Q&A MAIN IMAGE: MELISSA LANE PORTER
What made you become a journalist? My parents’ insatiable appetite for news, politics and social justice. Plus a love of writing.
What other job might you have done? I’d probably have ended up becoming an opera singer or musical theatre performer. Failing that, you’d have found me playing the piano in a hotel lobby.
When did you join the NUJ and why? A wise colleague at The Independent suggested I’d be mad – and arrogant – not to join. She was right.
And the most frustrating? The contemporary click-bait culture that fuels vacuous stories. The dark arts of tabloid journalism. Always feeling there is more I should be doing.
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What is the worst place you’ve ever worked in? I once worked in an office providing customer support to executives looking for a job. Knowing that they were paying for a service that was unlikely to get them one felt pretty disheartening. But I was hardly going down coal mines.
What’s been your best moment in your career? The idiosyncratic encounters, whether doorstepping Dominique Strauss-Khan in New York; chatting with Dev Patel about the struggles of being a British Asian or quizzing Michael Jackson’s brother about his family’s political legacy. The 2015 general election was fascinating and the extraordinary 10pm exit poll that torpedoed every assumption most had held for months was great political drama.
And in the union? I see the NUJ a bit like home content insurance, 999 or the British Foreign Office. I haven’t had recourse to it yet, but I’m glad it’s there.
And the worst ones? Working in unstable teams. Good journalism comes from trust among colleagues and editors willing you to win. That intensifies when the threat of redundancies loom. The NUJ provides invaluable solidarity in such times.
And the best? Nothing quite beats the newsrooms of The Independent, The i Newspaper and Channel 4 News on a fast-moving day. Except perhaps for live television – reviewing the newspapers on BBC News occasionally is still a thrill.
NUJ & Me
Kunal Dutta is a freelance journalist working for The
Independent, i Newspaper and Channel 4 News
What are your hopes for journalism over the next five years? That long-form digital journalism returns, along with bigger commissioning budgets. That more talent is employed from outside the upper middle class.
Which six people, alive or dead, would you invite to a dinner party? Benjamin Britten, Michael Jackson, Barack Obama, Julia Gillard, Michael Atherton and Miranda Hart.
What’s the most rewarding thing about your job? The chance to document history as it unfolds. The people you spend your day with. Never waking up reluctant to go to work. It’s all one enormous privilege. I feel very lucky.
What one thing would you most want to change in the next 12 months? I’d like to see Western reporters returning to areas of Syria and Iraq that have been deemed too dangerous. And I’d be happy never having to watch another Isis propaganda video again.
How would you like to be remembered? Happy for you to draw your own conclusions. And if it’s “he was an eternal optimist who viewed the world with a sense of wide-eyed-wonderment,” that’s absolutely fine.
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