Link

Guest post on Guardian Edinburgh about a competition being run by Ten Tracks in association with EIFF 2011 – can you make a music video in a month?  Go on then!  You might get it premiered at this year’s film festival…

Sad Day for Hyperlocal Edinburgh

Everyone has a paper, don’t they.  I don’t mean the local one that you sort of have to get, for births and marriages and news of jumble sales, I mean the national one that you actually choose to read.

In my house, it’s always been The Guardian.

I appreciate it’s crap for news of stuff that’s going on in Scotland, but the Graun has always been good for features.  I’ve found tons of columnists there whose styles I admire and would like to emulate – Charlie Brooker, Grace Dent, Jim Shelley, Alexis Petridis, Hadley Freeman, Lucy Mangan, Zoe Williams, Stuart Heritage, Tim Dowling, John Crace and Mil Millington, to name several completely off the top of my head.

They also seem quite willing to do things that other nationals don’t – support the Liberal Democrats, for example, or pioneer hyperlocal news websites.

I’ve wanted to work for them since I decided I was interested in journalism about a decade ago, and the closest I’ve got thus far was being interviewed for the job of the Edinburgh Beatblogger on November 27 2009.

I remember I got there ridiculously early (I was worried about going to the wrong place) – early enough to see the candidate before me leaving, actually.  It was a man, a bit older than me maybe, with brownish cords and reddish hair.  I was later able to identify him as Tom Allan, and it was he who got the job.  I did however receive easily the nicest rejection letter I’ve ever had from Launch Editor Sarah Hartley; commending my community knowledge and saying she was hopeful there would be ways we could work together in the future.

I’ve followed the project with interest since that point – or rather, since the site was formally launched in early March 2010.  Whilst the Leeds and Cardiff pages remained in the hands of John Baron and Hannah Waldram throughout, the Edinburgh page was curated first by Tom, then for a few weeks by Nick Eardley (who I believe was just finishing a journalism degree before taking on a job at The Scotsman), and finally by Michael MacLeod, who opened up the page far more and made it many people’s first port of call for local news every day.

I say finally, because as you’ve probably already heard, The Guardian has decided to wind the project down.

According to the paper’s Head of Social Media Development Meg Pickard (who lulled me in to a false sense of security by complimenting my shoes at interview, the cad), “the project is unsustainable in its current form.”

On one level this is understandable.  The pages are free for the public to access, but the paper still has to pay three hacks and an editor to maintain them.  Although one wonders whether they looked at advertising in any serious way – using the notice board on the page is £10 for a week, but the likes of Facebook charge more like $20 a day for an advert the same size.  And inevitably the decision prompted mutterings that if the paper can afford to expand into America, surely it could find a bit of cash for this.

Pickard also pointed out that the project was always experimental.  Now, I knew that, and the people doing the blogs presumably knew it too – but I don’t think it was explicitly stated to the general public.  Which is a little bit insensitive, given those were the people using the service. 

Still, you can’t argue with fact, and these are the notes I wrote after the interview:

As you can see in the middle, I wrote “they have no idea how it would progress – ttl speriment (‘total experiment’ for those who can’t grasp my shorthand!).”

Unfortunately, it seems like they didn’t really take into account the fact that the experiment might work, and that people might be really upset that The Guardian would start up this great resource with amazing potential, then take it away again without warning.  Several readers commented that this would stop them reading the main site again and I can’t say I blame them.  The success of the project has encouraged several other groups to throw their hyperlocal hat into the ring too, supported and publicized by the Guardian bloggers, so it’d make sense to decamp to them.

The page has been used in a variety of ways; from publicising campaigns to save Blindcraft and The Forest Cafe to covering council meetings and student protests.  It’s acted as an umbrella linking to many local sites, including Greener Leith, the blogs of local councillors, The Broughton Spurtle, Tales of One City, Edinburgh Spotlight, ReelScotland, Song by Toad and countless others.  It has given a platform for local authors, journalists and campaigners to get their voices heard in the form of guest posts.  Rather than trying to do everything alone, it has very much been used as a community resource, signposting existing articles, events and experts rather than rewriting stories in a slightly different way. 

It seems odd to me to close the project on grounds of unsustainability, given that so much content has been generated for free via networking and goodwill.  I also can’t help thinking that they knew from the beginning that they were putting money into a model that wasn’t going to make a return. 

