Communications, Comic Capital, Champagne and IC

Back to Gareth's house on Wednesday so that we could walk a few blocks to a communications center called Mostra. Incidentally, this is the company Gareth works with when he creates EU promotional films. He's filmed all over Europe and even in parts of Africa working with Mostra.

We met his producer Elena Lincznyiova. Don't ask me how to pronounce that; I have no idea. She is a lovely Hungarian woman who essentially oversees all the productions that Mostra puts out. At any one time, there are 90 of these in operation. We got to see two films that Gareth worked on as well as one that a different journalist did completely on his own in Afghanistan. All three were pretty incredible. They were promotional material, certainly, but not propaganda, which I liked.

Next we toured the very mod offices--the editing pods, the press relations team, the translators, etc. It was fascinating and another thing that draws me to communications rather than journalism. Both Gareth and Elena stated that without journalism they would not be able to do what they do for Mostra (having both been journalists past or present). I would disagree with that. I understand the interview part and the 'digging deeper for the truth' elements might seem journalistic, but I would wager those are pretty universal for any media company that's trying to portray a message or look for a story. Having worked on film projects myself, there's very little that is strictly journalism evident in those films. I'll let them believe what they want, though.

I really enjoyed Wednesday's class, however. After so much disillusionment about journalism (which I'd heard but never actually observed or experienced), I'm seeing it is less and less the field I need to be in. I can pitch a story; I can research a story; I can conduct interviews; I can write a story. I hate informal interviews and I hate the deadlines. One week is not enough time to write a well-developed story. Journalism isn't about details. It's about cramming as much information as you can into a single line of text. It's about listing facts rather than explaining them. It's about minimizing inches and word size so that your reader might still be interested by the end.

I'm too stuck in academia to enjoy any part of that. I'm good at it. I won't deny it. I wrote one hell of a good article in my opinion. But the story it told was shit. I needed about 3 more pages to be satisfied. Instead, I was granted 1000 word max.

We went straight from Mostra to the Comic Book Museum. Belgium is famous for being the comic capital of the world (honestly, what is it NOT the capital of the world for?). The museum was relatively uninteresting. I was never into comics as a kid. I had no idea who TinTin or Lucky Luke were until I got here. I've never read Asterix. Le Chat is pretty funny, but I didn't even know what that was until I started researching about Belgium back in February or March. He had a single board display. TinTin had an entire section of the museum plus a few boards and a marble bust near the stairs. Obviously I'm out of the loop when it comes to comics...

But again, the architecture of the building was pretty. It was a former textile shop after being something else before that. I wasn't really paying attention to what I was reading, sorry. It was in complete disrepair before it was bought out and turned into its current position as the comic book centre of Brussels. I don't even know if I'd recommend the museum to anyone who hasn't read comics before (note, I've read American comics like Lola and For Better or For Worse and Garfield. But no European ones). It's not worth the €7.50 it costs to get in.

Took some quotes from random passers-by on my way back home. Got thrown out of 3 restaurants because they were "too busy to answer my questions and would I kindly wait for their colleagues to speak with me?" Their colleagues, by the way, were the servers who were actually doing their job, actually seemed to be working, and probably didn't know the answers to my questions anyway. Don't try and protest to Belgian restaurant managers. You will only be asked to leave. They have "no time for journalists."

Whatever.

The article was finished and turned in. Bus tickets to Paris were booked but not without some grief from Thalys and Eurostar. I don't know how many times I tried to reserve tickets with Thalys (the TGV), but it wouldn't let me book the cheap tickets or the expensive tickets or pay for the only tickets it would let me book. So no train for us. Back to the deceivingly-titled EuroLines bus route. We anticipate an extra hour of travel time at least and we will definitely be more prepared for the journey this time around. I rather like the roadtrip business, but trains are so much nicer.

We finished off the night in celebration--Champagne and Moulin Rouge. We celebrated turning in our articles and finally, FINALLY booking our tickets to Paris! We're good to go for our last weekend here. Crazy to think about. I'm coming back to the States on Monday.

Still no word from Invisible Children about the Roadie position, but I did get an official email saying they'd extended the date by which we should hear from them to Friday July 3. I already knew this information, but I guess being official is a good thing. I found out that one of the girls I met in Chicago--Sarah Eyk--was turned down. It's a real shame, but on a selfish note, that's good for me, right?

Two more days may or may not determine my life course this fall. The "may not" has to be included because it's Invisible Children and if July 3 is too soon, they'll easily push it back. I can't say that'd be a bad thing. I'll be back in town by that point and I would prefer a physical phone call to an email that stares me in the face.

Regardless, Wednesday was a big day, if not busy.