#work asks

[formulatrash]

sorry to like Write Something A Bit Serious on Tumblr but I posted about this on LinkedIn (an act of extreme last resort if there ever was one) and I think it deserves to go elsewhere.

there's a guy who's posted to LinkedIn (link for proof: x) about how the FIA have made the decision to only allow media with full-season accreditation* and some select outlets from the host country's media to attend written media post-session interviews at the European races.

there's generally more accredited media at the European rounds than others. a lot of the F1 press is based in Europe and applications are much higher for some rounds in particular, like Silverstone. a lot of people who get the accreditation are not first-timers, it's just that the European rounds are, for them, the most geographically accessible and so will be the ones cash-pressed publications or freelancers' own budgets can get them to. they may well have been doing this for many years.

there is nothing about having a full-season pass that says you're more expert or more senior or have a bigger platform than media accredited on a race-by-race basis. often, media who attend a few rounds may well have a much bigger platform - national newspapers, big but non-F1-specialist magazines and websites. many of the full-season pass holders like Joe Saward, Dieter Rencken before he became an advisor to Ben Sulayem (which, wtf), Adam Cooper, are or were accredited for their own blogs.

their coverage may reach bigger platforms eventually but in theory your accreditation is meant to be for your "main" publication. it's not technically possible to accredit yourself as a freelancer. or well, wasn't until I did it and broke the system about 10 years ago.

the point is: having a full-season pass is not something you get on a merit system. it's just for when you have attended so many races the previous year the FIA can save themselves some admin by giving you one pass not 24.

no one starts out with that pass, as a written journalist, unless you come from some very specific publications who commit to sending a full-season reporter. you have to re-apply for it every year on the basis of having attended the majority of the previous season's races.

I've separately seen the actual email from the FIA which said that all sessions would be recorded and shared on a google drive for all accredited media. but what's being missed out on is the right to ask questions.

race-by-race accreditation is difficult to get and difficult to be approved for travel for. sometimes journalists find out they've been turned down after they've had to book their flights and hotels. (this happened to me once with a longhaul that fortunately I got the decision overturned on)

in order to be accredited as media you have to go through a series of hoops: proof of coverage, letter from an editor, approval on the accreditation portal first as a valid publication then for each specific series and event. it takes weeks if not months of work - a lot of publications skip it by just going as guests of brands, which gives them much more limited access to ask questions and a lot more helicopters and complimentary cocktails.

once you've done all that you should be allowed access to ask questions when it counts, which is immediately after a session when there's stuff for them to actually react to rather than either re-hashing the previous race in the Thursday sessions or bland quotes looking forward to the weekend.

it's hard to convince editors it's worth you being on the ground. just watch it on TV, just use the Sky quotes, find stuff online. the purpose of it is so that you can ask questions and get access to more things.

devaluing that will just discourage anyone getting sent at all. you can't replace the coverage from distinct outlets by just assuming the ✨big guys✨ will share their quotes. a lot of them either don't ask any questions (there's at least five guys with full-season passes this is true of - I used to transcribe every session and it's noticeable who does and doesn't ask anything) or frankly ask agenda-based garbage that's of no wide use. they often rely on a tiny handful of people to actually ask sensible questions.

why should some geezer who writes for his own blog get more access to ask about what happened in a race than, I don't know, someone from Teen Vogue just because they don't have a full-season, dedicated F1 reporter? you can't just say he's going to fill the same role and supply the same material, clearly. these guys do not have any reach to a lot of publications that are now regularly writing about Formula 1.

as a sidenote, I do not know the man who wrote the original post. but I have heard reports from multiple people that he exhibits predatory behaviour to women in the paddock. he is, obviously, far from the only full-season pass holder that can be said of. and that's who gets special access? that's genuinely disgusting.

the FIA says it's overcrowding concerns. ok, yes, I imagine some drivers are incredibly popular - maybe use a sign-up basis for those sessions. but there'll be others where media is barely in attendance and there's no reason a handful of full-season-pass holders should be the only ones at any of them.

it is not right for the FIA to both shore up a (to my knowledge) currently exclusively male (and pretty sure exclusively white) group of the media over any others. if you have earned the accreditation you have earned your right to ask questions - the publications who've had to fight for a one-off pass have probably worked much harder and have a lot more skin in the game to do so than someone on their millionth time around the whole season who's so jaded and checked-out their coverage regularly includes descriptions of their lunch.

people who make the commitment to start out shouldn't be put on a second tier. I had a full-season pass when I worked in Formula E and I never would have expected that to give me access to something people on a one-race pass couldn't get; it was literally just an admin saving device so I didn't have to apply every single round and waste the media team and my own time. it did not make me better than someone who was there for one or two or five rounds that my lanyard was thicker. it did not mean my coverage got more attention and it didn't mean I was more professional or expert.

