Matthew O'Neill
Journalist, Time Off Magazine

Written by Danny Quinn on 2009-10-09

Matthew O’Neill is a journalist who writes for Street Press Australia, a national street press network that encompasses a number of magazines including Time Off magazine in Brisbane. His forte is music journalism and his ambition is to reinvigorate the relationship between song and press.

I had the chance to talk to Matt about a number of issues including how to go about entering the exciting world of music journalism and what skills this industry is looking for. Matt also presented insights into where street press fits into Brisbane’s media landscape, how it is changing and the challenges it faces in the near future.

Why did you decide to pursue a career in the media and communications industry?

I never actually viewed it as a career, really. I viewed it more as a ‘I couldn’t get a normal job’ and it’s kind of turned into a career because I’m good at it. As to why I sort of chose music journalism as the option [to work as] … Well I’ve always liked music and I’ve always liked talking about what it represents and I think music journalism, and feature journalism in general, is largely a profession populated by sub-standard … (laughs) artists and I was looking to improve the breed.

How did you go about getting your job, as music journalism is quite a specialised and almost invisible profession?

I went about it … a friend of mine who lectures at Queensland University of Technology and is a tutor too, Laurence English, was the longest serving writer with Time Off magazine and I went to him and just basically said … how to I get to write for Time Off, and he said go speak to Steve Bell the editor, tell him you’re one of my students. Tell him you want to write for Time Off and go from there. And I went and did that and he gave me some CD’s to review, he liked what I did and it kind of went up in scale from there so I went from CD reviews to concert reviews, from concert reviews to interviews, then high profile interviews. When the magazine was bought by Street Press Australia I started doing interviews with … across states and all that type of stuff. It was really quite a natural growth.

What has been your most memorable achievement or experience working as a part of Brisbane’s media landscape?

Uh, there’s been a few … I think the biggest one, aside from all the great people I interview like high profile musicians such as Public Enemy or Lady GaGa … Kate Miller-Heidke once sent me an email saying that she thought my article on her was possibly the best article she’d ever seen written about her music, and … she took it upon her self to email me and let me know that and that’s probably one of my biggest and most concrete achievements.

What are the most important/valuable skills that graduates can bring to music journalism?

I think more so than anything is a willingness to work hard and to learn and to just throw yourself out there. I got to where I am today … purely because I did absolutely everything they asked of me and anything they gave me … And because I showed an interest in everything, when nobody else could do a story they often threw it at me … And I think another thing is to not be afraid to assert yourself … No journalist would tell you to write the way I write…but it’s because of that I’ve got all of the jobs and work I have. So if I hadn’t shown faith in what I was doing or hadn’t wanted to do a certain style then I wouldn’t be where I am now. Also always assume that absolutely everyone is your better … try and learn something from them because inevitably they will have something to offer.

In your opinion, where does Street Press fit into the media landscape of Brisbane and why is it important?

I think it’s important in the sense of stimulating the music scene in the city and stimulating the art scene because it allows artists to build up a reputation and a following and to sort of road test themselves before hurling themselves at the big media … So the street press allows, is sort of like a filter in that it weeds out all the really crap bands, theoretically, and then the good ones kind of, can use it as a launch pad to go somewhere else and also it gives an audience the stuff that normally they wouldn’t get the chance to hear … there’s stuff that people just wouldn’t access unless they went to a specialty publication, like Wiley’s latest record … the Courier Mail wouldn’t touch him because he [doesn’t have] a mainstream audience … but he would make it into the dance section in street press so that allows people to discover stuff that’s a little bit under the radar.

So then what are the biggest challenges you and your organisation face as a member of the Brisbane media community?

Specifically speaking I think the biggest challenge Street Press Australia faced was when they first swooped in and there was a great many accusations flying around that they were going to stop it from being local … But generally speaking the main challenge is obviously the Internet and I don’t want to say blogs…but the Internet as a resource tool because now people can go out and discover artists like Wiley just from word of mouth and they can access publications from the UK or underground publications from the UK like Evert Truth’s Plan B magazine, which is highly respected. They can access that from here in Australia. They don’t need us to tell them … they don’t need us to sort of dictate the tastes to them and so, I think street press and music journalism in general has to really consider what it’s roll actually is now.

What changes do you see happening over the next five years in the Street Press industry?

I think Street Press Australia are the ones who are going to facilitate the changes and essentially what you want is something … [that] has a global outlook and a national outlook…but still has connections to a local community. How they’re going to do that, I’m not exactly sure but I think the only way to do it is to build a web prescience that corresponds with their street presence … What’s more they need to think less in the terms of individual weeks because of the Internet this whole concept of issues doesn’t really happen as much anymore … they’re going to have to archive all that they do…So that people can access this and [street press] can provide an institutional level of information and opinions … but I think that’s what they are going to need to do if they’re going to survive because street press is increasingly endangered in regards to being irrelevant.