All posts in Interviewed by Others

  • Interviewed by Bianca Valentino about freelance journalism, October 2011

    Brisbane-based music journalist and zine maker Bianca Valentino has posted a long interview with me on her blog, Conversations With Bianca.  Here we speak about freelance journalism, interviewing, and goal-setting. Excerpt below.

    Interview: Andrew McMillen on Freelance Journalism In Australia, Writing & Interviewing

    To me Australian journalist Andrew McMillen is without a doubt a success. His work has been published in/for Rolling Stone Australia, The Weekend Australian, QWeekend, Mess + Noise, The Vine, Triple J Mag, The Courier-Mail, Australian Penthouse, Gamespot, BrisbaneTimes.com.au and Junior. Andrew has managed to make freelance journalism in Australia pay the bills, not an easy task! Here Andrew and I discuss interviewing, challenges facing freelance journalists in Australia, his career goals and aspirations as well an insight into how he’s made writing a full-time gig. I give you a chat with two writers that deeply care about their craft…

    I get a little nervous before my interviews, just a little. Good nerves though I think.
    ANDREW MCMILLEN: Ha, you know Neil Strauss told me the same thing which I think is fascinating because he’s pretty much at the top of his game yet he still feels that way. He told me it is because of the expectations that he puts on himself to do the best interview that that person has ever done. Obviously if you are talking to some of the most famous people in the world then that is a pretty tough ask most of the time.

    Do you get that way yourself?
    AM: Yeah, in the moments leading up to an interview. On the phone it’s usually worse because of that anticipation – you’re walking around in the morning or whenever it is and you know it’s coming up ’cause it’s in your schedule and you know you’ll be fine once you start doing it but it’s just the planning and waiting that increases my anticipation for it. Once you’re actually in the moment I find that you’re fine.

    There have been moments in my interviewing career where I have had almost a constant anxiety attack throughout the whole interview and then because I wasn’t in the moment when I got off the phone I was like, damn! I wish I hadn’t been so worked up I didn’t see the opportunity to ask an awesome question.
    AM: Do you think that came down to a lack of preparation on your part?

    No – I was suffering from panic attacks and anxiety at the time – I do more research than anyone else that I know for my interviews and with a lot of people I interview I have long-standing relationships and friendships I’ve built up with them over our careers, sometimes a decade or more. At times when I’ve done interviews I get an almost out of body experience or it’s almost a trance like state. I can’t quite explain it. I’ve had some amazing experiences and connections interviewing. I really, really care about what I do.
    AM: Yeah, wow! For me a big part of it for me is being present in the moment. You’ve got your list of questions in front of you that you want to get through but you should be willing to go with what they want to say and change in direction if need be. I’ve done interviews where I have lots of stuff prepared but then I only get to ask three or four questions and the rest of it is made up on the spot because they go off on some tangent which interests me and then I push them on that and go down an entirely different path. Some of those interviews have been some of the most enjoyable interviews I think, the ones which don’t go how you planned at all. I think that comes down to being versatile and being able to change it up on the spot.

    I’ve had some interviews where I’ve had a list of 50 questions and pretty much not even asked one of them. I also have notes on hand as well as questions. I did an interview with Dr Know from the Bad Brains – I’d loved that band for so long – once and when I started talking to him I felt it kind of fell apart. It was a really interesting interview for me where I learnt a lot from.
    AM: It turned out good in the end though didn’t it?

    Yeah in the end it did but at the time when I got off the phone to him I burst into tears – it’s the first and only interview that’s ever happened with. I thought I’d really failed. It meant so much to me because they were one of the first overtly spiritual hardcore punk bands and those two things mean the world to me. Reading the interview back though I realised it was awesome!
    AM: I love that reflection of how you might not realise it in the moment but then you type it up afterwards and awesome stuff comes out, it speaks a lot about the person, it speaks a lot about your talent to get that kind of thing out of them. I like when people say ‘I’ve never told anyone else before but…’ and then they tell you.

    That makes your heart stop a little and you’re like ‘hell yeah!’
    AM: [laughs].

    I wanted to clarify, is writing your sole work that you do?
    AM: Yeah I’ve done it full-time since June 2009. Up until October 2010 I was doing a bunch of copywriting and web project management, client management stuff for a small business called Native Digital. I was doing that as well as journalism so I wasn’t fully concentrating on journalism. Since October last year my full energy has gone into pitching, researching, interviewing and writing – it was a real shift in my mindset because it wasn’t just me plugging away trying to get my name out someone else [Nick Crocker] was investing time, energy and to a certain extent their reputation in introducing me to other people. We’d have weekly updates and they’d really just push me with each passing day to make sure that I was getting better—more connecting, pitching harder and pushing harder. That was the real shift for me in 2009.

    Since the start of last year Nick and I started this pitching spreadsheet where every time I pitched any kind of article to anyone – it could be an album review or a feature story – I’d track it in a Google Docs spread sheet so we could both see what was going on and what the response was and what stories were worth to me in a money sense. That was a business management strategy that Nick employed to get me to be more accountable for my actions so that I could see on a daily basis what I have on, what I’ve earned and I can see how it’s changed between now and six months ago. If I look back from now to Feb 2010 the changes are just ridiculous. I was totally green back then in terms of the stories I was pitching and the relationship I had with editors. Now it’s at a much more advanced level because I have those systems in place and I’m accountable and keep pushing harder. That relationship with Nick has been a massive part of why I am where I am.

