Interview with Jimmy Rice (www.liverpoolfc.tv)

As some of you are aware, I have decided to run an interview section on this blog. This section will feature interviews with real working journalists, allowing us to learn about their careers and how they got in to it.

This new section’s first interview is with Jimmy Rice (News Editor of Liverpool Football Club’s official website). This is what he had to say.

What made you want to become a journalist? 

I didn’t know what I wanted to do when I finished uni – all I knew was that I wasn’t ready for a proper job. A Masters in Print Journalism seemed like a fun means to an end.

Did you do a specific course in journalism? If so, which course and at which university?

I did a law degree at Sheffield Uni before staying on for the Masters in 2003.

What was your first job in journalism?

It was a real struggle for everyone on the course to get jobs initially. I was one of the first, but I was earning only £12,000 at a weekly paper in West Yorkshire called The Spenborough Guardian. Somewhere like that is a great place to learn how to do the job properly – you’ve got a patch and you need to make contacts/friends and your colleagues have more time to help you. I learned more in my first month there than during an entire year of journalism lectures.

After a couple of years I moved to the Sheffield Star – bigger stories but less interaction with people and far more pressure. Six months later I applied for a job at Liverpoolfc.tv and got it. Pretty much all of my mates on the course ended up with decent jobs. One is now at the Daily Mail, another at The Independent, and one’s a celebrity reporter for Splash in LA.

University lecturers are increasingly stressing the importance of thinking of oneself as an ‘all-round’ journalist (i.e. not merely a ‘print’ journalist or a ‘broadcast’ journalist). How important do you think this is?

It’s important because there aren’t many jobs around, so you need to keep your options open. While I still do a lot of writing, working for a website has required me to do on-camera interviews, take and cut photos and get to grips with a content management system. I wasn’t trained for any of this. 

On the other hand I virtually never use shorthand anymore. A friend of mine did a print course with the NCTJ last year and has just started a job as a digital journalist for PA (she got the job after impressing during work experience). Very little writing involved. So you need to be adaptable.

As a football journalist, you are living the dream that many aspire towards. Could you describe what a typical day in your life is like?

There isn’t a typical day. As news editor I have to do interviews, write news stories or features, sub work done by our four other journos (though quite often they just put it on the site themselves), report on matches, check through the newspapers for any Liverpool news, cut photos, travel around with the club, promote our stories and interact with the fans on Facebook and Twitter, send SMS updates to supporters, publish videos produced by our video editors, report on press conferences and loads of other things that I can’t think of right now.

What would you describe as your finest moment as a working journalist?

I was proud to win Yorkshire Feature Writer of the Year – mainly because the girl I was up against from the Wakefield Express was a vile and suspiciously bony creature. After that, interviewing people like Thierry Henry, Kenny Dalglish, Steven Gerrard, Ed Miliband, John Prescott and snooker player Paul Hunter about his cancer.

I did a bit of the Prince Naseem trial as well, totally missing the angle so that my piece got (rightly) butchered by the subs at the Star. And chatting for a former Prisoner of War for two days while at the Spenborough Guardian was amazing. You’d never get to do that at a daily.

If you could provide one tip for aspiring journalists, what would it be?

Read your stuff thoroughly before it’s published. Then read it again two more times. Then after it’s published read it again. Often you’ll cringe – either at an error of your own or one inserted by subs – but you’ll always learn something. And keep your front pages in a pile under your bed – you’ll enjoy looking back on them. And be enthusiastic in job interviews. And never make the point of your writing to prove how clever you are. Nobody cares – make it easy to read.

The rise of social media, with particular regards to twitter, has had a massive impact on journalism. You yourself are a fairly active ‘tweeter’. How important is social media and what are the best ways to harness its power? 

Twitter is now the place to go for breaking news. From my point of view, all the top Liverpool FC journalists and football journalists are on there and that’s where information is released first. Even if an exclusive is held back for the actual newspaper, someone will put it on Twitter within seconds and people can see it wherever they are via their phones. It’s yet another challenge for newspapers but if used correctly it can drive huge amounts of traffic to their websites.

It’s also a source of stories. For instance, a week or two ago we learnt about former Liverpool player Miki Roque’s cancer through Twitter and a message posted by his mate Xabi Alonso. Something I’m finding interesting is the number of footballers who are signing up. Even 17-year-old Academy players are getting decent followings – re-establishing a link with fans that might have been lost. This is massively important in the days when supporters could become disallusioned with the sport because of the fame and money associated with it. For reporters this can mean you don’t have to wait at a community event (that you’ve got no intention of reporting on) for two hours just to get contact with a famous player – they are now there, tweeting every day, every update a potential story.

Finally… Torres or Suarez?

Suarez has started brilliantly and if he carries on he’ll give us as many good memories as Fernando did. When all the activity took place in January there was a debate in the office as to whether you’d have an in-form Torres over Suarez and Carroll. I don’t think it’s much of a debate now. 

 

Thank you for your time Jimmy!

 

Jimmy Rice writes for www.liverpoolfc.tv. Follow him on twitter at www.twitter.com/jimmyricewriter