19
Jan
2010
Coaching…(15.01.10)
Last time I saw Ian Gormely, I was recording my answering machine message.
“Does that sound okay?” I asked nervously from the other side of his cubicle divider.
“Ya, sounds good,” he said casually, leaning back so I could see his face.
Ian and I both interned at Progress magazine in Halifax. We walked through the same rotating door: me sweaty-palmed and on my way in, him, wiping his hands clean and on his way out. He was off to Toronto where he planned to hone his writing skills (read: his girlfriend got a job at Maclean’s and he followed her).
Ian sits infront of me a year and a half later at a Toronto coffee shop with the same goofy grin and tousled hair. I’m in the city meeting with anybody I know doing the journalism thing, after realizing the job prospects in Ottawa are as likely as a warm winter (ironically, it’s pretty warm in Toronto. Good sign?).
In an attempt to get all multimedia on y’all, I brought my recorder to conduct a little interview. Apparently, I’m a tad rusty after seven months of reporting abstinence, and pressed the play button instead of record.
So while there were two conversations going on at our table, I didn’t get any of Ian’s artfully worded answers.
Sorry Ian. I am an idiot. I’ll attempt to sum up our conversation with none of your charm or humour. (Any editor who is reading this and thinking about hiring me: it won’t happen again). Me getting “Italian mad” at my recorder
Ian- a late-twenties King’s College journalism grad- is a music lover and a writer (check out his blog).
When he first arrived in Toronto, he got in touch with music website CHARTattack.com, and six months later was asked to do some reviews.He also e-mailed Toronto-based music publication Exclaim!, and after writing sporadically for them, landed a position as an assistant editor.
Ian did a three-week unpaid internship for EYE weekly, an alternative Toronto paper, freelances for Metro, and is the music coordinator for community radio station CHRY. Wowza.
As he said in his facebook message in response to me calling him a journalism vet:
“Journalism vet? No. Hardened by the lifestyle? Yep.
But yeah, stuff seems to be going my way down here.”
He admits it’s been a hard road and a definite slow-start. On the upside, he managed to avoid slinging brunch (however he did offer to give me the contacts of a temp agency he used) and now supports himself doing what he loves.
His advice? Casually schmooze with people. He got his assistant editor job at Exclaim! after running into a staff member at the bar who said there was an opening. “‘I can do that’,” he said, probably between sips of beer. “Drinking definitely helps.”
To sum up his lifestyle, Ian says with a smile: “I work really hard, for little pay, on things few people read.” Or something like that. I don’t really know. I forgot to record it. Something about Ian and machines always makes me nervous…