Trade magazine publishing is a very strange game in a lot of ways. The public are always interested in journalists and journalism as a theoretical beast but the practicalities elude them. The desire people have to meet others that they perceive to have more interesting lives than them means it instantly invokes a romantic ideal when they hear it's your profession.
In my experience, there's an assumption that being a journalist automatically means you must work for either:
a) A national newspaper
b) A glamorous glossy or
c) Something that covers movies, music or celebrities
So if you're asked "What do you do?" and you say "I'm a journalist", the eyebrows always shoot up with a "really? who for?".
And that's just setting you up for a fall. If they're expecting "well, I've just got back from being embedded with the US marines in Fallujah" or "well, I'm interviewing Orlando Bloom tomorrow at the Ivy" then the actual answer of "I work for a trade magazine covering the retail interiors industry" means those eyebrows drop faster than Ron Atkinson's income.