I can’t pretend to know the ins and outs of the advertising world, but surely the logical thing to do would have been to employ a marketing person from the start, whose job it would be to generate income from local advertising?  And it wouldn’t have hurt for the blogs themselves to get a bit of promotion – on the Guardian’s main page, at the very least.  There certainly weren’t any posters or bus shelters or events publicizing the thing in Edinburgh, so the success of the site was pretty much entirely down to the networking skills of the individual journalists.

And yet the site was and is known and popular, a testament to the tenacity of those involved (she said, alliteratively).

But even more than making me and other residents aware of a whole host of events, resources and websites across the city, Guardian Edinburgh has helped me develop on a professional level.  Being re-tweeted on Twitter and included in the morning roundup of what’s going on has raised my profile and generated traffic for my own sites, as well as introducing me to other contacts.

It was an RT by Guardian Edinburgh that put me in touch with The Edinburgh Reporter, and contributing to that has given me the opportunity to attend the Film and Television Festivals, to interview a whole host of interesting people, and to help cover an historic election.

My inclusion in the Literary Blogosphere, whilst slightly baffling at the time, was hugely flattering and gave me the impetus to concentrate more on fiction and features – so maybe some of the blame for 12 Books in 12 Months even lies there!

And it was Michael from Guardian Edinburgh who encouraged me to write guest posts, which means I can tell people “I write for The Guardian” just like I wanted when I was a teenager.

It was, from my point of view, a very successful experiment – good enough to continue, in fact.  Hyperlocal Edinburgh, saturated with content though it may be, will be a darker place without it.

A Link and a Promise

I have written but one article this week – a post for Ten Tracks outlining some of the best Scottish music blogs.

However, you will doubtless be thrilled to hear that there are Plans Afoot.  For one, myself and Andrew will be live blogging Eurovision on Saturday over on my personal blog, A Daddy Long Legs is Not A Father.  The idea behind this is to give me a bit more practice using Coverit Live, because the editor of The Edinburgh Reporter made an interesting 12 Books related suggestion that would entail using it.  But in an enigmatic sort of way, I’m not going to tell you any more than that just now.  More information is coming soon, though.

Linked In

This evening I have done a bit of housekeeping.  You may notice that the appearance of this blog has changed, for example.  And I have joined Linkedin.

It’s one of those things I’ve been meaning to do for ages, for no very concrete reason other than the fact that people keep telling me to.  I fully expect to wake up to an inbox full of job offers tomorrow.  If you want to connect with me (and I’m sure you do), you can find me here.

Thus far I’ve spent an inordinate amount of time trying to persuade the site to let me upload my CV, but it keeps telling me that I need to try in a PDF or Word format.  I have of course tried both, and sacrificed quality resolution to shrink it down to less than 500KB… but it’s not happening.  If I wasn’t so tired, I would almost certainly commit violence of some sort.  As it is, I’ve made it available on this page again.  Take that, bandwidth.

I Invented The Moon

You may be shocked to learn that I’m not the only one who has found it hard to obtain fulfilling / paid work since leaving university.  Surfing the web today I came across this echo of my graduate sentiments by London based Emma Hyatt, who is having a pretty rough time.  And yesterday this was doing the rounds on Twitter – again, I completely empathise.

On the plus side though, at least I got uni over and done with before the coalition happened.  And live in Scotland.  Our jobs market may be markedly more tumbleweedy than England’s, but the Graduate Endowment was scrapped when I was in third year and my debt is considerably lower than the students of the future as a result.  I count myself lucky on that point, even if it is a moot one.  I’m never going to be earning enough to pay anything back.

Unless of course I miraculously make it as an SEO writer as per the many emails I keep getting from the long distance journalism course I signed up to.  No, twinkly Australian man, I do not want to spend $17 on your ebook about how to write content for the types of site most internet users try to avoid.  I do not have $17 to spare, certainly not on the dubious pastime of buzzwording morons into buying enough green tea to sink Boston. Those dollars are going to be 18 gold ingots in British currency soon, and I’ll need them all to swap for powdered eggs and tripe when a birthday comes round.  #BigSociety

#demo2010 – The Scottish Solution

According to BBC Reporting Scotland, students protested in Edinburgh on Thursday to send a message to Holyrood not to follow the lead of MPs in Westminster on tuition fees.

