Entertainment Journalism

Making it your Career

Ben Falk

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2018
• Print ISBN: 9781138649378
• eBook ISBN: 9781317233244
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Media Studies
• Index: Social Sciences

Entertainment Journalism is a practical guide to one of the most highly visible areas of media practice. Drawing on 20 years' experience as an entertainment journalist, Ben Falk gives a comprehensive overview of journalistic reporting on the arts industries, with particular focus on film, music, TV and celebrity gossip. This is coupled with an extensive range of tips and tools to help students and young professionals hone the key skills required for a career in entertainment journalism. Interviews with industry professionals appear throughout, from current editors of the biggest entertainment brands, Hollywood bureau chiefs and critics to consumer publicists, multimedia content producers, live radio correspondents, video makers, TV presenters and social media specialists.

Topics include:

• breaking a story
• interviewing techniques
• working at press junkets and red carpet events
• working with PRs
• selling as a freelance
• using social media for reporting and networking
• breaking into the industry.

With up-to-the-minute expert advice, accessibly written guidance on writing and reporting and invaluable perspectives from those within the entertainment world, this is an instructive and insightful book for any aspiring showbiz journalist.

1

Getting and breaking stories

If you’re going to be a successful entertainment journalist, then you have to be able to break stories. Now this is where a lot of aspiring journalists start to panic. I know – I’ve seen it. “I’m a nobody; how am I supposed to find a story that no one else has?” “Where does one even start?”

The thing is, for an entertainment journalist, breaking a story doesn’t necessarily mean what it might if you’re a general news reporter working in the front section of a newspaper. It can of course. When I was Assistant News Editor at Look magazine, we were constantly approached by news agencies, as well as regular freelance contributors who said they had a story about Angelina Jolie or Jennifer Aniston. A marriage hiccup, a weight issue – typical showbiz tabloid fodder (we’ll leave the ethics of this out for the time being, though this will be addressed in Chapter 9). Sometimes, we’d run the story; sometimes we wouldn’t. Occasionally, we’d ask the freelancer if they had anything else about a celebrity we particularly wanted to feature that week, and they’d go away and dig around.

Angle

Before you proceed any further with a story, think about whether you have a good angle. If the story is new, what’s your take on it? If it’s ongoing, what new thing are you bringing to it to move the story forward? If it’s a more in-depth piece, why should someone be reading your 1000-word analysis rather than another journalist’s? I often tell students to ask themselves the question: why should you write about this now? Often this causes useful contemplation. Just ‘wanting to write about it’ normally isn’t enough. Unless you’re a big-time columnist with carte blanche from your editors and a loyal audience who hang on your every word (and that is a tiny minority of hacks).

Generally, it’s not just coming up with a story idea. It’s coming up with the angle as well. If you can’t do that, then you’re really only covering a ‘topic’. Good journalists need to be able to see and grasp the key nugget in a topic which will illuminate that topic for an audience.

This is harder than you think. It will come very naturally to some people. Others might take longer, but it’s something that – although idiotic naysayers who mostly still wish that a newspaper was written in the pub argue otherwise – can be learned. Through practice. Doing it over and over again. Reading, watching, listening and analysing other people who do it really well and understanding how they do. Even, if you’re lucky enough, talking to them in person or getting guidance from them about how you can improve and then actually acting on their feedback without grumbling about them constructively criticising you. It’s unlikely to be something that you ever truly master, and even if you work in the business for some time, you’ll still have plenty of bad days. But don’t worry. Never giving up on trying to improve this aspect of your skills will only improve you as a journalist.

Contacts

Contacts are the holy grail for any journalist. It might be that you know someone working inside the White House who’s prepared to give you things off the record. It might be that there’s a government policy wonk in Whitehall who leaks material or even a boot man at Manchester United who doesn’t like the new manager all that much. For the most part, these kinds of contacts are cultivated over a period of time. People are specifically hired by an outlet because of their contact book. And this is where young journalists get panicky – they don’t have ten years in the field to build up that kind of relationship, so how are they going to compete?

The thing is, there’s a new type of contacts book now, and it’s called social media. Social media is such a broad and complex web of communications and relationships that it’s a gold mine for any young journalist looking to make their way. My students often complain (and sometimes with good reason) that they find it difficult to get interviewees for their stories. But it’s all about lateral thinking. While you can approach someone famous on Twitter, and sometimes get a reply, as long as you put in the groundwork, there is a good chance you’ll be able to use this platform or something similar, like Instagram, to find someone who knows someone who knows someone. This is often where your contacts book begins. It’s unlikely that you’re going to be getting quotes from Brad Pitt’s best mate straight away. But chatting to someone who knows that guy on the Channel 4 structured reality show? That’s a start. And that’s what I mean by the entertainment journalist not having to compete in the same way as a hack in the news section for The Guardian. The news you’ll be covering will be interesting and important to a large swathe of the population, but the stakes are, essentially, lower.

