Meet Claire Dupree the editor of Narc magazine who has been running the magazine for 17 years. Narc is a magazine that is an independent guide to alternative music and culture for the North East.
Claire explains what a day in her life looks like, and gives advice for those who are wanting to work in music journalism."Not every day is the same and it depends on what part of the month it is! If it is earlier in the month I spend more time dealing with advertising sales, researching content, and organising articles with writers."
"As the month progresses, I spend more time writing my own articles, conducting interviews and managing the writers' workloads, towards the end of the month the focus shifts to proofreading, chasing people up and collating content ready for design and print. In between there's lots of admin to deal with and coordinating things with our web editor."
"Everything that goes into the magazine needs to be time-sensitive, so it needs to be happening in the month we're working on. We take into consideration what artists have achieved, or are aspiring towards, and, of course, how much space we have in the magazine! For the website, we have more time to play with so can cover things much closer to when they're happening."
"I started NARC myself 17 years ago because I felt the regional press wasn't paying enough attention to grassroots musicians and the North East music scene as a whole."
"A lot of organisation is key to being an editor- I have many spreadsheets; quite a lot of local knowledge - although I rely on our writers for that too; a decent way with words; good grammar/spelling; a calm, friendly and patient manner and a fair bit of determination - this isn't an easy job, and sometimes a very stressful one, and the pay is frankly pretty rubbish, so it has to be a labour of love. "
"We do our own festival in July every year in the Ouseburn Valley (NARC. Fest), we also run a stage at Stockton Calling (Easter) and Last Train Home in Darlington (Sept)."
"However, through the course of my job, I see a lot more male musicians coming through than female or gender minorities, which tells us something about the industry as a whole and how it's unfairly skewed. For my job, I haven't experienced anything particularly overt."
"We have a great bedrock (venues, labels, publishers, techs, studios, even a vinyl pressing plant) but we lack management, agents, qualified and specialised PR, and the means to offer people the skills to do these jobs. Much of this is 'work in progress' thanks to organisations like Generator and Tees Music Alliance, but until we have all the facets of a working music scene like you'd find in London or perhaps Manchester, our artists will be forced to look outside the region for representation, and that's a shame."
"Persevere, know your goals set out to achieve them, and if the job you want doesn't exist or isn't available, make it yourself."
Read Narc Magazine here: https://narcmagazine.com/
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