I probably did have all those credentials. but it wasn't anything to do with which box I ticked when applying for my pass - and your full-season pass isn't judged on those criteria, only on you having got accreditation for enough races the previous year.

(if you'd like to interact with the sanitised LinkedIn version of this then it's here: x)

*that's what a "permanent" pass is and it isn't permanent, it's on a season-by-season basis and dependent on having attended a certain minimum number of races the previous season. it's not a frickin Nando's black card of accreditation.

[maidenofmadness]

Alright, what is your favorite dish to prepare at work. If not there then for yourself.

Definitely arranging the hummus plate

[formulatrash]

I wanted to ask what your thoughts were on the Guardian article on Lando

Idly wondering if you do any gardening or keep plants.

tbf I have been waiting to be asked about that in a sort of inevitable way. my official verdict is: it is very normal for PRs to ask for your questions in advance for a one-on-one - not the topics, your actual questions. I have been asked for this many times. especially if you are not familiar to them or the driver you're interviewing, which Donald McRae isn't - he is a sports journalist but he mostly covers horse racing and boxing.

obviously I don't know what happened. but with what I do know about interviewing drivers...

sometimes you get told you can't ask those questions. I think this has happened to me a sum total of once and I can't even remember what the hell it was about, possibly something embargoed. I wasn't offended and submitted a different question which got approved.

if they tell you they don't like your questions it's probably because they're out of pocket; I am not even slightly joking when I say a PR once showed me a list of questions she was vetting for Susie Wolff, then Venturi Formula E team principal. can't remember all of them because this was years ago but two of them were "do you think you can combine motherhood with running a team" and "how does it go down in the paddock that your husband got you this job." surprise! he got told to fuck off with those questions.

I am guessing Lando's management had reason to suspect the interview would get deeply weird if this guy got onto those topics and were particularly suspicious he would ask them anyway. his reaction in the piece feels quite strange, from the perspective of someone who used to do this.

(the bit about "pointing to my white hair to show how long I have been interviewing athletes" suggests he... made some sort of weird gesture and is describing it differently, to me, for instance 😬)

anyway back on topic: I don't have a single green finger unfortunately (my brain is strongly wired to engineering and mechanical stuff) but I am currently growing broccoli and cabbages on the flat roof of the pub. so far they are alive! this is quite an achievement for me. who knows if they will bear fruit or the little cat will inevitably sleep on them all summer.

[formulatrash]

My god I wish you would write more. Not only is it great to read, but these last few weeks your responses have taught me more about this sport than years of watching.

sometimes I guess you need a woman who no longer gives a fuck to talk about it. it's why the Williams book is so, so good and absolutely essential reading about the whole world of F1; Ginny really Did Not Care about hurting men's feelings and in fact was wiring it (with Pamela Cockerill) in a heightened fury at them.

I kind of worry that it doesn't come across that I love it. I love F1 and Formula E and all the twenty other different types of stuff I covered. I love rally and endurance and questionable club racing and speedway and junior series. I loved it before I worked in it, I loved it the whole time I did and I still do.

despite all the skeevy dudes and the fact motorsport paddocks never loved me, I fucking loved being in them. I loved writing about it as my daily job. I loved chasing the technical details about track surfaces and barriers and fuel mixes. I loved interviewing people. it's a bit easy to remember the low times, the shit weekends - there were more and more of them towards the end because that's how it works. you don't go out on a high, obviously.

and I still fucking loved it. I miss it all the time. it's better, for me, I think, that I don't do it - even if there were any jobs left in it (and there aren't, the press is shrinking by the second) then it's just better for me not to. if things had gone differently that might not be the case but tbh the media world is pretty rotten and I not only don't want to be a fucking influencer but am obviously too old and at least 3 dress sizes too hench.

but I do still fucking love all this bullshit. it's not true that nothing compares to it but it's difficult, when you've got so hooked, to find something else.

[formulatrash]

I love how you were like 'no I don't discuss horny rpf with my male colleagues because they barely respect me and it would be awful for my credibility' only a few weeks ago and now we have a male journalist (followed my merc too)... Discussing horny rpf on Twitter. I knew the double standards were there but it's always so surprising seeing it so obviously playing out.

