Week 11 of Internship

Today I was based in the Newsroom. The first story I was given was on a RC helicopter competition being held over the weekend. I was given a media release and flyer for the event and that was it. This is definitely a change from the last few weeks because I did not know who I would be interviewing until I got out to the location. Usually I know exactly who I am interviewing because I am doing a phone interview and so I have to personally chase up the talent myself. In this instance I went out to the location with a photographer and basically asked around, “who has a good story? Who would make for a good interview?” I quickly found out that one of the “pilots” was from Sydney, which seemed a long way to travel for a toy helicopter competition.

Thankfully the guy was atheistically pleasing as well so the photographer and I thought the profile would work best if he was the subject. While I was only suppose to interview one person, another competitor obviously felt that his opinion was also worth sharing and kept answering questions that I was not directed at him. Fortunately the photographer caught on and she was able to distract him for long enough so I could interview the talent. By the time my interview had completed and photos had been taken, 45 minutes had passed!

Once I was back in the newsroom I was very concern about my story, I had not taken a voice recorder because I wanted to fasten up my writing pace. The real problem however is that the piece had to be a profile on one competitor but the information provided by the event co-coordinator was more informative about said event….go figure. In the end, I had to put some quotes in by the coordinator in order to get all the essential information in. Fortunately I found that once I started writing the piece came together very smoothly.

Once that story was compete, sorry complete, I was sent the media release about an event being held at the local RSA. The ceremony involved the presenting of blazers to RAR soldiers are going to compete in Cambrian Patrol in the London. The Cambrian Patrol is basically the commonwealth games of the Army. Once I had done up my questions I found that I had about an hour to kill until it was time to run out and do my interview

I headed out on my second story to the Townsville RSL, a lot more relaxed. But then when I walked in the door there was that moment of confusion, looking around the room who was looking at me and the photographer, with no idea who I was suppose to talk to. Luckily the events head chief made his way over to us. I asked him if there was anyone I could talk to who was going over to compete in the competition, and he introduced me to the right fellows. The interview went fine, the only problem was when more then one person was talking and I had to scribble down as much as I could catch from each guy.

After the interview and photos were done, I didn’t feel at all worried about the story until I got back to the news desk. The usually “where do I start?” question popped up and while I was writing the story I was definitely struggling to met my supposed length. In order to over come this I simply included some in-direct quotes, and then the piece came together fairly quickly towards the end.

However, once I had told the Chief of staff that my stories were done and in - she told me (after reading them) that I needed to work on me leads. She said that because they were picture stories the should be fun and bubbly "silly." This surprised me. I suppose with all my focus on feature writing over the past year I had forgotten the difference between hard and soft news. These were soft news stories but I was writing them like hard news - cold, sterile facts - bam bam bam. Needless to say it, going back to the computer and re-doing the leads seemed particularly painful. I had to re-ring one of my sources (whose contact was on their email) and basically re-interview him. I must admit I was pretty embarrassed that I had to do that, but at least it made me understand the story content better.

Another rookie mistake I made, and I don't even know why I did it, was failing to get the contact information from the people I interviewed! Something that has only been drilled into me from day one at JCU!! I have no idea how I managed to forget the devastatingly basic journalist tactic. In the end though, I managed to make do with the quotes I had and made the stories work. So my verdict for this week is, news journalism is alright but I know where my passion lies, so I am looking forward to returning to feature writing next week! :)