God that Naomi volte-face makes me laugh. I have a friend who interviewed her and she sounds pure theatre. Unapologetically so. Before you castigate yourself too much, I think the getting-mugged-en-route-to-an-interview debacle is a journalistic rite of passage. I had the exact same thing happen in Islington, when my phone was stolen with not one, not two, but THREE profile interviews on it. I had to re-do every single one. They were so gracious, particularly Bella Freud. I’ve also had the exact same thing happen when Brene Brown’s publicist asked me to interview her for The Sunday Times but only if they could review it afterwards, bc she’d recently had a poor review in the same paper. That’s not journalism... that’s a press release. (I declined.) I love this newsletter Eleanor, thank you for it!
Talking of PRs and the stories they could tell, have you read Barbara Charone's memoir? She's got lots of great anecdotes.
God that Naomi volte-face makes me laugh. I have a friend who interviewed her and she sounds pure theatre. Unapologetically so. Before you castigate yourself too much, I think the getting-mugged-en-route-to-an-interview debacle is a journalistic rite of passage. I had the exact same thing happen in Islington, when my phone was stolen with not one, not two, but THREE profile interviews on it. I had to re-do every single one. They were so gracious, particularly Bella Freud. I’ve also had the exact same thing happen when Brene Brown’s publicist asked me to interview her for The Sunday Times but only if they could review it afterwards, bc she’d recently had a poor review in the same paper. That’s not journalism... that’s a press release. (I declined.) I love this newsletter Eleanor, thank you for it!