Via SSYP website

The twitter hashtag #solidarity suggested a more general motive of support in my eyes, but what do I know.  Watching the rest of the beeb’s report, I couldn’t help thinking they haven’t bothered to get the full story at either side of the border.

For one thing, they branded every one of the London protestors with a hood up as being a troublemaker. Watching the footage back that was evidently not the case – some were undoubtedly just a bit cold. It is winter, you know.  I’d have been more inclined to judge that bunch of reprobates who were all dressed in black and wearing masks whilst they smashed the windows of the Treasury.

Anyway, back to my point. Are Edinburgh students genuinely worried that the Scottish government will renege on one of the key issues of devolution and suddenly start charging people £9,000 to go to university where at the moment it’s free to Scottish students?  They only scrapped the graduate endowment when I was in fourth year, a mere three years ago.  Surely politicians are not so fickle?! *cough* Clegg *cough*.

MSPs are all swearing blind this will not happen, although nobody has been particularly forthcoming on an alternative funding model as yet.  There will be a green paper released on the subject next week, and in a chilling piece to camera on STV, president of NUS Scotland Liam Burns warned that he WOULD BE WATCHING.

But if Scottish students do continue to study for free (excepting of course their cost of living, books and actual graduation after four years), what does that mean in terms of finances for our universities?

MP for Edinburgh East Sheila Gilmore has been quoted this week as being concerned that universities, who have struggled with some fairly brutal cuts over the past few years, may take higher quotas of fee-paying students from England and abroad to try and raise some money, to the detriment of bright and able young Scots.

Taking this to the logical conclusion, we’ll still be churning out graduates, but they’ll presumably decamp back down south after graduation and the Scottish economy will see none of the benefits of their (alleged) higher earning power. Meanwhile we’ll have a larger number of unqualified natives working three or four menial jobs to try and make ends meet.
Sorry, but this smacks of scaremongering, and xenophobic scaremongering at that.  Whilst there are a lot of English students in Scotland, there would need to be an exponential surge in numbers for them to overtake the levels of Scottish students.  According to data collected by The Higher Education Statistics Agency in 2006-2007, out of 223, 532 people studying for their degrees in Scotland, 21,514 were from England, whilst there were 158 983 Scots.

However, the nationality of our students seems irrelevant given that the chance of anyone getting a decent job after graduation is fast becoming an urban myth.  The jobs market in Scotland is a barren wasteland, littered with the dead aspirations of graduates who wanted to do something interesting and found instead that it was bottom rung data entry, retail or dole.  One of my friends tells a story of how last year he attended a training session in an Edinburgh branch of Waterstones where one St Andrews graduate (who also had an MLitt from Edinburgh University) taught four other recent graduates how to lift a box.

We don’t have to start paying back our SAAS loans until we’re earning more than 15k, and I only know about three people who have got to that stage.  I graduated in 2008.  Meanwhile the new legislation from Westminster gives people till 21k before they have to start paying things back.  It could take years to get to that stage.  The way things look right now, it might never happen.
In that case, what is the point of getting a degree in the first place? You’d be as well doing your 6 months on the dole straight from school, then getting on the career ladder ASAP.  Except that when you then want to go for those middle management, 20k promotions in your late twenties or early thirties, they turn round and tell you that you do need a degree after all.  Not because you can’t do the job, particularly, but because all the other candidates have one.  It denotes a particular aptitude for handing in paperwork that you may not have as someone who came to work straight from school.

Furthermore, according to a Universities Scotland report, employment growth will continue to be concentrated at graduate level over the next few years.  Although as far as I can gather, ‘graduate level work’ almost exclusively involves moving to London and working for companies like Deloitte doing something you have no real interest in.

This is probably a product of my arts degree.  I didn’t go to university to become an historian; I went to work on the student press as part of my quest to become a journalist.  Whilst the experience has done nothing to get me work paying more than 13.5k pa; it was a valuable and worthwhile experience which taught me to think and communicate in a number of different ways.

As a result, I do think that people ought to have the option to go and on a personal level I’m open to the idea of a graduate contribution to facilitate this.  Who can really argue against putting something back into a system that enabled you to go as far as you could intellectually and financially?

I don’t know what our ‘Scottish Solution’ to the problem of Higher Education is going to be, but I do think that a graduate contribution of some kind makes sense.  Just as long as the Scottish Government don’t present it in the same cack-handed way as Clegg and the coalition, because that makes people angry.  And people put their hoods up when they’re angry.

