Week five of Internship

For my fifth week at the Bulletin I was assigned two stories and then a short re-write piece. The first story was a profile on local band Voodoo cats. I was extremely happy to do this piece because not only do I love profile but anything to do with music is an easy sell for me. When I was given the story, I recognised the band name and realised that I had actually seen them perform on numerous occasions at one of my previous waitressing jobs. So it was great that I already knew who they were. The interview went well, and it was the first time I have ever interviewed more than one person at a time (speaker phone - two piece band- you do the math). Writing the story went fairly well, I knew straight way that there were 3 different ways I could write the story, the hardest part however was choosing a catchy lead and a neat tie off for the ending. I chose to go with the classic technique of linking the last paragraph to the first. Fingers crossed that editor approves and performs only minimal changes to the piece.

The second write up was on an Elvis and Roy Orbinson Tribute show at Jupiters. The usually phone tag situation occurred where I'd ring the contact they wouldn't answer and they would ring me when I had stepped away from my computer. This was a little frustrating because I need to get into contact with Jupiters to get the contact number of one of the performers that I needed to interview. Fortunately I had done my first two stories before 12 so at least I had a bit of time to play with.

After I got into contact with Jupiters, I was told that there were only a handful of tickets left, and those were expected to be sold by the end of the day. Which made me think - is there any point in writing an article about an "Amazing Tribute Show" that no-one can get tickets too? Unfortunately both Isis and the feature editor were not in, and the chief of staff was also a bit unsure about whether or not to write the article.

After talking to the women who use to edit the Guide, she suggested that I write a little 100-200 word piece on the Jupiters Tribute show. I never recieved the contact information from Jupiters, but because I only had to write 100 words it didn't matter, I just used the little information I had. For the rest of the afternoon I did a couple of re-writes from media releases. The thing that is challenging with these pieces is the temptation to spit out the information and not putting a great deal of effort into them - because they are only 100 words. I am trying not to have that attitude, and to care about every little story and blurb I write, but the temptation is always there!