I am now in my final year of University and I am learning about magazine journalism. This is the career I always thought I would enjoy and on this course I am finding that I do love it as much as Broadcast Journalism. We learnt last week about Fireworks and creating spreads. This is what I will have to do for my final assessment but this week I had a play around and you can find what the outcome is above.
The thought bubble reads: "He who says there is no such thing as an honest man, you may be sure is himself a knave."
Both these pictures I picked up from Google Images so they are copyrighted. As were not publishing it or making any money from it this will be OK. For my actual magazine spreads the pictures will need to be from Creative Commons or taken myself.
Week two of working at the Daily Echo. It is not as tiring now, I know everyone's names - just about - and it kind of feels homely.
On Monday I wrote up quite a few press releases. Some were small, some lengthy but I think I am getting better at news writing now. I did 150 words on Chortle's student comedian awards. 150 words about a man that got fined £75 for letting all four of his greyhounds foul the pavement. A very small piece on The Eastleigh Ramblers meeting place and times. I also re-worked my male childcare lecturer article from the Monday before for features instead. It just needed a few more words and a little re-organising of the paragraphs. Lastly, I wrote a small article on The Hamble Point Boat Show in April. Mostly a promotional piece about what you can expect there, when it is etc. Julian Robinson, the Eastleugh reporter, also showed me how to write and put together an article from a press release. It was really helpful and showed me what I need to improve on.
I have discovered that everyone has short hand. There are notepads everywhere with little shorthand scrawlings on them. Just taking a phone message, it is taken in short hand. I managed to get 30 words a minute in my first year of university but now all that I can remember is what 'the' is. I have all the books at home and I think that even if I am not 100 percent on becoming a reporter, shorthand will still be useful. During my interview with Barbra, last Friday I found I could not write quick enough and did not have many quotes that I could put in the article word for word.
Tuesday, I went to the Magistrates court with Sian Davies for a case about a man not keeping his dog under control. It was scheduled for 10.30am but when we got there it was delayed. We went in to another court room and watched to see if there were any other stories we could get whilst waiting for the dog case. I found it really interesting. It felt like a soap opera. The amount of people coming in, one after the other, I was surprised to see. I think I was quite naiive about the amount of crime in Southampton. After a while, the dog case still was not being heard so we went back to the newsroom.
As I had some afternoon free from work I decided to research tv listings. I need the SKY television listings for the Monday 27th August 1990 for my FYP. After exhausting the Internet it dawned on me that the Echo keep an archive of all their past newspapers. It was a long shot but I asked about any magazines they had kept. It turns out that after ITV Meridian moved from Northam they gave all their TV Times magazines to the Echo. No one had seen them since they had been put in to the filing cabinet except me. I was optimistic that out of all magazines the TV Times would be the one to have the SKY listings that I needed. Alas, the only channels they catered for was ITV and Channel 4. Not even the BBC. At a last attempt I asked to see the newspaper itself for August 1990. As it is a local and it does not do TV listings now I did think I was slightly wasting my time but it had to be checked in order for it to be ruled out. Since the 80's they had been putting the paper on to film. I checked the dates and found that not only did the paper have TV listings, it had listings for SKY too. I printed them out and was able to find what I needed for my FYP.
Wednesday was a busy day and I now know that a reporter should not wear heels. I started by doing the 60 second headlines, which I am really enjoying. I then did a phone interview and arranged a photographer to meet with Debbie Beale. She has been collecting animal necesities for a local rescue centre. I then typed up the article and sent it in.
I then went out with Patrick Knox, a news reporter on a couple of his stories. The first was that there was going to be 10 million gallons of water drained from a reservoir on Southampton Common. This would be news worthy because recently people in Southampton have had water meters installed. Meaning that they are paying for the amount of water being used in their household. After walking around the common trying to find the reservoir we gave up. It was a story that needed pictures and we were not able to get any. This was not an easy feat in heels and mud either.
We then went on to interview, David Reynolds. He had recently built a scale model of the Titanic out of matchsticks. I found this interview really interesting and thought it was amazing with what he could do with matchsticks. He had an entire room with amazing models of ships. David was also a Guiness World Record holder for the most matchsticks used, when building a scale model of an oil rig. Patrick had to do a written story as well as a video. Again, short hand definitely comes in handy.
Lastly there had been a tip off that there were rats around a broken gate in a river in Southampton. A river that recently had people canoeing and rowing on it that had caught viles disease. This disease can kill and comes from rat urine. Due to the gate being broken there had been a lot of rubbish and waste build up. I thought it was a lot but apparently it had been cleaned and so we needed to come back in a weeks time to see a lot more waste and rats, to make the story more concrete.
Thursday was amazing! Easily the best day of the week and probably one of the highs for reporters that are more commonly used to finding rats than celebrities. Arron Hendy, another news reporter took me out to No Limits in Southampton. It is a charity that helps get young people off of the street and in to homes and jobs. This is where Matt Cardle was going to be, signing autographs and taking pictures with the young adults there to promote Sports Relief. We were allowed to film and interview him for 15 minutes as well as vox pop the people that use the No Limits service and the manager Liz Carter. Again, due to convergence I filmed all the interviews whilst Arron wrote them and asked the questions for a written piece.
