Although the visual outcome is meant to be seen as entertainment by one kind of target audience, I'm also interested in reaching the practitioners. This is something that needs to actually implemented. In other words, Hire me!
A profile of A Practitioner-type
Kiernan and Elke live in different mid-size, Midwest, metropolitan cities. They are both in their 20s. They both have cars — old ones they’ve pushed beyond the 150,000-mile mark. They both buy their vegetables at their local farmers markets. They both eat Kashi cereal with organic skim milk for breakfast. And they both have cool names.
They are also both music editors at alt-weekly publications. Neither thought they would reach their dream of editing a music section before 30. Until six months ago, they had mastered living on 1000 dollars a month. Now, though, they have a freelance budget, and the health benefits seem to satisfy their parents.
They don’t make a big deal out of it, but Kiernan and Elke work their asses off. They stay at their offices past 10, and by 3 a.m. on Monday morning, they have their 50 blog posts written, edited and scheduled for publishing throughout the upcoming week. They try to plan and control what content they can, so they can plan and write and assign some more.
They gave up their Nokias for iPhones when they moved into their big-kid jobs and their very own, unshared, one-bedroom big-kid apartments. When they aren’t doing work things, they are doing work things. After syncing his e-mail and phone, Kiernan figured out that he works 10 extra hours each week. Elke files late-night texts from drunk musicians for future story ideas. They both dream about pitch meetings.
Sometimes they work through the night — at coffee tables (the desks aren’t big enough and kitchen tables are something to which they aspire)— only interrupting their routine of assigning memos and pitches for periodic sips of Boulevard or Schlafly wheat beer and to make a late-night breakfast sandwich. The sun will rise and they’ll realize it’s too late to go to bed, so they’ll cycle into work because they think better on their bikes, and when they arrive at their window-facing cubicles, it won’t matter that they didn’t get much sleep. They’ll have their Americanos and the pride of knowing that the days of being an intern are behind them. Now they have their own, unpaid fledglings to gently boss around.
Although they are in different cities, and their respective, respectable alt-weeklies, they are both searching for a new way to write about music. They were hired over the dudes with ten or fifteen years experience because so many of the other editors already love print. And although the bossman says he likes blogging, well, everyone knows what he’s daydreaming about when they see the hordes of past issues, stacked up high on top of the filing cabinet in his office. He wants a paper-paper, but he’s not getting one. Kiernan and Elke love print too. It’s how they came to love music. But the magazines they used to read and the record stores they once visited have turned into Pitchfork and iTunes.
Kiernan and Elke know they could get more readers if they changed a few things online, and they’ve begged the art-director for a print-edition redesign. Their colleagues acknowledge the rampant problems — fluffy Q&As and the cockroach-like resilience of the current show preview. But it’s as risky to maintain the same format as it is to make a change. Kiernan and Elke have good ideas. They have big ideas, but follow-through is daunting when the company they work for won’t even shovel out the cash for an office copy of Microsoft Word.
Neither of them smoke, but they hang out with friends on the back decks of gigs because that’s where the brain-picking happens. They all suffer from mild internet addictions. They’re all gradually landing on their feet. Sheppa’s a graphic designer for VML, but he also just made a fucking beautiful music video for Margo for free. Next August Sheresa’s going to teach high school orchestra, but this summer, she’s photographing weddings.
When Elke asks her friends why they’ve come to these shows, they say they’re not just there to see who’s playing. They’re there to see who’s listening. No one does just one thing. No one wants it just one way. They want an experience. That’s what Kiernan and Elke want too. Instead of paying for freelancers, Kiernan spent his weekly budget on a camera with video. Elke’s been recording with her iPhone.
Kiernan and Elke both know about music. They, like, really know it. But they also know that knowing isn’t enough.
Yeah, because they write for city papers, they have to think local. But they want to cover music in a way that connects someone in New York and someone else in their mid-size, Midwest, metropolitan cities. They have a lot of big ideas. They have a lot of work to do. Mostly, they want to make something their friends will read, not out of friendship obligations, but because it’s good and get-able.
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