    I’ve had a few conversations with Nick where he has encouraged me. I remember our first chat he asked me why I hadn’t started a blog yet. I told him I was waiting for this or for that and he told me there will never be a perfect time and to just start doing it.
    AM: He is incredible in that way. He’s started several businesses, he has that entrepreneurial spirit in him obviously but he even applies all that stuff to non-business things. He had this blog called Way Cool Jnr for a couple of years that he used to push his ideas about the music industry just for the hell of it. He wasn’t getting paid for it, it was for free. It became one of the most popular music blogs in Australia for some time. I took over editing it last year and I did it for a while but I stopped that recently because I can’t give it the time it needs which is a shame. That brand, that blog called Way Cool Jnr had a good name for itself and it just shows you can start a blog and it can have an impact even if it’s not for a business purpose. I have my own blog which I’ve had for a couple of years and it was cool to have that inbuilt audience from Way Cool Jnr.

    For the full interview, visit Bianca’s blog. You can find her on Twitter at @BiancaValentino, too. Thanks for the interview, Bianca.

  • Interviewed: 4ZzZ Book Club on National Young Writers’ Month, freelance journalism, and UnConvention Brisbane 2011

    This is a three-way live radio interview conducted by Sky Kirkham, Amy Stevenson, and Alexander Atkinson, the co-hosts of the4ZzZ Book Club, on Thursday 26 May 2011. 4ZzZ is a community radio station in Brisbane.

    Our half-hour interview concerned National Young Writers’ Month 2011, my freelance journalism, and my role as co-organiser of UnConvention Brisbane 2011. Their questions are bolded.

    If, for some crazy reason, you’d rather listen to the audio of this interview than read the transcript, you can do that here.

    Welcome Andrew, and thank you for joining us today.

    Thank you.

    Andrew is the Queensland ambassador for National Young Writers’ Month. So I suppose to start off, tell us about National Young Writers’ Month.

    Sure, National Young Writers’ Month starts next month, funnily enough. So I’ve been organising some events here in Brisbane and up in my home town of Bundaberg in anticipation of next month, to get young people inspired about writing and to start thinking about setting some goals to work towards during the month of June.

    I’s really about getting young people talking about writing, and helping them work towards those goals by building a little community around young writers across the country.

    How is the event doing that?

    It’s online-based, and there’s a website which Express Media have organised. National Young Writers’ Month is promoted by Express Media, who are a Victoria-based arts company. The website is expressmedia.org.au/nywm.

    We will put a link to that from our Facebook page at the end of the show. How did you get involved in National Young Writers’ Month?

    The coordinator of the event came across my work somehow, I don’t know, through a search engine or something. And she liked what I was doing, so she asked me to be involved because she could see that I was under 25,and the event is targeted towards under 25s. She could see that I’d done a fair few interviews with writers in the past, and hoped that could translate through to helping other people be inspired enough to start writing.

    Is there any particular reason for the age 25 limits on it? It seems almost arbitrary.

    It does seem arbitrary, doesn’t it? It’s not my decision. I couldn’t answer that question.

    I guess you have to cut ‘youth’ off somewhere.

    What kind of goals are people going to be setting? Are these all manner of writing, or is it non-fiction and fiction?

    It’s all manner of writing. Of the national ambassadors, I’m the only journalist. The rest of the ambassadors are fiction writers, poets, and that kind of thing. So it’s for any kind of writing, whether you want to start a book or get a few chapters down during the month, or start a blog and write every day, or even just write yourself a diary entry every day. It’s just to get the juices flowing.

    Whatever achievable goal you think you can do in a month.

    Yeah. It’s about making it an achievable goal, too, so not like “I’m going to write a book in a month!” because you’d probably tear your hair out in frustration.

    I’m sure some people try.

    Are there any physical workshops coming up? I know you’ve just run a couple of seminars or conversations with local authors.

    I don’t have anything else planned. In the last 10 days or so I’ve done three events; two here in Brisbane, and one in my hometown of Bundaberg. Last Tuesday I had Benjamin Law and John Birmingham talking about freelance journalism – which is what I do, and what they are both well-known for doing. And this Tuesday just past, I had the Courier Mail’s Qweekend magazine staff talking about feature journalism, which I think was pretty cool because that magazine is regarded as being the best journalism in Queensland. Certainly among the best in Australia too.

    So that was Trent Dalton —

    Matthew Condon, and Amanda Watt.

    Who was your favourite interview?

    On stage, you mean?

    Yeah.

    Andrew: Matthew Condon, because… actually, it’d be a tie between him and John Birmingham, because they both have the rare distinction of being writers who speak as well as they write. Most writers… myself definitely included; I don’t speak as well as I write, because I like to have that time to get my mind focused. But somehow, JB and Matthew Condon have that ability to form whole sentences and witty comments on the fly.

    Makes you wonder if their writing comes out that way in one smooth, flowing, fully-formed script.

    Yeah.

    Yes, we try to do that on the 4ZzZ Book Club. We don’t always succeed. [laughs]

    To take a step back; you’re saying you are a freelance journalist. How did you get into that industry in the first place? What was it that drew you to it, and what was your first step in getting involved, as advice to all of our young writers out there who might be interested.