What’s more, what constitutes a story in the world of entertainment is vastly different to most other spheres of journalism. The semantics surrounding the word ‘news’ is something I constantly battle with, and this is particularly the case in showbiz journalism. You wouldn’t naturally think a review of a new band’s album is a news story, but it is if barely anyone’s written about it before. Similarly, the first review of an amazing new movie (or a truly awful one) from a festival could be counted as news within entertainment. This isn’t saying that breaking a story about a celebrity marriage break-up or a famous death isn’t a great thing to do. But I’d argue that in the entertainment world, both types of story hold the same value. That’s not the case, I don’t think, in so-called hard news.

So you can start small and begin with some serious digging on social media.

Remember too that cultivating contacts, especially in the entertainment industry, takes time. Did you immediately become close with everyone in your friendship circle? Did you trust your boyfriend enough to reveal everything about yourself to him after the first date? Highly unlikely. But a few weeks or months down the line? Perhaps. Often contacts or sources are part of a long game. They’re people you bump into at every red carpet and share a little bit of conversation with you each time. They’re the yoga instructor you take classes with for ages before he or she eventually confides in you that one of the ex-One Direction boys is a close personal friend. They’re the publicist who you get stuck with at a rubbish launch party and with whom you bond over stale ham sandwiches and warm white wine.

It’s always worth being told that a source isn’t necessarily someone you would think of immediately. I knew a tabloid journalist who got great gossip out of Brangelina’s bodyguard. That’s straightforward. But what you can’t account for is the random meetings, the accidental contacts you make. And a good journalist always seems to be the one in those places. A good journalist makes their own luck. They think clinically about where they need to be or how they need to stand. They make careful strategic decisions about who to approach and undergo research about how to do it most effectively. I remember seeing long-standing Daily Mail correspondent Baz Bamingboye on the Oscars red carpet, standing a long way down the press line. And believe me, there are hundreds of reporters at the Academy Awards, all queuing up to talk to the attendees. He is an established journalist and had covered the ceremony for many years; I couldn’t understand why he was prepared to let 50, maybe 70, crews stand in front of him. But then the stars started arriving, and I realised what he was doing. He’d positioned himself on the corner of a barrier facing the arriving stars so that rather than being anonymous amongst the press herd until an actor was literally standing in front of him, they could see him ahead as they walked down the carpet. When they finished the interview before his and looked where to go next, they could see his beaming face right in front of them. Putting himself on a corner also meant that he was able to turn his interviewees away from the rest of the press pack. On the red carpet, it’s almost impossible to get an exclusive interview because everyone’s standing next to each other. Not so Baz. He carefully turned Rachel Weisz or whoever it was towards him, and no one could hear what she was saying to him. A night of constant exclusive quotes – genius. What’s even more infuriating is that I had scoped the area out earlier and decided it wouldn’t work for me. Big mistake.

A lot of good reporting is about putting yourself out there, talking to people, insinuating yourself into situations and conversations. But just like any craft – and journalism is a craft despite what its detractors might say – there needs to be background thinking. Some of the best material you’ll ever get will be something you fell into at random, sure. But rarely. Most of the best originally reported stories come about through sheer bloody-minded hard work and a lot of nous. Never be afraid of the former or forget the latter.

SOPHIE VOKES-DUDGEON – ONLINE EDITOR, HELLO!

What would you say to a person looking to break into your profession right now?

It’s a hard industry to break into, but if you keep knocking, the door will open. When you’re given an opportunity, make sure you shine. If work experience is available, be the person who is willing, excited, eager and professional. Be nervous, but do it anyway. And make sure that for every opportunity that ends (a work experience placement, for example), you take away a lead to the next.

Ask people whose jobs you aspire to having if they can spare time for a coffee. Pick their brains; get ideas for what to try next.

What are the three most important things you need as a showbiz reporter?

1. Genuine interest in people. Don’t go to an interview with a list of questions and work your way through them. Listen. Have a proper conversation. Share things, talk back, engage your interview subject. They will give you much more interesting answers.

2. News sense. Understand what a story is. With interviews, keep talking until you have discovered something you find interesting. Make sure it’s something you would genuinely tell a friend/family member/stranger.

3. Nosiness. It might sound general, but you really can’t be a reporter in general if you’re not curious. And for celebrity reporting, you need a genuinely nosey nature to come up with the ideas for stories that people will want to read.

