker to be free might have been the last straw. Exhausted and possibly alcohol-fueled, he offered incomprehensible spelling instructions like ‘S for William’ and didn’t take kindly to me enquiring whether he meant S for sugar or W for William. What mattered was the content to go in the paper, so we all stayed until the copy was right, ready to go to press. A weekly paper must work on a strict timetable to ensure it’s on the shelves on the correct day.
One of the most significant lessons I learnt was the difference between staff journalists (staffers) and freelancers (often referred to by an uncomplimentary name). The staffers held all the power.
The MCN office wasn’t an environment for shrinking violets, but it was an education to listen to the staffers work.
Here are some of my takeaways:
- If Freelancer A proves unsatisfactory, a staffer will move on to Freelancer B. There are plenty to choose from!
- Freelancers must therefore be strategic in their dealings with the staffers or lose work.
- Freelancers shouldn’t take offence when work’s rejected. Simply persist until something hits the right note. Giving up never got anybody published!
- Hit deadlines because editors have a schedule. Don’t mess with it or the work might dry up.
These takeaways still serve me well. I’m called an author . . . but it’s still freelance.
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