    I started… I guess the first time I was published was in mid-2007 and for a couple of years following that, all I did was review live shows here in Brisbane for Rave Magazine and for FasterLouder. So for those two years, it was just purely live reviewing, the occasional CD review. That was my ‘journalism’ for two years, and I was happy to leave it at that was because it was a fun little pastime for me. It meant I got free concert tickets and I could go to see shows that I otherwise would pay for.

    So that was cool, but at the same time it gave me the ability to work towards deadlines, and to word counts, and to be concise and to the point. So that was a hobby. I graduated from uni with a Bachelor of Communication in mid 2009. I didn’t really intend to do anything with journalism, but around that time I quit my job in web design, and I was kind of at a crossroads where I could decide to either pursue another full-time offie job or try something else that I knew; which, in that case, was freelance journalism fulltime. So I decided to put my mind to that. And it took many months, in financial terms, before I saw the fruits of that effort, but over those last two or so years, I think I’ve kind of got on top of it.

    Is it possible to earn a living from freelance journalism?

    It is, but you have to be incredibly dedicated and persistent. You have to get up every day and market yourself to editors, and have ideas, and constantly be thinking weeks or months ahead in terms of publication schedules, and what’s going to be current a few months down the track.

    What would you describe as maybe the thrills and perils of freelance journalism?

    The thrill is… for the year or so I was working an office job, the morning commute is quite upsetting. You have to get up early, make your lunch, catch a bus or train in… That gets old pretty quickly, as I’m sure everyone can appreciate in some regard. [Andrews note: I didn’t get to finish saying it, but the ‘thrill’ I was referring to was setting my own hours, and working from home…]

    I suppose in those earlier days you would have been working to finance yourself some other way, as well.

    That’s true. I did a bit of copywriting and web account management for a friend’s business, but in the last year or so I’ve given that up and I’ve just been freelance writing full-time. The thrills… and what was the other part?

    Perils.

    Perils. Well, it comes down to finance, I suppose. I mean, like I said; you have to be marketing yourself every day, and if you’re not doing that, then you’re not getting paid, and you can’t pay your rent or feed yourself.

    And become yet another impoverished writer.

    Exactly. I didn’t want to become a cliché, which is why I’ve been successful. [laughs]

    Or living the stereotype. Is it all about generating a portfolio? Is that how you tend to market yourself once you have volunteered [as a writer] and you’ve got stuff that you haven’t been paid for, and people can see you’re good at what you do, then you can take your portfolio further?

    In a way, yes. Those two years when – I was doing the stuff for the street press and FasterLouder – was essentially unpaid. But at the same time, I didn’t expect to get paid, because it was fun for me; free tickets and all that. But after I quit that job and made the distinction that I wanted to be a writer full-time, then I only pursued paying publications. I did that doggedly, for months on end, before I really saw the return.

    That’s how you have to think; months down the track, instead of on a day-to-day basis, because you can do excellent work and people can like your work across Australia or across the world, but you don’t see the invoice until a few weeks or months down the track.

    We are talking to Andrew McMillen on the Book Club here tonight on 4ZzZ. Andrew, what was your first paid journalism article?

    I interviewed the Brisbane band Screamfeeder for a website called messandnoise.com. It was funny, because I’d been doing – in some ways – music journalism for a couple of years, but I’d never actually interviewed a band. So in anticipation of that I bought a little recorder, and I did all my research and preparation and took notes, and all that sort of thing.

    It went really well, and it was published online, and it was worth $60 or something like that. It was a breakthrough for me because it was like, “holy shit”; here’s this article which I put a lot of effort into and I could see the results, and it was well received among the [online] community and all that sort of thing. And that first paying success, as it were, I still feel that to this day when I get published in The Weekend Australian or Rolling Stone.

    I mean, obviously I’m a full-time writer. I like to get paid for my work, but it’s also still a thrill to see my name in print and to see people responding to an article, whether through comments on an article or on Twitter or Facebook; that sort of thing.

    You’re saying how you write full-time. What was the draw of journalism in particular? Did you ever have any aspirations of pursuing other writing activities?

    No, I didn’t. Now that you asked that, I’m not really sure. I’m curious. I guess I’m naturally curious, and the role of the journalist, I think, is to remove curiosity from day-to-day life. A good journalist is asking the questions that you want to know, and putting them into articles or radio programs or TV shows that are answering those questions. I guess I like being rooted in non-fiction, because it’s where I live on a day-to-day basis, rather than being lost in my head with fictional characters.

    I suppose in journalism as well, you get to come out of your hidey-hole and interview people.

    Yes.

    Actually have contact with people.

    Exactly, because I know from experience you can spend enough time in your bedroom, or your workspace, and it’s days before you actually go out and see someone. So it’s always a thrill to be out and to meet people, definitely.

    As one of the challenges of freelance journalism, you’re talking about the need to market yourself constantly, and to look ahead. Is there this trade-off where, I suppose, you would have some freedom as a freelance journo that you wouldn’t otherwise, that you have to work almost as hard at the marketing side as you do at actually writing your articles?

    Definitely, that’s the balance. It’s great to be able to roll out of bed at midday, or stay up late and not have to worry about getting up for work, or whatever, but in terms of why I have been successful is because, from the beginning, when I had that first paying article, I started uploading all of my articles to my own blog, which is andrewmcmillen.com. Every time I would introduce myself to another editor, I would show them my blog and show them my three best articles up to that point.