Literary Edinburgh

I made a video about the NaNoWriMo experience, which can be viewed here.

For aspiring writers there are also details of meeting times of one of the city’s many writing groups, NanoBeans.  Hoorah!

Protest Power

Student protests against the education cuts are right up there with the snow in the news this week, although the former is decidedly more interesting to me as a jobless graduate.  Unfortunately I wasn’t able to make the Edinburgh protest today because I had a couple of deadlines (one successfully met, the other less so) but I was able to follow the action in real time on Twitter.  Here’s how it went down…

Around noon:

@tomallan : Not many protesters here at Bristo Square…plenty of police – http://moby.to/6kjufp

@EdJournal : Protestors starting to gather in Bristo Square @UniofEdinburgh #Edinburgh #dayx2 #demo2010 http://plixi.com/p/60092684 (via @thistlejohn)

Nobody tweets about leaving Bristo Square, but they presumably did as:

@GdnEdinburgh : Student rally against education cuts has stopped outside Edinburgh council chambers. #demo2010

Then:

@tomallan : Student protest heads to Scottish Parliament. – http://moby.to/amr9xd

@GdnEdinburgh : Students carrying a DIY coffin down the Royal Mile with “RIP education” on the sides. #demo2010

@GdnEdinburgh : As the rally goes down the Royal Mile, the chanting is very much aimed at the Lib Dems today. #demo2010

@tomallan : #demo2010 Protesters on Edinburgh’s Royal Mile – http://moby.to/melbzu

@viceuk : What’s everyone having for lunch?

@tomallan : #demo2010 #edinburgh Protesters arrive at an ice bound Scottish Parliament

@GdnEdinburgh : Student protesters are singing the Darth Vader tune as police move in to guard the door at the Scottish Parliament. #demo2010

@GdnEdinburgh : Protesters using the megaphone to read out Lib Dem phone nos outside the Scottish Parliament #demo2010

@DeadlineClare : Edinburgh Protesters now shouting “come outside” at doors of Scottish Parliament at Holyrood.

@GdnEdinburgh : #demo2010 police guard the doors of the Scottish Parliament during student cuts demo. http://twitpic.com/3bllrm

@thistlejohn : Protestors have effectively blocked the public entrance to Scottish Parliament #demo2010 #dayx2 #Edinburgh

@GdnEdinburgh : Students chanting outside Scottish parliament “Let us lobby let us in” #demo2010

@Subchimp : Student #protest at Scottish parliament. St Andrew’s Day is a holiday. So they’re chanting “come outside” to an empty building. Fuckwits

2pm

@GdnEdinburgh : Snowballs hitting the Scottish parliament #demo2010 http://twitpic.com/3blv5o

@ClareCarswell : #edinburgh anti-education cuts protest poster http://twitpic.com/3blds4

@impworks : Hark I hear the dulcet tones of a Student protest…

@GdnEdinburgh : #demo2010 student protest now moving to Dynamic Earth, where they seem to think Nick Clegg is “hiding”…

…. 20 minutes later….

@GdnEdinburgh : #demo2010 protesters in Edinburgh heading back to Appleton Tower after seeing Nick Clegg on tv in Westminster.

@thesimonevans : Students are a bit like yamaha electronic keyboards. At their most impressive when in Demo mode.

Twitter then panicked and went over capacity, which was conducive to my finishing a What’s On column for The Broughton Spurtle, but sort of disappointing.

However, you can now see a slideshow of photos over at Deadline News, or read articles about it on STV (worth a look at the picture they use) or Guardian Edinburgh.  The Guardian’s video features an interview with Patrick Harvie MSP and footage of student chants, some of which were more realistic than others… worth a look.

I found it interesting to note that none of the Edinburgh protests have descended into kettling yet, especially after watching Coppers last night.  Even though students were chucking snowballs at them, they seemed to remain quite calm.  Are our police more tolerant than those in London, Manchester and other larger UK cities?  Or are our protesters better behaved than those down south?!  And does a genuinely peaceful peaceful protest publicise the cause as effectively?

Further Adventures In NaNoWriMo

First published on The Edinburgh Reporter November 15 2010

The NaNo Beans writing group reserves tables in coffee shops across Edinburgh so that people can write in style...

“So, how’s nana-rama going?” my sister now asks me on a daily basis.

She is not referring to my latest musical project where I encourage a group of grandmothers to backcomb their hair and sing the hits of the 80s, but to my misguided attempts to write 50, 000 words of a novel by the end of November.

