A journalist's panic response: freeze
One of those moments that still makes my stomach clench today 😬
In one of my earliest birthday memories, I was at Pizza Express with my family. My mum had innocently told the staff that it was my birthday, thinking they might put a sparkler in my pudding. When they brought out my chocolate fudge cake, there wasn’t just a candle in it though; the whole kitchen came out banging pots and pans together to sing me ‘Happy Birthday’. I’m sure they meant well, but to five-year-old me, this was a nightmare.
I burst into tears and slid under the table, while the staff continued to sing. They finally finished and an awkward silence fell as the birthday girl was nowhere to be seen. This reaction would set the tone for the rest of my social skills to this day: I don’t like the spotlight being on me, especially when I don’t have time to prepare.
I always joke that it makes me a much better writer: I can express myself via the written word because I can edit and refine what I say. When I speak out loud, I often end up stuttering and stumbling over my words, going increasingly red at the same time.
Of course, as a journalist, talking to people is a huge part of my job. While studying for my MA in Berlin, one of the main areas I had to work on was getting over my fear of talking to people on the spot. It all came to a breaking point at re:publica 2018, a digital conference with hundreds of prominent politicians and digital leaders from around the world.
The team of other journalism students and I were tasked with creating a series of 60-second videos each day, often based on interviews. We attended events of particular interest and tracked down the speakers to get their individual thoughts.
Sounds easy, right? For me, absolutely not.
Every time my mini-team, made up of me, another journalist, and a cameraman, was tracking someone down to interview, I shoved my friend ahead of me. “You go, you go,” I insisted. “I’ll only mess it up.”
She rolled her eyes at me, but did it every single time, not wanting to miss out on the interview. Until one fateful afternoon, when catastrophe struck. My friend went to the loo - and our dream interviewee walked past us.
The speaker had just done a fantastic talk about sex robots and why they are actually the last thing we should be worried about when it comes to the influences on how we approach and think about sex nowadays. Her talk had been engaging, she was funny, she was dynamic: she was basically the perfect interview subject and we had been trying to track her down all day.
Our cameraman frantically waved at me to run after her. I looked around wildly, hoping my friend would miraculously come back from the bathroom right that minute.
“I- I can’t,” I stammered to him. I stared at the speaker, walking calmly through the hall with her coffee and a sandwich, blissfully unaware of the panic she was inspiring in the student journalist frozen about five metres away from her.
“If you don’t go now, we’ll never get the interview!” said the cameraman. “Just go!”
I took a faltering step forward, then walked haltingly over to her.
“Hi,” I mumbled. “Would you - um - would you want to be in a video?”
“A video?” she asked, understandably confused as to who I was or what I was asking from her. I turned pillar-box red and continued to stumble my way through an explanation that made absolutely no sense - until the cameraman arrived to save the day.
Despite being weighed down by a tripod, two cameras, and a mike kit, he was still able to explain more clearly who we were and what was going on. The speaker graciously agreed to the interview and I managed to pull myself together enough to help get her miked up and do the interview itself.
Now that I had questions prepared and an interview rhythm I knew well, I managed to regain power over my own speech, where just seconds before I had been an unintelligible mess. The interview went smoothly and we had our interview feature for the day.
I’d like to say that this excruciatingly embarrassing faux pas was enough to make me practice more often, so that I would never be frozen in fear like that again. But unfortunately, it has happened since and I’m pretty sure it will happen again.
What I can say is that putting myself in situations where I have to chase down interviewees and speak to people in public is making it easier and easier every time. I’m much less likely to get thrown when forced to speak to strangers suddenly nowadays, even if a panic freeze does still happen more than I’d like.
So for anyone else whose reaction to a stranger’s expectant face is to simply freeze and stare at them, don’t worry. Enough freezes and one day you’ll be able to string a coherent sentence together, I promise! If the little girl who cried under a Pizza Express table can do it, so can you ❤️
Next week, I’ll be featuring a Freelancing Fail sent in by a subscriber. If you’ve got a past FF that you would also like to share, this is your opportunity to share it with the class. It can be anonymous if you prefer and it also does not have to have a shining lesson of redemption. Sometimes, we just do stupid things - and that’s okay!
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