From a Journalist’s Perspective

Tahj Watson, an undergraduate student majoring in Communication, interviewed NolaVie Editor Kelley Crawford about her many gigs, creative work, and her COVID-19 experience as a creative worker.

Tahj – So what made you start ViaNolaVie?

Kelley – So having those two roles of being a journalist and also then seeing what other journalists were doing and writing and the expectations within mainstream journalism. I saw all of these students who were doing work that was more founded in research, was more critical, and was way more on the edge of progressive mindsets. I thought, why in the world is this not connected together?

Also, I don’t like hierarchies. There are some amazing journalists who don’t have the “credentials.” Yet they are reporting on groundbreaking news and stories because they’re actually in that environment, rather than trying to put a spotlight on the environment.

My mission at ViaNolaVie has always been the same, which is: it’s an alternative publication. That means it’s very hands-off in the sense of you get to share your opinion. We edit, help, and mentor each other here. I like it where everyone works together; that’s my ideal.

Tahj – What does creative work mean to you?

Kelley – That’s a big question. I think it was Henry James who said, “I am able to afford my imagination,” and I think that is a big part of creative work. It is when you don’t even have the actual world infiltrate your what you can imagine in your mind, if you can see it, it can come to fruition because you’ve already created it. It’s just now putting those steps in.

I also am a writer, and right now, I’m trying to write something that has never been written before. I don’t know how to do it, so that’s the creative process for me. When you don’t have a model, and you don’t have something that you can say, ‘Oh, this is what I’m trying to become or be.’ That’s what creative work is.

Tahj – I asked that question because I am taking a class in which I never really knew how to define creative work or labor. So I just told myself that creative work wasn’t stagnant and always moving.

Kelley – Yeah, right, that’s huge. It’s funny how the world never wants us to move. And yet your best workers are the ones who can fulfill whatever requirement and be the most creative. They have to solve and communicate.

Tahj- Could you tell me about your experience working during the pandemic?

Kelley – Talk about creative labor! That was creative labor because we did not know what was going to happen. I didn’t know what to do. In the classroom, it was the use of technology that suddenly became such a huge factor. At ViaNolaVie, our content is fully digital, so we didn’t have any transition there. We were able to put out material the entire time, and all of our writers were remote. We had no barriers in that regard. For us, the challenge was writing about others and being around people but socially distanced during a pandemic. Plus we were weaving in the information you need to know about the spread of this disease. We had to tell writers the ways that you can still get out and write things but not expose yourself to the virus. So it’s kind of this nice marriage when all of that could come together.

The most horrible part was that I regularly talk to all the people I have interviewed. Watching their lives be completely taken away from them. No more musical gigs. All the dance shows got canceled from strippers to ballerinas. A couple of the painters still used Instagram, and tattoo artists used it to do one-on-one work. But just that was a horrible, awful emotional time for all of these people that I want to support. New Orleans got really destroyed. For a majority of the artists I know, Jazz Fest is 50% of their income and the festivals went away. The musicians, the artists, the dancers, everyone is all part of that. That was a hard emotional barrier for me.

Tahj – When you compare journalists and writers to performers and artists, did the pandemic make it easier for one group than the other?

Kelley – That’s a good question. In regards to getting work out, journalism was easier because people wanted information. For artists, what I saw was Facebook Live or porch concerts. Those were easier because you’re able to control them yourself. You don’t have to book a venue. It was much easier for writers when you don’t have to go through five editors because they need this material. Again, that’s that hierarchy thing.

I’ll speak for myself, because I don’t know about other people, but I had a lot to write about. I had a lot of observations, I like being a nerdy academic, looking at the psychological effects, or the sociological effects, and also looking at the sciences. There’s a lot to compute and data to retrieve, research, analyze, etc.

It’s weird because it’s a bad easy for me as a writer. It’s like gosh, you don’t want those to be the circumstances for why writing is so easy. Why can we just have that easy without having the terrible? That was the bad part.

Tahj – It is more or less survival of the fittest at that point.

Kelley – I don’t think people have dealt with what’s going on because we’ve been in a ‘fight or flight’ mode for so long for so long. The social anxiety is real. Therapy is just going through the roof with the number of people who need to talk and express themselves and figure out how to have a relationship. There are many things that we’re not dealing with yet.

Tahj – What advice would you give journalists and other performers regarding the pandemic?

Kelley – My first advice would be don’t take my advice. My second would be to listen to your intuition, what makes you feel alive, and what makes you feel like it’s worth it. The best instructor you can ever have in life is yourself. You’re going to have lots of mentors who will help you bring that out, But whatever is living inside of you is the best instructor ever.

The other thing that I live by, and I think it has probably been helpful to me, is to ask questions. Right, what’s the intent here? What’s the reason someone wants this? Why is someone asking me? Why am I asking this of myself? What life do I want to live, rather than what job do I want to have.

I am thinking about those questions and being okay with not having mentors because, you know. I think the best description of humans I’ve ever received is that we are atoms trying to explain atoms to atoms.

Tahj – Let’s say another crisis came like the pandemic. How would you prepare differently?

Kelley – A big part of being prepared is having good teams, whether your family, or your colleagues or your WhatsApp teams — anyone , you can feel like you can springboard ideas off of, and they’re going to give you valuable feedback. I would say I am being proactive in making sure those people are in my life that I can trust and rely on.

I would also like to see proactive support of people in the community. Maybe a census of what’s going on. I ask myself, How do we consider everyone here and have open communication on a consistent basis, so needs are being met? What are their answers to a crisis, even if no one knows everything? I’m thinking specifically about this in New Orleans because we are small enough to do it.

Tahj- Well, those were all the questions I had for you today. I thank you, and I appreciate your time.