Saturday, May 22, 2010

Lost in the Media!

Lots of media today. It's always the bit of a letdown day, where you've spent hours and hours of your time talking to these people, only to get one quote here and a five-second soundbyte here. Was it worth sacrificing my entire week off where I was supposed to be writing the book? Not sure... but I'll take it. ;)

My feature for the Globe and Mail is in the paper today. You can also read it here. I plugged it as a piece on "Why Lost Matters" and instead it's in the paper billed as the confessions of a Lost addict. Sigh... Whatever. I'm surprised that when I wrote a similar feature on the end of Buffy, they plugged it off A1, then devoted the entire front page of the arts section to it, and it was on another network. Lost is on the same network as the Globe, and they buried it on the fifth page. Weird. But still cool. ;)

The segment on CBC's The National aired last night with Jen, who has been here talking with Fred on some of the higher points of Lost (she's doing her PhD thesis on Lost, though you'd never know that from the way they edited the story... she's the gal with the white Dharma shirt) and our very own Question Mark is here, too! He's the guy talking about how Lost pioneered the online marketing. The National crew were in my house for almost 2 hours, and spent much of that filming me doing the Globe chat (you can see my daughter's artwork on the wall behind me, along with the pages of her sight words that she has to learn for kindergarten that I've tacked up all over the wall, haha!! They chose that corner because it had The Sopranos poster, I think) and in the end I think it comes down to 10 seconds. I think there's a longer shot of me sitting in the movie theatre watching the live Darlton thing!! (That's my brother sitting to my left, which was cool to see! And that's Mark Askwith from Space sitting beside me on the other side.) You can watch the clip here, and where the white dots appear on the bottom, just jump directly to the second last white dot, which will take you directly to the clip. And hey, this blog was shown in it, which was awesome, along with panning across all my books. I was actually pretty happy with the piece, all told.

I spoke for about 45 minutes to the St. Petersburg Times, and got a couple of good quotes out of it. The reporter there is always such a fun guy to talk to. (Though he quotes a prediction at the end that I never actually said was mine... instead I listed off a bunch of different ideas and said I haven't come up with one at all, but he's said it as if I said that's how it's going to happen, which I didn't.) Go here to read that one.

And finally, my hometown paper, the London Free Press, contacted me on Thursday and because they're the first paper to ever write about me, I'll always give them lots of my time. The piece about me writing about Lost is here, and it's very sweet.

Here's a piece that went up on the National Post website with quotes from me and DocArzt! :)

I did a lot of other media, but those pieces were either kiboshed or aren't showing up online or I can't remember or they're holding off until tomorrow. I'll post any more if I find them!!

4 comments:

GolfGuy said...

I thought the London Free Press story really captured what people love about Nikki, and demonstrates all the years she's put into her craft. As for the other reporters -- well, all I can say is that I've been a reporter and like any profession, there are good and bad. I think it is a testament to Nikki and Lost that the show has captured such attention this week. What's next for Nikki? A long and well-deserved break, I hope.

TM Lawrence said...

Nikki:
From personal experience, I would say that the best you can hope for, as a subject expert, after running a media gauntlet is to not look a babbling fool. Their interest and agenda is not yours, the sound byte is deceptive and biased, and the lenses for the closeup interviews are intimidatingly HUGE and in your face.

You handled yourself with aplomb. You conveyed the integrity and passion of the committed fan and put a positive spin on our, ahem, particular obsession. You made it worth following all those links. Every one. Congratulations.

Mr Reaney's piece resonated most precisely for my take on your niche in the Lost sphere: hard work, smarts, thoroughness,witty, broad-based, fast, prodigious, and funny. And you do walk the highwire with seeming effortlessness, but it is clear to any who truly follow your work that therein is belied devotion to your craft and mad skills. I share the optimism that you will rebound quickly into a new venture to showcase such rare and polished talent.

Oh, and the Stephen King stuff will be lost on me, too, regardless of the high credit given by TPTB to The Stand. Joyce, Milton, Carroll, Huxley, Rushdie: soul sisters and brothers more worthy of your interest.

Nikki Stafford said...

Thanks to both of you. And don't worry, I'm certainly not disappointed in anything, and have been joking for a few days that I bet all of this will come down to 5 minutes, and it did, but if I'd only spoken for 10 minutes, it would have come down to nothing. ;)

TM: Thank you so much. You know, I'm reading Dostoevsky's Notes from Underground RIGHT NOW and I've been struggling with it all week and hitting roadblocks with it, and just suddenly hit a section that made perfect sense and seemed to pull all of the various threads of Lost together, and I'm thrilled and suddenly typing loads again. Yay!! ;)

Thanks for checking out all those links!! It's a lot of reading for a Saturday morning. :)

Gracie said...

Nikki said: "My feature for the Globe and Mail is in the paper today. You can also read it here. I plugged it as a piece on "Why Lost Matters" and instead it's in the paper billed as the confessions of a Lost addict. Sigh... Whatever."

Nikki: I've read this, and I don't understand. Where do you see that they are billing you as a "Lost Addict"?

Please reply and be specific, because I thought (and think) that it appears to be (and is!) a well thought out article! What's wrong with it?