Gunillocentrism – web diary of a freelance journalist

I’ve been pretty grumpy and down for two weeks, but when a very strange bug in my computer’s e-mail client (Eudora) was fixed today by a skilled computer guy, I immediately turned into a happy and energetic person.
All of a sudden, I can send e-mails again – have hardly been able to do so for a month (including the weeks onboard M/Y Arctic Sunrise in Greenland)! This means I can communicate with editors in a normal fashion - work, and so perhaps in the end make some money.
For weeks, I thought I had screwed Eudora or my Swedish ISP Telia up somehow (by writing wrong codes, wrong SMTP server names, by not paying the bill etc) but it turned out there was actually a weird bug in Eudora. It really took a skilled and stubborn programmer to track the problem down. (And how did I track the skilled programmer down? Through an understanding friend, of course. Thanks, Michel.)
So, I’m happy today, and I was even happier when I discovered that there is a wireless connection at this nice place: Tvillingarnas båtuthyrning & sjökrog Nothing is greater than having a sea-side restaurant as an office, especially when the sun is shining and there are lots of boats to watch – and a working, online computer to match that!

/Gunilla

Now I have _finally_ managed to book a ticket to New York.

It has taken me countless hours on the Internet the last week, trying to find deasently priced tickets and convenient itineraries. To no avail, unfortunately… Cheap tickets do exist, but only for people who travel for up to one month or three months or so, I discovered. Or after, for example, September 15 or so.
Also, several bookings were interrupted by the system when I was almost done, and when I had to start again the price had gone up – sometimes considerably.
Only today, I had to call no less than four different customer services (Scandinavian Airlines, MrJet, Kilroy Travel, United Airlines) to sort things out (and none of these calls had anything to do with the ticket that I finally bought)!

Well, after having been online for over four hours today (and it’s _great_ sunshine in Stockholm outside, so my original plan was to do a car excursion to Knutby the entire day!) I was desperate enough to book pretty much anything, and finally ended up paying over SEK 7 000. That’s a lot more than I usually pay for tickets…and I guess I will end up paying more, once I realize the return ticket on June 29 is a completely ridiculous and random date and have to change it.

So, I will come to New York on September 8, at 13.10! (No stopover in London on Sunday, as I might have promised somebody previously.)

/Gunilla

Yeah, the entire region of Kalmar (Kalmar län) will soon become wireless! This is totally new in Sweden. I hope it will get followers. Luckily, the summer house of the Kinn family is located in this region (Djupvik, Öland). Check this out:
Sveriges Radio P1 - Vetenskapsradion Tekno
Very, very good, I am pretty tired of modems and look forward to be able to work on beaches and on our porch and in Borgholm…and on the road when travelling back and forth to Öland!

/Gunilla

Just som jag kände mig som allra mest alienerad och deprimerad och låg och håglös och allt vad det heter idag ringde min vän Henrik och bjöd mig på Lux-lunch på Lilla Essingen imorgon! Som tack för alla middagar han blivit bjuden på hos mig genom tiderna, i Stockholm och New York. Och för att han behöver material till sitt nya värv som Gourmet-krönikör.
En sådan begåvad pojke, precis vad jag hade hoppats skulle hända. Inte för att det hjälpte mot dagens håglöshet, men imorgon kommer en lyxig lunch garanterat att göra mig på bra humör!
Restaurang Lux i Stockholm

/Gunilla

Finally, I made it into the Stockholm archipelago. Only for a couple of hours, but anyway. My friends Elisabet&Tomas convinced me to come out and visit them, and watch their newly purchased vintage-70’s-cottage-with-sea-view on Ornö (close to Dalarö).
And despite of sleeping in, missing the train after having biked like a madwoman to the station, and having to spend quite some time at Handen’s bus terminal, I finally made it there – and managed to see some open sea, boats, and cute houses; get some nice smell of a Swedish forest, and even picking blueberries, lingonberries, and a mushroom before we all returned to the city.

/Gunilla

I have written two lengthy travelogues on my trip in Greenland – in Swedish (here and here).

I would happily write a summary in English as well – but only on public demand!
So, please tell me if you would like to read more about the trip than what I wrote below (August 17).

Or, wait for my pictorial travelogue, to be published on www.kinn.se at some point (just like I have written on my trips in Haiti and Pennsylvania before).

/Gunilla

Tro det eller ej, men jag har _äntligen_ lyckats få igång min jävla mobiltelefon. För första gången på typ hela sommaren. Lagom tills jag snart ska åka tillbaka till New York…

Så nu kan ni ringa på 0708 10 33 08! Jag har ännu inte vant mig vid själva telefonen (som jag lånat) så det är osäkert om jag klarar att svara, men gör ett försök.