    I’m not sure, because none of my editors have ever said it, but I think that taking that kind of time to build a web presence and keep it updated, and take pride in that; I would hope that has swayed them in some ways to think, “Okay, this guy’s serious about what he does.”

    Interviewer 1: You see that with authors and websites as well. There are some authors who have the most fantastic websites and then you have ones which look as though they haven’t been touched for years, and are atrociously formatted. You have to wonder whether they’re actually interested in booking themselves up, because they’re obviously not committed to it.

    Interviewer 2: That comes back to the balance again, I guess, of authors who feel they shouldn’t have to do anything other than write.  I believe we’ve heard even people on this show talk about that, but definitely I’ve heard other interviews with authors feeling quite indignant that they have to do something other than —

    Interviewer 1: “What? I have to market myself?”

    Interviewer 2: Exactly.

    Interviewer 1:: “Don’t people get paid to do that?”

    Interviewer 2: It seems pretty lonely to engage in writing that way, lock yourself up in a little room and just do nothing but write. I think it’s a skill that probably our generation is in grasp of a lot more. We are a generation of bloggers and Facebookers. We have no problem really of announcing our ideas to our community of friends, and taking that on to a larger step as a professional basis. You probably have to be quite good these days, because everyone’s tried their hand at that sort of lifestyle.

    I was adept at that kind of social media, or whatever you want to call it, because I’ve grown up with the internet. I’ve been using it hardcore since I was 12, and I don’t see myself stopping.

    Didn’t you first start writing on the internet; gaming reviews or something?

    Yeah.

    See, we’ve done research!

    The first time I was published in some way, I suppose, is when I was about 12 or 13, for an online video game community [NINTEN] where I was essentially rewriting press releases. Which is as glamorous as it sounds. But it was cool because I was already a member of this community but it was also helping me to show some talent of mine: that I could write, and that people might want to read about the latest Nintendo game or some other thing that’s coming out. It feels silly to talk about it now, but at the time I loved it because I was passionate about video games, and for years I wanted to be a video game journalist, which I have kind of…

    Sounds like a rad job.

    Video game journalist?

    Yeah; you play the games, you tell people about them. The dream job.

    I’ve kind of done some video game journalism, but it’s been nothing to do with playing games; more about looking at the business side of games, which I don’t think many people – either in Australia or in the world – are doing. I got into that because, here in Brisbane a studio called Krome shut down the end of last year. For a week or so, there were rumours floating around that they’d fired all their staff, but no one was confirming it.

    Because no one was looking into it I was like, “I’m going to go check it out for myself.” There’s a gaming website called IGN, which I approached the editor of. I said, “Can I do this story for you?” He’s like, “Yeah man, I really want somebody to do it because, like you, I’m curious.”

    So I found a bunch of staff who had left the studio recently, and I put together their stories and theories on why the company went out of business. Then I got an interview with the CEO. It was the first time he’d spoken to media since the rumours started, because all the Courier Mail reporters [and the like] and all were calling up to say, “Is this true?!”. They were really confronting him, whereas I came in under the radar and said, “Look, I’ve done this research with some past employees. They’ve told me this; is it true?”

    I guess it’s that kind of tenacity that really drives a young journalist. Do you have any writing heroes, or literary heroes that you used as a model for that, or any sort of model for your writing?

    Yeah, also around the time I quit that [web design] job, I went down to Sydney to interview my favourite writer, Neil Strauss. He’s an American author who’s best known for writing for Rolling Stone and New York Times for about 20 years, and in 2005 he had a book called The Game: Penetrating the Secret Society of Pickup Artists.

    I think I’ve heard of that one.

    He had a new book that came out in 2009, and I had an interview lined up with him. He was meant to come to Brisbane for this book tour, but it didn’t come through. He was just going to Sydney and Melbourne instead, because I guess there wasn’t enough media attention up here. So I had resigned myself to just doing a phone interview with him, like any other writer or musician I’ve done before. My friend said, “If this guy means so much to you, why don’t you take a few hundred dollars and take the cost and fly down and see him?” Which I hadn’t considered at all.

    So I did that, and I met him. I interviewed him for 45 minutes or so. That was a massive formative experience for me, because here’s this guy who has literally built his life around writing and publishing words. And that made me realise that I can do that; that’s what I wanted to do.

    So you’ve clearly gone a few paths as a journalist. You’ve got your musical background and, I guess, more straight stories, things like the current one [‘Krome Studios: Things Fall Apart’]. How do you plan the difference in approaching those, and also, how do the publications you’re dealing with approach your involvement in them as a freelance journalist?

    It depends very much on the publication, and what they want from their writers. For example, the majority of music writing I do these days is for a website called TheVine.com.au. And mostly what I do for them is interviews, which are published in a straight Q+A format. So there’s a few hundred word intro and then it’s just the conversation as it happened. Which I’m really big on, because I remember reading street press, before I was writing for it. I would see, “this band’s touring”, or they’ve got an album coming out. There’s this little 300 or 500 word article and there’s a couple of quotes that are plugged in there, but it’s like – “what did the writer and musician talk about for the rest of those 15 minutes?” Because most bands give 15 minute phone interview blocks.

    It confused me, because I wanted to see the full story. So both TheVine and Mess+Noise are quite good at publishing full interviews, but that’s, again, because they are web publications, whereas a magazine like Rolling Stone or triple j mag, they’re constrained by space.