How do you see the future of your profession and what might a young person need to know moving forward?

The landscape of celeb news has changed hugely with the advent of social media. Keeping up with all aspects of social and digital reporting is pretty key I think.

What’s the best thing about your job?

There are times most weeks when you really can’t believe you’re being paid to do this. Each day is different and the subject matter is fun. And you’ve always got good dinner stories about the time you made Angelina Jolie cry or the time you met Tom Cruise on the red carpet. And although the subject matter is frivolous, the skills that go into investigating and reporting are common to all types of news.

It’s also a wonderfully flexible job.

Tell us about your favourite moment/s in your job?

I remember when I started out, screenings and interviews were very exciting. Watching forthcoming episodes of your favourite TV shows then talking to the actors would be fun even if it wasn’t your job.

But as I get older I enjoy the challenge of trying to do something better, quicker, from a more interesting angle than your competitors. I’ve been in a room so jam-packed with stars it feels like a celebrity zoo – Jennifer Aniston dancing next to me, Uma Thurman and Mick Jagger on the far side of the room. Justin Timberlake on the sofa. It feels surreal and fun.

But getting a lead on an exclusive story is a feeling that really makes this job exciting. Like the time I discovered Angelina Jolie’s trip to Ethiopia was not just a charity mission but was to adopt a new child. With a lot of publications spending a lot of money trying to make sure these exclusives are theirs, it’s a thrill to get an exclusive story.

(Interview with author, 2017)

Reactive/feature pieces

Of course there is breaking news in entertainment journalism, but a large part of the industry is made up of creating feature content. The Pulitzer Prize committee describes feature writing as “non-hard-news stories distinguished by quality of writing. Stories should be memorable for reporting, crafting and creativity”. In reality, what constitutes a feature in a modern media landscape is a little broader. For me, that means anything from a long-form, reported article through listicles and reviews to a podcast or documentary. They are all, I believe, a form of feature piece.

A lot, if not the majority, of these will have a newsy hook. They’ll be tied to a story of the day or something that’s happened during the week. That could be anything from a top ten dig into a musician’s oeuvre just after he’s died to the profile of an actress who’s in a new movie or an audio documentary celebrating the anniversary of the cancellation of a well-loved television show. And for story-finding, this is where it gets important. You need to think plentifully and laterally. You need to find an (if possible) original take. That can prove difficult with entertainment stories. I’ve sat in countless brainstorming meetings while the participants sit around glumly trying to come up with a fresh feature idea for Christmas or about the Star Wars saga. These have been done to death. So how do you make them different?

Perhaps it’s easier if I explain how we came up with our feature ideas at Yahoo Movies UK. We’d have a weekly planning meeting where I’d sit with my editor and his deputy to hammer out some possibilities that they could commission me and the other freelancers to do during the month. We’d start by going through the film release schedule. What’s coming out? Who stars in it? What’s the premise of the movie? Is it related to other films in some way? We might already have interviews with the on-screen talent lined up, but aside from them, we were looking for clever, interesting and funny ideas which would pull people to the site. A lot of this is Google-related. If something is in the news, people Google it. You want potential reading material to come up on the Google search when they type in “Fast and Furious 462” or “the new Star Trek”. So …

Let’s take a movie like Kong: Skull Island, which is one that we did brainstorm together.

Ten things …

You could start with a very simple online listicle feature like “Ten things you never knew about King Kong”. While it’s not the most scintillating idea in the world, articles like this generate good traffic online because they’re easy to digest and you can test your knowledge as a fan against them (most of the time when I wrote these, the comments were filled with irate cinephiles whinging about how they already knew everything I’d just written).

Tom Hiddleston

British actor Tom Hiddleston (best known for playing Loki in the Marvel Cinematic Universe) stars in Skull Island, so you could write something more specific to him. “Why Skull Island proves Tom should be the next Bond”, or “How Tom Hiddleston got in shape for Skull Island”. These kinds of stories pull the focus of the feature a little wider and appeal to the fan base of the actor or actress you’re creating content about, which is why it’s important to think about whether that person works for your audience. I read a piece about some behind-the-scenes discussions at Wired magazine which talks about how they’re going to write a piece about Being John Malkovich screenwriter Ch...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction
• 1. Getting and breaking stories
• 2. Entertainment journalism – in context
• 3. Interviewing
• 4. Junkets and red carpets
• 5. Working with PRs
• 6. Using social media
• 7. Reviewing
• 8. Working with different media
• 9. Law and ethics
• 10. Selling as a freelance
• 11. Breaking into the industry
• Bibliography
• Index