My week in the media

It began with Maggie.

Poor Maggie Barry. She gave me plenty of rope, and I flayed myself. It was my first interview for my new word-finder/vocab-builder/cheat-sheet book, In a Word, and I inevitably muffed it. Us media types always push for first interview, but it's not always wise.

Drivetime, and my mouth was full of chalk, my ears of rusty tin, my head of soggy cotton wool. Maggie tried with a question about how her 11-year-old daughter might use the book, but I had no answer, at least none close to coherent. It was three minutes of bumble. She had inadvertently set off my panic when she asked me off air beforehand if “in flagrante delicto” was in the book – she couldn't find it in Latin Terms, and had found it often misused. (Later I found it in Word Associations in the Appendix, and emailed her producer on Radio Live; he said he'd pass it on.) I'd waited 10 minutes in the corridor on a plastic chair for this?

Sunrise (my moment sadly not online) the next morning was a bit of a train wreck, but at least no one got seriously hurt.

Got there early again, in a vain attempt to calm my nerves. I was sitting in what may be the green room – a corridor intersection with soft chairs – across from writer and director Anthony McCarten. He's a sharp fellow and a trouper and was there to market books for that film of his about keeping your hand on the car.

I got some foundation to hide my shine and learned my lines. I'd pledged to enjoy it – I'll probably never get on national TV again. Those in the know said the cameras would probably be robotic, controlled from the, well, control room. They were not. They were controlled by three people, blokes I think, and a female producer. The news people were off to the left, Carly and Oliver to my right (the dog on the floor), and a bloody great big screen full of my fat face off in the middle distance. It was a crowded house. Still, I was here to have fun. I laughed and said vaguely appropriate things and felt a little sick. Then it was over and they were talking about tuckshops. The hosts were pleasant enough. Oliver seemed to like the book, but it felt like a conveyor belt, I guess the same sort us print journalists are on, only more brightly lit.

Wednesday was bfm, a bright spark called Paul Deady manning the afternoon talk slot. It was supposed to be someone else, so Paul hadn't seen the book, but it turned out to be a much better chat because he's a curious fellow. He pinned me on a lazy comment about the book being useful for writers and bloggers – what's the difference, he, a blogger, rightly inquired – and the truth is only that bloggers probably tend to throw out opinions perhaps a little more readily, and both tend to stay out of each other's patch. There is brilliance and mediocrity and uselessness on both sides of the digital divide, though the best do tend to get paid.

“Sharing a common, extended and precise vocabulary is likely to be one of the main features of civilisation and peace among people.” This was the first comment on a NY Times blog post about newsroom style. Reading this during the week, I felt like they had been looking at my book, or at least intuiting my intention from my ragged interviews.

Friday came, bringing with it a chat with Ruth Todd, from Plains FM in Canterbury. Ruth is a charming ex-school teacher with sharpened vowels and ringing consonants, so she liked that the book wanted to stretch vocab and insist (through sections like Common and Occasional Confusions) that there are rules that should be obeyed for clarity and consistency. The week is over, and so far everyone - broadcasters and writers, so perhaps not surprisingly - seems to like it.

On Monday, Kiwi FM's Wammo interviewed me, another perceptive fellow who hadn't seen the book. A friend said he lost focus about 2/3 of the way through the YouTubed interview, but if so I failed to notice being in full blather at the time. He liked the Descriptive Thesaurus, most immediately because it offers a swathe of words for Big – something he's always trying to find a synonym for. An Austrian friend who tuned in from Paris was perturbed by the term "grammar Nazi" and I had to explain that it doesn't have quite the connotation outside the Anschluss.

A few hours later, I did my last – for now at least – at Radio Rhema. For those who don't know, Rhema is a Christian broadcaster, and the avuncular, chunky bloke who pre-recorded an interview – he kept me waiting, but I had some suitable material to read – mentioned Promise Keepers, sermons in Philippines and Ian Grant all within a couple of minutes. I might disagree with some of their ideas, but they seem like nice people.

The next week New Holland had a book launch at the terrific independent Time Out bookshop, where Rocket Launcher and poet Kevin Ireland (who came out of launching retirement ) did such a good job, the shop sold a slew of copies.

Truth is, I was happy to have one interview, let alone six. Radio NZ and TVNZ weren't interested, and even after I wrote that not very well-tethered thesis on public broadcasting. No worries. I got better, and so the interviews got better. There is a lot of cleverness out there in broadcasting land, and I was really pleased to have met it.

UPDATE: was interviewed by Jessie Colquhoun,of AUT's journalism paper Te Waha Nui (The Big Mouth, apparently). It's my only print interview to date, and it was fascinating seeing how a good chat was converted into words on the page. Can't really complain: I wasn't misquoted, but subtlety went a bit west. My advice to young journos: if you don't have shorthand, tape it.

If you have any thoughts, suggestions, nya-nya moments upon finding errors (four minor ones so far), email me at mbroatch at good old gmail.com. A couple of people have asked me about an index, which I might do if there is an update, which I would like to do.