    I guess that’s a major thing; the advent of online media to the point where it can actually generate a business model these days and allows that additional space. It also has allowed the rise of a larger group of freelance journalists to get published and get their information out there.

    Maybe for less money.

    Almost definitely, which is a shame, because I prefer writing for the web. Because like I said; I’ve grown up with it and I spend most of my day online and I like to see what’s new and what’s current. But at the moment, in terms of writers getting paid or journalists getting paid, the scales are definitely still tipped in print’s favour. I like writing more for Rolling Stone or The Australian because they pay really well, as opposed to —

    Could you put a figure on it per word?

    Yeah. Rolling Stone pays 60 cents per word, and The Weekend Australian pays 70 cents per word.

    Online that would be…?

    TheVine, for example, pays $150 per interview, or $50 per review. It’s the shift between per word and per article and it’s great; TheVine is run by Fairfax Digital, who had a quite forward-thinking business strategy a few years ago when they launched TheVine and Brisbane Times, and those kind of sites. [Andrew’s note: those two sites launched at different times, however.] They’ve been monetised and profitable for years now. Hopefully that balance between print and web will tip towards web’s favour. I think it will, because more advertisers will be going towards the web, because more people are reading websites.

    You are listening to the Book Club on 4ZzZ 102.2 FM. We are joined today by Andrew McMillen, who is the Queensland ambassador for National Young Writers’ Month. Let’s talk a bit more about National Young Writers’ Month. You were saying there’s online workshops. Are you involved with that at all? How does that work? How do you get enrolled?

    Not so much online workshops as a community built around the forum, and blogs that are on that website.

    How are they going? Have they started yet?

    All the ambassadors have written their response to ‘Why I Write,’ which I think is where you got your research from, maybe… maybe not. [laughs] And we’ve had a few guest authors do that, like Benjamin Law put his response in, which was, in typical Ben Law style, quite humorous. There’s forums where you can talk about journalism or blogs or fiction writing or poetry. They’re trying to cover all the bases in terms of writing forms, which I think they’ve done.

    How do people get involved with that? They go to the website, subscribe and register and then have access to the activities?

    Yeah, you can join the community and make friends and do all those kinds of social networking activities.

    Is there any other support groups around? I know Visible Ink which is in the valley which is a government initiative supports young writers and I suppose some of the publishing bodies we’ve talked about today like FasterLouder and stuff sort of support young writers in a way, to their own benefit in a way as well. Are there any other associated organisations involved in this one?

    Not involved in this [NYWM] specifically. The Queensland Writers’ Centre are quite visible, obviously.

    We talked about The Edge as well, in the break and that’s something else that’s quite a beneficial, useful little space.

    It is, and they often have workshops, government workshops there. I’m not sure how many of them are writing based.

    Andrew: They do have occasional ones. I remember last year – which I wasn’t in town for it – they had a feature journalism chat with Trent Dalton. Young writers could come along and ask questions; much like they could at my events in the past 10 days.

    There is also a broad range of things that go on at The Edge, one of which is something else you’re also involved in, which is UnConvention, which is coming up on the 11th and 12th of June. Can you give us a bit of rundown on that, while you’re in the studio?

    Sure. I am a co-organiser of UnConvention Brisbane 2011. It’s the sequel of UnConvention Brisbane 2010 funnily enough. It started last year as a grassroots independent music community networking event. It’s much the same format this year, with more of a focus on encouraging discussions during the panel sessions.

    As well as that, there’s a networking event at the Boundary Hotel on Saturday night, and a few local artists will be showcasing throughout the weekend at the Edge and at the Boundary Hotel.

    How did you get involved with the UnConvention organisation?

    It’s based on a concept that started in the U.K. a few years ago and it’s since been replicated around the world, like in Brazil and India and all sorts of places. UnConvention Brisbane last year was the first Australian UnConvention. A co-organiser named Dave Carter who is a lecturer at the Conservatorium and a local musician himself, he saw the idea and thought about bringing it to Brisbane because he felt there was a bit of a gap in terms of strengthening bonds within the independent music community and bringing them together.

    That’s what we really aimed to do, and based on feedback from last year we had about 220 people come along to the Edge and hopefully we’ll do the same again this year. The feedback was really positive.

    I caught a thread online the other day about Brisbane and the difference — a lot of people say that Brisbane isn’t quite as cultural as our other cities of Australia and whether that was a problem of representation in the music industry, or whether that was a lack of talent in Brisbane. The general consensus was that there’s bits of both but there’s slightly less cohesion I suppose was the general consensus of the thread. I wasn’t a contributor or anything, I just took it off.

    This is on Collapse Board, perchance? [‘An Open Question to Brisbane’]

    Yeah.

    It’s an interesting thread. I’ve kept an eye on it too, and I haven’t contributed myself either. It’s one of those discussions that’s been around for a long time and I know the guy who started it, Everett True, who is running a workshop at UnConvention about online publishing or self publishing.

    He’s a pretty good writer.

    Yeah, he’s amazing. He’s literally been a music journalist his whole adult life; he knows what he’s doing, for sure. But he started it because he wanted to answer the question “Why does Brisbane perceive itself to be a cultural backwater”; those sorts of questions. There are no easy answers for that because… I don’t even know where to start.

    Interviewer 1: I was thrown to each side of the argument as I read on. I thought, “Yeah, clearly because everyone leaves Brisbane and goes to Melbourne if you’re a creative person.” And the I read a little bit further and I thought, “No, I know there’s venues in the suburbs and there’s music.”

