For this paper I decided to interview Jim DeRogatis. The most important thing I learned from Mr. DeRogatis is that I don’t want to do what I majored in journalism to do.
I chose Jim DeRogatis because his name was listed on the blog as a music journalist and because my advisor, Paula Brien, had talked highly of him as a music journalist when I met with her a few weeks back. I found his email on the Columbia College website and emailed him with an explanation of the project and asking if he would be willing to meet up with me to do the interview.
I didn’t exactly have a clear idea about what I wanted to talk to Jim about, but I knew that I wanted advice on how to break into the field of music journalism. I read an article posted to the Columbia website about Jim and also searched him on Google and read the biography on his radio show’s website. This background information made me a little bit more comfortable with the idea of asking Jim questions about his profession. I planned to ask him how he got started in the profession, how he managed to make it big, how he knew what to write about, etc.
Mr. DeRogatis and I had a little trouble setting a date for the interview at first and finally settled on a phone interview, because we were both short on time. On Tuesday, December 7, I called Jim for the interview with an understanding that it had to be short and sweet. This made me very nervous. However, Jim seemed to be very nice and this did help to ease my mind. The interview lasted about fifteen minutes and was very rushed, but I did learn some very valuable things.
I started by asking him the basic questions: how he knew this is what he wanted to do, how he got to where he was, what made it worthwhile? Jim provided me with a quick run-through of his job history and told me what he loves about it. “It’s the greatest job in the world. I can’t think of any better reason for living than great music. Food is okay, being in love is great, but music is the most rewarding thing in the universe,” said Jim in response to these questions. Following this, I asked Jim some more specifics of his job: how does he know which music to write about? “It has to make me feel strongly in one way or another,” he said. Is it hard to talk to publicists? “Some of them think it’s their job to keep you away. But, it’s not all about chasing the Kanyes of the world,” said Jim.
Basically, Jim couldn’t stop raving about how much he loved what he did and how rewarding it was to write about something that you feel so passionately about. And that’s when what I learned hit me. I’m just not cut out to write about music. In a way, I felt ashamed talking to this journalist, because I knew that I didn’t even begin to feel as strongly about this career path as he did.
Through the process of getting this interview and conducting it, I definitely learned a lot about where I want to go with my career and how to get there. I learned some smaller things like don’t procrastinate, don’t give up on contacting someone, have questions prepared, phone interviews consist of a lot of awkward silence, etc. But more importantly, I learned that I don’t want to write about music at all. I’m not made for it. Jim DeRogatis helped me realize that I need to find something that I’m beyond crazy about to write about well. I was surprised that this is what I came out of the interview with. I was planning on coming out of the interview with a direction to start traveling on my way to being the next big music journalist. Instead, I left with the certainty of not wanting to write about music at all and the openness to look at other paths to start traveling down. And honestly, I couldn’t be happier with my result.
No comments:
Post a Comment