(Och ring då först på 08 10 33 03, för jag är nästan alltid hemma…)

Dessutom låter Telia meddela att jag ska kunna skicka e-post som vanligt genom Eudora, med hjälp av ett nytt lösenord som jag ska få med posten imorgon. Det låter ju som om det vore för bra för att vara sant att en del av allt technostrul ska börja lösa sig sentomsider, men kanske!

Nu återstår kanske snart bara att få liv i den stendöda TV:n och den likstela CD-spelaren på stereon.

Och sedan, antar jag, börjar allting om igen i New York, d v s när jag ska programmera om alla användarnamn och lösenord och SMTP-servernummer och TCP/IP-adresser till min amerikanska Internetleverantör. Men där är jag inte ännu.

/Gunilla

….and this is probably true for all of my fellow freelance journalists, too.

Here’s the cliché:
“Unfortunately, we do not have a very large freelance budget.”

So far, this phrase – only with slight variations – has been uttered by at least 4 out of 5 of all the hundreds of news paper, magazine, and radio show editors and producers that I have ever been in touch with during my ten years of freelancing.
That fifth person does not have to say it, because the status of their freelance budget is obviously clear anyway.

The first time I hear “We are so happy to work with freelancers and acknowledge that it’s best if they get paid well, so we actually have secured a quite large freelance budget – and we happily pay their expenses, too.” I will probably already have died and find myself in paradise.

/Gunilla

Time for another reality check! (The last one is to be found here: Gunillocentrism – web diary of a freelance journalist :: April :: 2005)

This is what I’m up to right now:
• planning meetings with editors (new magazines are starting up in Sweden soon, very exciting!)
• organizing new story ideas
• hanging out with friends
• hanging out with myself (in my beautiful garden, for example right now when I am having a breakfast with vanilla yoghurt and whisky- and cinnamon-lingonberry jam and ice coffee!)
• messing with technology, or rather it’s messing with me (my e-mail client Eudora is giving me a very hard time, and also my mobile phone is on strike, the TV set no longer works, and so on) – this is by far the most time-consuming and frustrating activity!
• dish-washing (the second-most time-consuming thing…)

Things I should start doing immdiately, and that I’m at least thinking about:
• finishing articles with an immediate deadline (for example, one on restaurants in Greenland for Gourmet, and one on UN opinions in the USA for FN-förbundet)
• pitching story ideas from Greenland
• organizing my pictures and sound files
• writing a paper on Human Security for the course that I took earlier this summer
• registering at Stockholm University, fetching my passport (the old one expires today) and ten thousand other practical things
• cleaning up a lot and organzing things in my apartment

Also, I’m spending lots of time postponing (and not even thinking about):
• organizing my accounting, including sorting all my receipts
• research for my book on Harlem

/Gunilla

Yesterday, a friend of mine who is an excellent news photographer told me interesting things about the mechanisms of newsrooms. This summer, he has been working as a picture editor at the photo desk of one of Sweden’s largest news papers (I will have to ask him if it’s OK that I write which one) and so provided some inside-info.

He said that many of the young news reporters who are employed on that big and prestigious news paper short term only are very keen on getting many bylines – so that the editors-in-charge will take notice of their writing, and so perhaps employ them “for real”.

(Background: In Sweden, many reporters and other journalists are employed short term, up to 12 months, only – because media employers are afraid they will end up being stuck with too much staff if they have to employ people. Strange interpretation of strange labor laws. It’s not difficult to find very good and experienced news reporters, even in the age of 40 or more, who constantly get short-term contracts with all the best news rooms. They usually are dying to get employed! Either they do eventually, or they give up and leave news journalism all together, sometimes for PR and infotainment jobs – which typically pay much better, and offer fixed employment and decent work hours.)

So, because of the stress to produce numerous bylines, some of these news reporters don’t take their time to pursue good journalism. Instead of going out into the field and do the footwork required, i e meet and talk to people in their ambiances, they do all the research and interviews via telephone.
This means
a) they have time to produce lots of articles.
b) they don’t meet the people they write about; they don’t get confidence from their interviewees, which means people are probably less likely to want to appear with their pictures in the papers; they don’t get the ambiance; they don’t get to see what’s actually going on out there and if their news story angle seems to be relevant; they don’t get the 15 story ideas /including actual news/ that you usually get when you are out there interacting with people….and so on.

I wonder if this strategy is back-firing or not, i e if bosses/editors-in-charge really are just looking for quantity, or if they manage to spot quality as well?
Also, I wonder if the culture in the news room encourages the reporters to go out into the field, if they do – after all – wish to do so, and so “own the story” or not.

Well, freelancing certainly is a way of getting out into the field as much as one wants…

/Gunilla