    Interviewer 2: We do have a massively creative scene as well. The number of good local bands coming out is always pretty impressive.

    Interviewer 1: I think it’s a stigma that holds around that there’s not much going on in Brisbane. Just the fact that there is a stigma, people keep re-saying it.

    It’s funny, because it exists down south. People down south perceive Brisbane to be like that, and somehow, for some reason, Brisbane people believe that, in some cases. That’s why I think it perpetuates.

    I think so.

    So you’re saying Everett True’s running a workshop on self-publishing.

    He’s co-hosting that with Bianca Valentino, who’s done a lot of her own zines called “Conversations With Punx”.

    I think I’ve been to a seminar by Everett True a couple of years ago. He was pretty cool.

    There we go; a reason to get along to UnConvention in a couple of weeks! You panelled, at the last one, a discussion on music and the media. Is there going to be something similar this time or is that retreading old ground at this point?

    We have aimed to start a whole new series of topics, although we have retained a similar kind of one in the music and culture discussion. I think that was really valuable. This year that’s being held by Kellie Lloyd of Screamfeeder, and Q Music. What was the question again? The music and media panel, last year. No, we’re not doing that exact topic this year but we are doing ‘documenting Brisbane’s music scene’, which is run by Justin Edwards, a local music photographer.

    Cool. I’d say there’s a lot to get to as well as National Young Writers’ Month, which you can log on. We’ll post up the site.

    UnConvention is held at The Edge in South Bank, next to the State Library of Queensland, on June 11 and 12. That’s the Queen’s Birthday long weekend. It’s $30 to get in and that gives you access to both days of panel discussions and networking events, as well as lunch on both days. For more information, you can visit unconventionbrisbane.com

    Andrew McMillen, thank you very much for joining us today. Andrew McMillen is a freelance journalist, the Queensland ambassador for National Young Writers’ Month, and one of the co-organisers at UnConvention. So a very busy man, and he also runs a blog, which you heard him mentioning before, which is andrewmcmillen.com.

    We’ll also post the link to it on our Facebook page after the show, for those that don’t write at the speed of my voice. It is a quarter-to-eight. You’re listening to the Book Club on 4ZzZ.


  • Interviewed: Meg White on interviewing, 2011

    The lovely Meg White – staff writer at Australian Penthouse – asked me some questions about interviewing. The results are published on her blog, uberwensch.com. Excerpt below.

    Andrew McMillen on Interviews

    Andrew McMillen is one of the best journalists around. He’s also one of the best resources, one of the best hustlers, and one of the nicest guys in the biz. I know this because I am a weary old hag, and I’ve watched McMillen go from one success to the next with nary a stitch or strain. Earnest, reliable, skilled and ubiquitous—my praise could carry itself far, far away.

    So back when I proposed an interview series, I immediately thought of Andrew. Though his city had just become submerged in floodwater, he agreed to answer my questions and did so in a timely fashion. Then I moved out of my house and found myself stranded, for actual months, in a world of no Internet, so those answers were hidden in the musty dungeon of my inbox. I’ve freed them this morning. Here’s what he had to say:

    What were the circumstances behind your best interview?

    I’d wanted to interview Robert Forster – he of the Brisbane pop band The Go-Betweens, who were active between 1977 and 2006 – for a long time. I didn’t have a particular ‘hook’ or currency peg, though. Except that the man is a total fucking legend, and not just for his music: he’s also one of the highest-paid music critics in Australia through his monthly column for The Monthly (note: highest-paid is not to be confused with best). So since Mess+Noise, a website dedicated to Australian music, have an irregular section named Icons, where significant contributors to the Australian music scene are interviewed at length, I eventually figured out that Forster would be perfect for it.

    I pitched the story to my editor, and he was keen on it, so I asked Forster’s manager for the interview – on the condition that we’d speak at length, about his whole career. We sorted out a time to meet at a bakery near his house. I spent many hours reading and watching everything I could find about Forster and The Go-Betweens online. I arrived with three double-spaced pages of questions. Forster answered them all, thoughtfully and at great length. By the two hour mark, he was late for a meeting, so he gave me a lift across town in his old Volvo. (The interview was over at that point, and we chatted casually.) I called him two days later and we spoke for another half-hour. So around 2.5 hours all up, and around 15,000 words on paper. Not once did he give me anything less than his full attention, or act impatient, or attempt to avoid a question. It was brilliant.

    I was paid $100 for the article, which ran in three parts on Mess+Noise. I generally outsource my interview transcriptions. It cost me around $140 for the transcription, so I was effectively operating at a loss. Which is not something I tend to do. But it was such a great opportunity – to ask a hugely influential artist many questions about his whole career – that I was happy to wear the cost.

    Another interview of note was a five-minute conversation with the American hip-hop artist Big Boi for The Vine, in a crowded ‘green room’, upstairs at the Hordern Pavilion in Sydney. In no way was this interview representative of my ‘best’ work, but it is an example of how certain situations require the interviewer to think on their feet, and adapt to the mood of the room. I wrote the interview up in a way that blends my inner monologue with Boi’s answers to my questions. It’s here.

    Also: I am reasonably proud of my interview with Tool singer Maynard James Keenan. I think I did as well as I could have possibly done, considering I had 15 minutes on the phone with one of the least talkative guys in rock music.

