Will Tizard
Verified
As seen in:
Euronews,
IMDb,
MSN,
MSN Australia,
MSN Singapore,
Yahoo Entertainment,
MSN Malaysia,
The Guardian,
The Telegraph,
Yahoo Canada,
Yahoo News Malaysia
and
Covers:
News, policy, film, arts, travel, current events and social issues
Founder, AskFilm, Central/Eastern Europe correspondent, Variety, Prague-based film prof. Views my own, great menus stolen.
Interview
What was your first job as a journalist?
A flimsy west-side San Francisco shopper - but I soon moved up to the dizzying heights of the Burlingame Boutique/Hillsborough Villager!
Have you ever used a typewriter?
I owe my entire career to my IBM Selectric summer course in high school.
How is social media changing news?
Generally, offering far more breadth but far less depth. The promise of deep data access to all has been elusive, to say the least.
Who's your favorite fictional journalist?
Hildy Johnson, of course - who else comes close?
What does it mean to be a journalist?
Having the rare privilege of asking the questions most people are employed not to ask.
What's the funniest news-related #hashtag you've seen?
Recently? #unwantedIvanka
How do you prefer to be pitched on stories?
What's fresh about the angle and what's the most current credible data?
What tools and software do you use to do your job?
"Vintage" MacBook, Word, Final Cut Pro
What's your favorite social network?
Twitter - the ability to tune out noise and follow intelligent experts and trends rocks.
Who do you wish followed you?
David Frum
Why did you become a journalist?
Clearly, I saw Hitchcock's The Foreign Correspondent one too many times. That and I love cutting through the dross to get at a fresh angle.
Did you work for your high school newspaper? If so, what did you do there?
I was mainly on stage in high school but I soon took up the call at The Daily Northwestern in college.
What story are you most proud of writing or working on?
A feature we broke at The Prague Post on how refugees were coping with a broken asylum system - courageously and cleverly, it turned out.
What advice can you offer to aspiring journalists?
Blogs are not journalism (usually). Facts and attribution are everything - along with getting out on the street to check them out firsthand.
When's the best time to pitch you?
Mornings CET - though I will generally respond quickly in any case.
What's the best pitch you ever got?
Danish TV show Sporloes seeking to reunite lost orphans with their Czech mother - a rewarding, successful project!
What's the worst pitch you ever got?
At my first newspaper, a west side San Francisco shopper, where my editor told me to find "movers and shakers." That was it.
What's your favorite drink?
Illy Americano
When you're not at a computer, where are you most likely to be?
On a film set - or scoping out new ideas on the streets of Prague or elsewhere in Central/Eastern Europe.
Aside from your own, what's your favorite publication to read?
The Atlantic, The New Yorker, The Guardian. It's always the "The"s, isn't it?
What's the most common misperception about your beat?
Eastern Europe is a backwater with bad food and bad film.
Would you like to take the Muck Rack Interview?
Create a Muck Rack profile.