Here is the first Great Editor profile for this blog. At this stage these profiles will be purely filtered from articles, interviews and any other information I can find within a few hours of reading everything I can about that person on the web. Eventually I hope to include my own interviews to discover and learn as much as possible from these people as possible, and also to share it with everyone.
Krissi Murison is inspiring to me because she is young, self-made, driven, passionate about music, fearlessly opinionated and really good at what she does. So far she seems to be doing a decent job in the top role at NME having been there for half a year now, and the cover stars (this is an all important gauge for NME cynics) seem to be steering away from the genre bias which makes people wince when the words lad, rock and NME are used within the same sentence. I’ll be doing magazine profiles here so more about NME later, meanwhile here’s a brief profile on Murison.
Krissi Murison Biography
Career timeline:
Grew up in Yately, Hampshire
Went to Abbey School in Reading
Work experience with a local music magazine in Reading at 14 years
Studied English at Bristol University
Worked part time scouting new talent for Island Records
Deputy Music Editor of Epigram (Bristol University’s student newspaper) in second year of uni
Music Editor of Epigram in her third year of uni
Began writing for NME during her third year of uni
Joined NME as a junior writer/intern in 2003 age 21
Worked hard, became NME’s New Music Editor
Won the UK’s Breaking Music Writer award in 2005
Became NME’s Features Editor
Became NME’s Deputy Editor
Became Nylon’s Music Director in New York in February 2009
Became 11th editor of NME July 29 2009, succeeding Conor McNicholas who went to edit Top Gear Magazine
First issue as editor was the third week of September
Inspiring quotes from news sites and blogs:
From an interview with Adeline Iziren for the Work & Careers section of Guardian.co.uk.
“I used to send pieces to people here and they didn’t reply, so I thought the pieces must be dreadful,” explains Murison, who nevertheless joined the magazine as a junior staff writer before being promoted to her current role.
Her advice, then, to anyone who would like to follow in her footsteps is: “Don’t give up.”
“If you want to write for a particular publication,” she adds, “read and study it closely, then learn to write in its style.”
Full article here.
From a great interview with Laura Snapes from http://kunstlicher.wordpress.com/. Laura is following Krissi’s footsteps as the current music editor at Epigram and an NME contributor.
“I’m pleased to report that in the six months I’ve been away there are already loads of really sharp new writers coming through [in NME]. I want to make sure they have the room to be as brilliant and opinionated as possible. There needs to be much more debate and outrageousness.”
“Being able to string a sentence together is a good start (it would scare you how many published writers I’ve come across who still struggle with this). At NME, most new writers come through writing about new bands in their area, so a good knowledge of (and enthusiasm about) your local scene is always really useful. Also pitch as many ideas as you can. If you want to really stand out though, you need to have a fresh voice and perspective – avoid clichés to try and find something new and interesting in your subject that hasn’t been written about before.”
The main pitfalls of student music journalism: “Thinking big words will mask the fact that you have nothing new or interesting to say. If it’s hard work writing it, imagine how hard it is going to be reading it.”
Full article here.
From an interview with Gemma Cairney at www.phamous69.com.
How did you get to where you are now? Was it hard?
“I did work experience and refused to ever leave.“
Full article here.
From an interview with Ruby Warrington for the Relationships section within the Women’s Life & Style section of Times Online (interestingly placed by Times Online… there was a lot of media attention when Murison was announced as the first femal editor in NME’s 57-year history).
“When I first did work experience at NME, there was a woman on staff who actually said: ‘Don’t ever think you’ll get anywhere in this business.’ I just thought: ‘With that attitude, you will never get anywhere.’ I went into the industry not expecting to be discriminated against, and I have never encountered it.”
“Because my husband was still in New York when I came back, I moved in with a friend, who was also my old editor at the NME. I was living out of a bag while trying to get to grips with my new job, and I think I might have had a breakdown had I not been able to come home and chat through scenarios at work that he, of course, understood totally. He also taught me to pick my battles. To work out what’s really important. If you fight every single thing, you never really win.“
Full article here.
From an interview with Stephanie Marsh for the Arts & Entertainment section of Times Online.
The magazine needs to be “unpredictable and outrageous,” and she wants to run interviews where readers might think to themselves, “I can’t believe that somebody actually had the balls to ask them that!”
Full article here.