Where do I begin to sum up my thoughts on my NME placement...

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Before my placement, I didn't entirely believe that I had the ability to write to a professional standard, even though I had been writing music reviews for a number of months prior to heading down to London. Now, I feel as though writing professionally is something that is within touching distance as a potential employment path for the future.

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From day one in the offices of the extremely big, looming, intimidating Blue Fin Building in central London, I was made to feel welcome from every writer on the team. This helped ease any nerves I had when first coming to start the placement and as I worked alongside another student named Julia who was also on placement for the course of the week, I think that overall, we both progressed in leaps and bounds as writers from the placement.

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I wasn't entirely sure how much written work I would have the opportunity to work on during my placement seeing as NME is such a renowned name in the UK and to be honest, I wouldn't have been surprised if I was purely drafted in for work experience in making teas and coffees for the writers! However, this pre-conception could not be further from the truth. In fact, on the first day of my placement I pitched a few ideas for potential articles to senior staff writer, Dan Stubbs, of which I thought might be appealing to audiences. As seen in both the images to the right of this text (click on the pictures for a look at each review), I managed to have two of my very own articles published under NME which now makes me a published writer... I definitely still haven't got over it yet. 

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Aside from the fact that I successfully achieved published written content from my placement, one of the best parts of my time down in London was witnessing people's reactions to my articles over social media, particularly the Glasgow bands which I highlighted in my 'Never Mind the Buckfast' article (reactions below this text). For me, I feel as though my work did more than just bringing attention to a thriving punk scene in Glasgow at the moment, it brought joy, happiness and optimism for the future ahead to so many people involved in and around the Glasgow scene and perhaps allowed artists an extra little push to keep working on what they love and to pursue their wildest dreams and ambitions. In addition, my Dundee piece was also picked up in the local newspaper, The Evening Telegraph, which was also great to see and hopefully helped to further fuel the positivity and optimism with the regeneration projects running through the city at the moment.

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On the last day of my placement, I was personally thanked and congratulated from every single writer on the team for my work throughout the week and was also informed that the Glasgow punk piece that I had written was one of NME's top performing and most read articles of the week. To see such kindness from the staff and to also see my work performing extremely well gave me a huge boost in confidence in my writing abilities and as previously mentioned, I can realistically see music journalism as a potential career goal after the success of my placement with NME.

 

Finally, with a recent new job as Dundee Venues Editor with Edinburgh based cultural magazine The Skinny now tied down and the offer of returning to London for another placement with NME on the table, I think it's fair to say I certainly haven't got off to a bad start in music journalism. I hope that many more exciting writing opportunities lie ahead in the near future and I'm optimistic of where my music journalism path can take me.