Truthfully, I’ve lost momentum.  I was doing fine until Wednesday – NaNoWriMo‘s statistics page cheerfully told me that if I carried on at this rate, I’d be finished five days ahead of schedule.  This was the point at which I attended a rock karaoke, and it all went downhill.  Why write 17,000 words when you can hone your Morrissey impersonation in front of a roomful of strangers?

There are other factors that have stopped me writing.  Over the past week I have been worried about my heroine (I want her to defy the romance genre by having backbone, and challenge the broken Britain stereotype by being a smart, likeable ned; but it might be better for the story to defer to type and write her as more of a sexy doormat).  I have added several new characters, who I now have to do something with.  I have veered wildly from the genre I was supposed to be emulating, none of it makes much sense, and I am concerned that it’s dull to read.

Theoretically, none of this should actually be a problem.  After all, nobody ever has to see the thing.  It’s all between me and my laptop.  As soon as I’ve hit 50k and validated my word count, I can hit delete and never think about it again.

There’s just one small problem with this.  I have been posting every chapter on my blog, in full view of the general public.  Oh, and this is the week Guardian Edinburgh has chosen to launch their literary blogosphere.  Which has a link to my blog.  Sorry, Edinburgh.

Fortunately help is at hand, in the form of the regular pep talks sent out to participants by NaNo HQ.  This week, we all got an email from American author John Green, who said,

“At this point, you’ve probably realized that it’s nearly impossible to write a good book in a month. I’ve been at this a while and have yet to write a book in less than three years.”

This may sound defeatist to the outside ear, but it embodies the NaNo spirit quite well.  This project is not about producing something perfect.  The point is to force people to jump the seemingly insurmountable first hurdle of book writing – the blank page.  NaNo takes the saying that everyone has a novel in them, and challenges people to stop making excuses and do it.  It says go on; it’s only thirty days of your life.  What’s the worst that can happen?  OK, maybe you end up with 90% unusable nonsense.  But nobody else ever has to know that.

Unless you’ve posted it on the internet.

NaNoWriMo

Not only am I doing NaNoWriMo this year, I am posting my book on my other blog, a chapter a day.  I am also blogging about the process of blogging it for The Edinburgh Reporter.  Confused?  You should be.

I have added another page at the top of this site where I have linked to each chapter chronologically.

Meanwhile, this was my experience of day one….

8.05am, Monday November 1st.

I am on a bus to work, catching up on emails (what did I do before I had a phone with Internet access?) and contemplating beginning my NaNoWriMo novel.

Currently my plan is to write a Mills and Boon pastiche.  This is a stupid idea because they’re funny enough on their own, so there is nothing to parody really.  As backup I have decided to include a subplot with an evil scientist, and I hope to end most chapters with a melodramatic, Thomas Hardy-esque cliffhanger.

What is stopping me from beginning RIGHT NOW is whether or not to start with chapter one. I have shot myself in the foot a bit by planning to blog the thing – it’s a little bit unfair on any readers if I write it out of order.

8.10am

Realise I solved my own problem with that statement.  Resolve to write in order.  Start tapping away on my phone.  My thumbs will be sore by the end of the month.

11.33am

Surreptitiously check email at work (in lieu of taking a break).  Emailed efforts from the commute to myself in order to copy and paste it into Word.  Did 556 words in about half an hour.  Not too bad.

6.05pm

It’s chucking it down.  As I navigate the monsoon to the Spoon Bistro for the official Edinburgh write-off, brolly turns itself inside out about fifteen times.  Suspect other people may stay in to write in their jim jams for this one.

6.10pm

Five others have braved the elements tonight, and apparently I am not the only one with a penchant for silliness.   Their plots include zombies, Romans, mages and giant ants.  Literary agents of Edinburgh, watch out!

6.40pm

Gentleman appears looking for the creative writing group.  We profess to be it, but apparently this is not the case – there is a rival gang in an opposite corner!  They are swiftly dubbed the People’s Front of Judea to our Judean People’s Front.  Or are we the Popular Front…?

7pm

I have slightly gone over the daily word count target of 1667 to 1828, conveniently bringing my first chapter to an end at the same time.  There’s a bit of padding in there, but a rule of the project is that I am not allowed to edit myself, so in it stays.

12am

Unable to think of good summing up line for this blog. Night all.