    I liked your Big Boi interview. When I read it my first thought was, “I wonder if any of his prepared questions got in there?”

    How about I just open up Google Docs and show you the questions I had prepared to ask? (These were then written, in note form, on a small piece of paper, which I carried into the interview.

    Big Boi Questions

    • How did this gig come about?
    • Are you a gamer?
    • Fave game of all time?
    • Of 2010?
    • Frustration that it took three years for Shutterbugg to come out?
    • Ever hear The Vines’ version of Ms Jackson?
    • Feelings on radio edits? Yelawolf’s verse in ‘You Ain’t No DJ’
    • Cee-Lo’s ‘Forget You’
    • You seem to put more effort into your videos than most artists. Do you see video as a big part of album process?
    • Censorship / logos in videos
    • What’s the next material we’ll hear from you?
    • Consider yourself more of a performer, producer, songwriter? Actor? Label boss?
    • Touring with Vonnegutt this time? If not, who you got singing ‘Follow Us’?
    • What other outrageous demands were you able to make for this one-off show?
    • Is this the first video game launch you’ve played?
    • The key to this album’s thrilling ride lies within this approach: by taking advantage of the freedom to flit between several personas, the rapper can both shrink and exaggerate his true self. It’s less a schizophrenic episode than a tactic to unlock new songwriting ideas and it’s one that works beautifully.” [note: this is a quote from my review of Big Boi’s album for The Vine, July 2010]

    Interesting. And on to Maynard: The interview looks shorter than 15 minutes.

    During the Maynard interview, there was a minute or two when he was speaking with someone else nearby. ‘Off camera’, if you will. I think it was a plumbing contractor asking him what needed to be fixed. Evidently he didn’t know, and said a couple of times, “I’m on the phone to Australia.” (Also: how do you think I felt, having my already-brief interview cut down even further due to an external distraction? Yeah.)

    How much of your interviews do you throw away?

    The answer is, it depends. If it is a relatively well-known/famous person who a lot of people will be interested in reading an interview with, I am a firm believer that the absolute entirety of your conversation (on the record) should be published. Why? Longevity. So that when someone’s Googling “(person’s name) interview” in 10 years’ time, your interview will show up. And not necessarily on the first page of results, or anything like that; just that it exists is very important to me.

    If I’m conducting a bunch of interviews with several different people for a feature story, those individual interviews probably don’t deserved to be published beyond the quotes I pull to include in a story. There is a reason why journalists pull quotes, and it usually comes down to two things: a) word/space restrictions, or b) the majority of the interview was unremarkable, irrelevant, or otherwise not worth publishing.

    The rule of thumb is: if it’s a famous person, I keep it all. If it’s not, I toss the unusable/uninteresting stuff.

    For the full interview, visit Meg’s blog. A big thanks to Meg for the interview.

    Elsewhere: Meg White asks, ‘How do I approach pitching as a freelancer?’, April 2010.

     

  • Interviewed: ‘5 Minutes With’ for ITJourno.com.au, 2011

    After being named as a finalist for ‘Best New Journalist’ in the 2010 Microsoft IT Journalism Awards last week, I was interviewed about my (limited) experience as a tech journalist for ITjourno.com.au.

    The interview isn’t public – ITjourno is for IT journalists only, as you might have guessed – so I’ve republished the Q+A below, with permission.

    5 minutes with Andrew McMillen
    by Allie Coyne, Tuesday 29th March 2011

    Where do you work and what do you do?

    I am a Brisbane-based freelance journalist. The majority of my writing is for the arts and entertainment space, for publications like Rolling Stone, The Weekend Australian, The Courier-Mail, TheVine.com.au and Mess+Noise. Tech journalism is a relatively new field for me; since October 2010, I’ve written about the video game industry for IGN Australia.

    Why did you decide to become a tech journalist?

    In mid-October 2010, there were rumours floating around that a video game development company named Krome Studios had fired all of its staff at both the Brisbane and Melbourne offices. At the time, they employed around 200 staff and were the largest game development company in Australia, so it was kind of a big deal. Yet it appeared that in the aftermath, no media outlets were investigating whether these rumours were true; and if so, why did the company collapse? So since I couldn’t find the answers elsewhere, I pitched the story idea to the editors at IGN Australia. It was the first time we’d been in contact, and they were immediately supportive of the story. I reached out to several former employees of the company, who anonymously provided their thoughts on why Krome collapsed. After speaking with those contacts, I got in touch with Krome Studios’ CEO, Robert Walsh, who agreed to provide his first media interview on the subject.

    I worked all of the above into a 2,800 word feature story which gave a comprehensive overview of the situation surrounding Krome Studios’ demise. This was the first time I’d written anything related to the games industry. As mentioned earlier, it only came about because I was curious to know the facts, and because no-one else was reporting on it. It wasn’t so much a decision – “that’s it, time to become a tech journalist!” – as it was a natural instinct to investigate an interesting and mysterious business development. It just so happened that the business was a video game developer. This led to further stories with IGN.

    What are you most proud of?

    In tech journalism terms, I’m most proud of securing the Krome story within a couple of weeks. It was an international exclusive, and judging by the response and coverage my article received afterwards, a lot of people wanted to know what went wrong with Krome Studios. That story immediately set the bar quite high for my ensuing feature stories for IGN. Since then, I’ve looked at Australian video games education and Australian big-budget game development. While neither were Krome-scale scoops, I’m proud of all three. But the Krome story was my favourite, because I was going where no-one else had gone before.