When we were finished there and I had stopped drooling over Matt we moved on to the job centre. Arron has an article in the paper every Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday about people that are looking for a job, entitled, 'Give Me a Chance'. Here we stopped four people for the column and asked them about what jobs they are looking for, how often they look, their education history and how long they have been out of work.
When we were back at the office we edited all of our footage an put it in to a two minute video. At the Daily Echo they use Avid whereas I use Final Cut Pro so this was something else new for me to learn. It did look a lot simpler than Final Cut but it did not look like you could do as much with it. We had problems with sound too which took a while to sort out. Whilst we watied for that to be fixed Arron wrote up the article which appeared in the paper on page 2 on Friday 20th January. Along with Patricks article about matchstick man, David Reynolds on page 3. You can find the matt cardle video here http://www.dailyecho.co.uk/video/
Wow was I tired by Friday. I tried to get in touch with a local woman that is planning to run in the London Marathon in April in aid of the British Heart Foundation. I emailed, phoned and left a message for her but as she is a midwife I think that she was a little too busy.
My first week at the Daily Echo went really well. The team of reporters is a lot smaller than expected and it is painfully quiet but I am starting to see what they all mean about them being a family that work together. I was surprised to see that it is still a very male dominated world with just male editors and only four female reporters out of a team of 10. There is even only one lady on sports.
My first day was spent researching the Olympics and localising it by seeing what events were happening in Southampton. Unfortunately, after a day of chasing up councillors I was told that they were not going to reveal any list of events until they were all confirmed. Thus meaning that my story was dead until the council revealed the details; which may take a couple of weeks.
Due to being on a broadcast course I am not shy around cameras and so was intrigued when I was asked to present their feature, 60 second headlines. They do this every morning and it is a simple package of a reporter reading the headlines of the day whilst the stories are on the screen. I believe we could have done something like this at WINOL, simply read the headlines of the day. This may have allowed to have a larger audience as we would have something fresh on the website every day. You can view the headlines I presented here:
I also wrote a 250 word article about a new male childcare professor. The story came from a press release and was very simple but after doing broadcast journalism for the last two years I think I could have used a refresher in news writing. I finished and sent it in but I have a feeling that it may not be used or saved for a slow news day as it is all ready dated by three months.
Day two and I was all ready feeling more relaxed. Ian Murray, the editor and chief of the newspaper had a talk with me and the other work experience students that I actually felt was really empowering. He spoke of how he got in to Journalism, what he does, the history of the paper and the troublesome times that the paper is in.
After meeting with Ian I had a small meeting with Andy Bissell, the features editor and the managing editor when Gordon is not in. He was really nice and spoke about his career and what we hope to do when we graduate. He also gave myself and Rosie, the other person on work experience, two jobs to do. The first was for a magazine, Hampshire Bride. There was a column in the last issue on the prices of different parts of the wedding, done by a survey company. This year no one could find an up-to-date survey so my job was to find prices for each item. Such as tiaras, rings, honeymoons, the dress, shoes etc and to get a price for on a budget, average and luxury. Needless to say, I had a lot of fun with the luxury price range. This also took a lot longer than I first expected and I had a couple of days to finish it up.
On my third day, was the second task Andy set us. There is a new theory test coming out at the end of the month with 100 questions on it. These questions are harder and there are more than there are now; only 50. We went to West Quay and got ten people to answer ten questions on the new test. We had to have six diverse people to complete it, along with a picture, a comment, their age, name and where they come from. We then chose the six best people and wrote up their captions. For example they sounded like, 'Domonique Jenkins, 21 of Southampton was at the top with 9 out of 10. She said: "I never thought I would do so well, I took my theory test with only 35 questions".' This was to accompany an article about the actual test itself.
Thursday was my finishing of the bridal research. I put in a lot of information and what to do if you were on a budget; how to save more money. I also contacted Dilys Gartside of Cyclewise to ask her to write two articles on cycling. The paper was doing a, 'new year, new you' piece and wanted top ten tips to get in to cycling and the benefits of it as an exercise.
The last day of the week was a welcome relief. I thought that I worked hard during the week and then worked hard at the weekend too with university and working at IKEA; but I have never been so tired. A 5 day week is a lot harder than I thought.
I read the headlines again, and knowing what to expect and what the finished article would look like I think I did a lot better. Please find this one above. I also sent Dilys's articles in to be subbed and put in to the paper on the following Tuesday. Friday was my first interview of the week too. Rosie and I were sent to Fitness First in Shirley to interview a man that had drastically changed his lifestyle and lost a lot of weight. We also went to interview a lady about colonic irrigation. My interviewee was Barbra Perry, a colonic hydrologist. She explained colonic irrigation, the lifestyle, the different foods and what should be eaten with what and - no - I did not try it our for myself. Barbra says that it is very comfortable and not painful at all but I do not think that I will be giving that a go. I wrote up the article and sent it in to Andy. Sadly the interview did not make the paper as the interview was last minute and there was no room for it. However, you may find it on here in a week or so.
Overall, a really good first week. I have all ready learnt so much and seen how different a newspaper is to broadcast journalism. After studying broadcast for three years now I wanted to see what the written world was like. It is a lot quieter and instead of people running around panicking at 3pm, everyone looks very calm. News happens throughout the day and I have seen first hand that what the editor wants, the editor gets and I actually find it really interesting. I thought that I only wanted to work in broadcast but I can see myself working for a paper now too. I think I need as many options open as possible in the current economic climate.
