Netribution, 25 years on

It’s 19-and-a-half years since I first emailed the late James MacGregor, in a state of major excitement: Netribution wanted to republish an article I’d written on work experience about short films!

That was May 2006. A month or so before, my brother and I had been checking out the mastheads of his beloved film magazines in our local Sainsbury’s, so I could find editors’ details and gain work experience (thank you, Hotdog magazine, RIP). That is an extremely mid-Noughties sentence. Hotdog itself was closed down in 2006. 

A 2005 graduate with an English Lit degree, I’d been teaching English in Spain, but knew that I really wanted to embark on a journalism career. Hotdog let me interview and review; those pieces led to more stories, which I used for my next work placement; and suddenly I was being published online! You couldn’t have told me that I wasn’t living in THE golden age of journalism.

Upon seeing my article republished on Netribution, I emailed James to offer him another story. He was very warm and encouraging, telling me: “We want to publish good quality material that stands the test of time” – a wonderful welcome. He introduced me to Nic Wistreich over email, and so our story began. 

Thanks to Netribution, I attended the London Film Festival for several years through the Noughties as press, darting in a daze between daytime screenings, before my evening shifts at my main job for The Associated Press, working on international breaking news. I had a lot of energy back in those days. Making the press pen at the LFF meant that I ended up on PR lists that were still helpful to me a decade later, leading to the making of the Black Mirror Cracked podcast for the Daily Mirror.

James and Nic suggested that I apply for the Berlinale Talent Campus’s Talent Press scheme, and gave me all the backing that a budding critic would need, like letters of recommendation and website analytics. I was accepted onto the 2008 cohort, and spent the week running around the festival with my colleagues from around the world, working with heroes like The Guardian’s late, legendary Derek Malcolm, and Stephanie Zacharek (then at Salon.com). The friends I made on that trip have led me to travel the world, from Lima in Peru, to finally making it to Brighton, a seaside city less than two hours by train from my hometown of London. 

What I’m trying to say is that Netribution changed my life in ways that I couldn’t have foreseen. Twenty years trying to make a living in the quicksand of a constantly-evolving media landscape is tough, but so much of the good I’ve been graced with in my career has come from Netribution. 

Now that I’m moving on from journalism to writing and making my own things, I’m grateful for everything I learned about creativity from writing for Netribution, and look back with wonder at the space and time I was given to grow. 

Here’s to another 25 years!