    Outside of tech journalism, I’m proud of making the most of the five minutes I had to interview hip-hop artist Big Boi – best known as half of the American duo Outkast – backstage in Sydney last November, for TheVine.com.au. It was tough to get something new out of Boi, since he’d been doing interviews – while playing video games – all day, but I eventually broke through with a few well-chosen questions.

    What are some top tips you can give PR pros for working with you most effectively?

    Get to the point. Don’t waste my time, and I won’t waste yours. If you’re emailing or calling me, you should be reasonably sure that I’ll be interested in hearing what you have to say because you’re representing a client who works within an industry that I write about. If this is not the case, don’t email or call. Find someone else who specialises in that particular area. There’s a lot to be said for tailoring your pitches to the right audience, rather than carpet-bombing as many journalists as you can find.

    What did you want to be growing up/ what would you be if not a tech journalist?

    One of my first career aspirations was to write about video games for Hyper Magazine, which I loved dearly throughout my childhood and adolescence. As it turned out, my senior editor at IGN Australia is Cam Shea, who edited Hyper between 2005 and 2007. So in a way I’ve ticked that box, though I tend to write about the business side of games rather than the beautiful graphics and totally sweet gameplay. Which is fine by me.

    Secret hobbies/ talents?

    I’m a passable bassist and competent guitarist. (There’s some evidence on YouTube, but it’s all pretty old footage.) I’m also decent at both IRL soccer and FIFA 11.

    What inspires you?

    Curiosity is my biggest inspiration. I can’t think of anything worse than sitting around, passively reading and accepting information. I want to be out there asking questions and challenging assumptions. That is the role of a journalist.

    Top 5 albums of all time.

    Led Zeppelin – Houses of the Holy
    At The Drive-In – Relationship Of Command
    Minus The Bear – Highly Refined Pirates
    The Drones – Wait Long By The River And The Bodies Of Your Enemies Will Float By
    The Knife – Deep Cuts

    Top-anything lists are ridiculously tough to answer, especially for a music critic. So these are five albums that I love dearly, whose place in the top five feels justified at the time of writing. (Whether I’d still feel that way tomorrow is another question.)

    What magazines/ publications do you subscribe to?

    Rolling Stone is the only magazine I subscribe to. I read The Weekend Australian and The Courier-Mail‘s Saturday magazine, Qweekend, religiously. Pretty much everything else is consumed online.

    What is the most important lesson you’ve learned about journalism?

    You can’t substitute curiosity, nor fake it. Remove curiosity from any journalistic equation, and it all comes crumbling down. If you’re not genuinely curious and enthused about a particular interview subject, industry, or topic, it’s going to reflect in your writing – in the worst possible way.

    What would your epitaph say?

    “I’ll leave it there.” I tend to say this at the end of every interview. It seems apt.

  • Interviewed: Plus One Brisbane

    Sarah McVeigh of Brisbane music blog Plus One asked me some questions, mostly about music writing and my work habits. I answered them. Excerpts below.

    Is Brisbane as good a place as any to be a music writer?

    Without doubt. There are loads of great stories within the local scene waiting to be told, and there are always nationals and internationals visiting. Anyone who argues otherwise isn’t trying hard enough.

    You seem to be getting alot of work – what’s your work routine like? How much time is spent chained to the desk? How do you deal with all the distractions of being constantly online?

    I pitch at least ten story ideas to various publications each week. Those that are approved, I write. Those that are rejected, I shop elsewhere if appropriate; if not, I let them go. I use an application called RescueTime to track the time that I spend on the computer each week, and how my time is split between different kinds of software usage. (It’s free and it’s pretty ace, you should check it out.) Looking back through my personal history, I spend 40-45 hours per week in front of a computer. I split my time between working from my bedroom, and from an office with friends just outside of the Brisbane CBD.

    Distractions are tough. Really fucking tough. If I told you that I had the discipline to work all day without checking in on Facebook, Twitter, Google Reader, Mess+Noise, The Vine, ABC News and email, I’d be lying. But I am improving. Slowly.

    That’s the beauty and burden of working in and around the internet: it’s both my workplace and playground. It is a pleasure and a curse. But all things considered, I get by. I don’t miss deadlines. Those are the biggest motivator to quit screwing around and get to work: the reality that if you miss a deadline, you’re fucked. So the goal is to consistently create deadlines for myself (published articles, reviews, blog stories, Waycooljnr entries, etc) to ensure that I’m constantly on deadline. That’s the mentality I aim to inhabit.

    On a related note, the website that I use to plan my week is TeuxDeux. It’ll probably change your life, like it did mine.

    What (in your view) is the likelihood of you sustaining a career in music writing? Do you know many young writers who are managing to earn a wage?

    I don’t know many my age who are earning a wage, no. But my skills aren’t based entirely around around writing. I’m doing copywriting and digital strategy on the side. I just tend not to blog about these side gigs, though, because they’re less interesting. In time, though, all will be revealed. It’s all contributing to my path as a writer, in the end, so I’m grateful for every opportunity I receive.

    As to the first question, it’s a case of ‘we’ll see’. Ask me the same question at the end of the year. Right now, it’s fun and it’s profitable, so I see no reason to give it up.

    Full interview at Plus One Brisbane. Thanks Sarah.