I mean they'll always find something to hate you about anyway. I'd guess there are actually way more male journalists that know about the existence of [insert sport here] rpf than female because female journalists are generally not massive gooners obsessed with social media gossip and a huge number of the men are.

like do I think that Natalie Pinkham reads Reddit? no lol. but I would bet actual meaningful money that David Croft does. I know for a total fact that Formula 1 as an organisation does (it used to be where all the social media ideas were pulled from and where a lot of mood-gauging was done back when I worked on that stuff in 2019) and that there are plenty of journalists who are so coked up on finding out what people are saying on X that they can't let go.

objectively, even if it's like ok don't post AO3 stats to X (I mean, don't post anything on X, the nazi website run for profit by nazis doing genuine and huge political harm but anyway) - why tf was this geezer looking at them? it weren't hashtagged it's not like he was just looking at #BahrainGP and this came up or whatever.

ok yes the algorithm puts anything with engagement in front of people, some of whom will be the wrong audience for it (mine used to helpfully put abuse in my feed where I might have missed it because they didn't actually tag me; cheers, twitter) and social media has made us all insane reactionaries. but in paddocks where actual sexual harassment and assault happens to actually real people worrying about dolls people are playing with on the doll playing website is obviously faux concern at best.

I quite liked Simon the couple of times I met him, he's far from the worst. but you've gotta remember that all of them are gooners. even the fairly normal ones. they are obsessed with what people are saying about them on a level that people who get rpf written about them just aren't. the media fixates about what people are saying because its biggest fear is that no one cares what it is saying.

[formulatrash]

Do you ever consider shutting the hell up? I work for a major publication in the US and it's no wonder you don't get any work anymore. You literally have the most unprofessional social media presence and the worst takes. And you do women like me a massive disservice because when people see what you post, they discredit all of us. Just log off.

enjoy your major US publication job: literally no one gives a fuck what I do because I am a Wetherspoons barmaid, you complete dipshit.

trying to imagine what I posted recently that could have in any way sparked this and the only candidates I can find are "not liking AI in critical vehicle systems monitoring" and "Red Bull could draw out who gets the second seat for weeks yet"

unless it was "wrote an article about Barbie's honestly quite interesting history with motorsport" which I also don't think probably merits a frothing load of abuse. touch grass! have a pint! I'll even serve it to you.

[formulatrash]

What do you think about team accounts using ship names? Williams has started posting about Loscar a lot but do you think they know what it means?

I have a bunch of thoughts about this but to start off with: yes, I am absolutely sure they know what it means.

the Williams social admins will have seen thousands of Loscar edits on TikTok. they will have read lots of comments and replies about Loscar on their other social platforms. beyond their official, professional commitments to monitoring the Williams stuff they're also F1 fans and they may well be on here or even AO3. you would be surprised how direct the pipeline from WattPad to PR is.

(a fair number of people who started off writing fic on livejournal are also quite high up in engineering these days and other technical roles obviously, just using WattPad to PR as an example there; basically, some people in F1 absolutely know about this sort of thing)

it's pretty innocent for social media admins to play on trends, especially if they know they get more interaction if they post Loscar than if they just post Logan. at the end of the day, it's a metric-based job and their task is to make numbers go up, not wonder if this might feel weird to some of us on tumblr. when I ran the F1 account I never would've used the word Maxiel but did definitely speed right on over to post anything that I thought might get picked up that way. was this kinda dirty cheating? yes but I had engagement targets to hit and the niche knowledge to know this was one way to do it.

(also technically my most unhinged work was creating this gif in staggering high definition for 2019. anyway!)

I do think there's two ways it's quite problematic for teams to lean into shipping, though. the first is that shipping is fictional and they're team accounts that are, well, real. the little guys that they have a sandbox to play with (coming up with sponsor content ideas and convincing the drivers to do them) are different from the dolls people make kiss on AO3.

the other is that it's queerbaiting, innit. we know how poor LGBTQ+ representation is in racing in general and how homophobic a lot of fans are - look at the abuse directed at Matt Bishop. or me, I guess but people (entirely reasonably, he's an absolutely brilliant man) like Matt more. anyway, the point is motorsport does not like LGBTQ+ people and therefore, probably shouldn't be allowed to use the idea of fictional versions of us for marketing.