Day three at NME (poet and I didn't know it)

Today was so busy compared to the rest of the week. We started, as usual with the mail, now...we were told that we would be getting more and more mail as the week went on. However, as the week has gone on so far it's become increasingly less, which I'm fine with but I thought as the new issue went out today there would be more mail today, guess I was wrong.
   After we had finished the mail we finished transcribing the interviews, Tom Howard came up to us in the morning asking us how we were doing and how we were finding it all, which was really nice. When the editors give you a task, they really are considerate towards you and understand that it's difficult. We said to Tom that we'd try and have them done by lunch time, however the interview was longer than I though, it ended up being around 40 minutes in length. If you've never transcribed an interview before, let me tell you...it's difficult. You have to listen to things several times before you really come to grips with what they're saying. We tried to get them finished by lunch time however we ran over by an hour and didn't get them finished until two. I had literally just finished my transcription when Jenny Stevens, the deputy news editor approached us, asking if we could transcribe an interview for her. I explained that I would love to do it as I really enjoy doing it, but I would have to start after lunch. She was really surprised that we had left lunch so late to finish some work. I guess she was impressed because she ushered us off to lunch. When I came back she gave me the Dictaphone she had, it wasn't hers it was Dan Stubbs' the news editor. She asked me too look through the files until I could find her interview, I thought this would be a pretty simple task however it deemed near-on impossible to find her interview, in the end I had to take it back to her and Dan seemed to find it so fast. I was so embarrassed, it made me look like such a fool and technophobe but I guess they didn't mind because it's not my fault I'd never seen a Dictaphone in real life before. I only got a third of the way through the interview before it was time to go home. I felt bad but I knew I'd be in the office all night if I'd carried on. I said to Jenny that I didn't mind going home and transcribing the rest for her, she said that it was okay. I guess she was working to a deadline because I got an email from her a couple of hours later saying that her deadline had been extended and could finish it tomorrow morning if I wanted to, of course I obliged. I felt that I couldn't leave it half done. So I guess that's what my job for tomorrow will be, I'm also hoping to do my single review tomorrow as well. I'll probably do the Disclosure track and the Swim Deep track. Karen gave us a list to choose from today, I thought these two would be okay because I'm a fan of both the bands. I haven't really written any bad reviews yet, so I didn't want NME to see my first bad review. The editors will be going through them with us on Friday, I think.

My second day of NME looked like this...

When I arrived at Blue Fin this morning, I was feeling a lot more confident about myself and I felt more confident walking in to the building. I was welcomed by security as if I've been working there for a good while. Using my id badge I gained access to the building straight away with ease, when we reached the ninth floor and got to the office we started on the mail straight away while all of the other editors went to a meeting. The new issue was sent to press today so everything was pretty quiet in the office for the rest of the day, the morning was very relaxed. After around 15 minutes, and we had finished the mail (there was only one sack today), Karen gave us two copies of the new issue - I personally felt really honored that we even got to see the new issue - one of the issues was free for us to keep and the other we had to look through and answer some questions about, really easy stuff like 'What do you think of the magazine?' and 'What three parts do you read every time you have NME' and my personal favourite 'What artists would you like to see more of in the NME?' I wrote quite a few "unknown" artists here. Then we were asked to go through the issue and put post it notes on the parts of the magazine we particularly like and dislike. This way, NME can take feedback from that to try and make the magazine even better than it already is.
   As an avid reader, it didn't take long for me to answer the questions and post-it the parts of the magazine I liked and disliked, I also wrote why I liked them or disliked them because that way I think the reason becomes more understandable. After this I finished typing up the old Joy Division/New Order reviews, half way through this Hamish (one of the features editors) came up to us and asked us how it was going, which I thought was really nice, considering hardly anyone in the office has made an effort to talk to us. We all understand though, they're busy and if they need our help they'll come and ask for it. Upon finishing this, we sent them across to Hamish and went to lunch. When we came back there was literally nothing for us to do, so we sat and read the new NME issue and discussed a lot about the Libertines because that's what this weeks main feature is on. It wasn't until around three o'clockish that Tom Howard himself came up to us and asked us to transcribe some interviews for him. As a budding journalist myself, I find Tom Howard to be a really great music reviewer and would love to be able to sit down with him and pick his brain about what makes a great music review, however, again I understand that he is busy all week so the likelihood I'll be able to do that is very small. Anyway, we each started transcribing the interviews we'd been given. I've been given one with Tom Howard and Rob Harvey, before the interview I knew nothing of Rob Harvey. However I now know that he's involved in a new project called The D.O.T with Mike Skinner and he also featured on The Streets' last album doing some vocals. It's really interesting to listen to the interview rather than just read it. Transcribing, however,  is a lot harder than I could ever imagine. People honestly talk so fast!! Anyway, tomorrow all I know is that I'll be spending all morning transcribing these interviews. I'm really happy with how it's going so far, the only thing I'm a bit disappointed about is the sitting around, not doing anything. I feel like I'm wasting space a little bit, but I wouldn't want to go up to the editors and ask them if there was anything I could do because I know they're busy and if they need us to do anything then they'll come to us. I didn't mind too much today though because it meant I could prepare my questions for my email interview with Swim Deep.

Sorry, I've been super busy lately, which is why I haven't been posting at all.

Today, I'm going to tell you about my work experience at NME. I'm not doing it to brag because that's not what I'm about at all, I'm doing it for everyone out there that has this coming up and wants to know what happens, because I know that before I started I wanted to know exactly what I'd be doing, what it looked like, everything.
   So before I turned up at blue fin building - which, by the way is super beautiful and modern and huge - I was super nervous, I was wearing a skirt a blouse and blazer, thinking everyone would be in office uniform. That was one of the biggest mistakes I made, everyone in the NME office was pretty much wearing casual. A mistake I will not make again tomorrow! When I met Karen (the editor's PA) I was pleasantly surprised, she's absolutely lovely, really helpful and friendly and very approachable. She gave us a tour of the office and gave us some handy information about the company, IPC media and how it's gone global.
   From here, she showed us to our desks, (I should explain that there are three of us doing work experience, one of the girls this is her fourth time, and then me and another girl it's our first time) gave us a run down of what we'd be doing throughout the week and throughout the day. It took a lot longer than we thought to go through all of the health and safety, but after that we got through the mail. What I mean by sorting the mail is that there are sacks and sacks of mail to go to all of the editors in the office and you have to sort the mail for each editor and personally go and give it to them. We got through this a lot quicker than Karen thought we would, so after doing that we cleared our desk. Then went for lunch.
   After we came back from lunch we honestly didn't know what to do, we weren't approached by Karen or any of the editors to give us jobs so we sat around for a bit and familiarized ourselves with the office a bit more. After this we went to speak to Karen about what to do next (we felt a bit weird talking to her all the time and asking her for jobs) she told us to speak to Dan Stubbs, the news features editor and see if he had anything for us. He asked us to go and look for some news articles that weren't featured on NME. We had no more le-way than that. So I found out that Foals are doing a UK tour, I noticed that NME hadn't featured that yet so I emailed Dan and he then featured it and thanked me for reminding him. While I was looking for other news stories another editor came up to us and asked us to re-type these Joy Division album reviews from the 1980's, it was so strange to read because I was thinking how these were written before Ian Curtis had died and it was really fascinating to read and re-type. This took up the rest of our day and before we knew it, it was time to go home.
    I am really looking forward to tomorrow!