Reflective Journal

During my 12 week Internship at the Bulletin I learnt many valuable lessons. For the most part, I spent my time in the features department of the newspaper interviewing solo artists, local bands, DJ’s, out of state acts and event coordinators. I did however get out into the field completing Vox Pop questionnaires as well as a few news stories. In this blog entry I will be taking a look back at my past 12 weeks, detailing my various responsibilities, analysing my performance and discussing the ethical issues I encountered.

Before I delve into my nostalgic entry, allow me to provide a brief overview of Townsville’s local newspaper. The Townsville Bulletin is responsible for covering news worthy events through out Townsville and the North/North West district. While keeping readers informed about regional politics, news and current affairs there is also a focus on local entertainment and human interest stories. With a broad circulation area, the paper aims to met the interests of readers within Townsville and abroad. In addition to this wide regional coverage, the paper also provides several pull out feature sections, Savvy, The Weekender and The Guide, which is where the majority of my articles were published.

As I was based in the features department, most of my interviews were conducted over the phone. Phone interviews were necessary as many of my interviewees were not in Townsville, as a result I did not step out of the office for the first few weeks. While the phone interviews were always successful, I could not help but compare them to traditional face to face interviews. Previous to my internship, all my interviews had been conducted in that manner so it was a bit of a switch for me. While I always received the necessary information and great quotes, I noticed upon re-playing my audio recording that I sounded disengaged from the conversation. I believe this was because I could not see my interviewee, there was no eye contact and I had no idea what they looked like. In the past I had always melded physical descriptions of the interviewees into my articles, something that could not be achieved through a phone interview. In order to fill this void, I would ask questions that were likely to lead to funny, quirky or intriguing little stories that I would be able to employ as opening anecdotes. Questions such as “Have there been any funny moments at previous performances?” “Was there a particular moment when you realized that you wanted to pursue music professionally?” or “What is your fondest memory from the road?” were all kept as backup prompters, in case the interviewee had not brought up interesting stories on their own. Once I had this tactic available to me, phone interviews become a lot more enjoyable and engaging for me.

The booking of photo sessions was another responsibility entrusted to me. Initially the hardest part for me was deciding on a location. The first photo session I book was with local vocalist Ebony Buckle, a young and pretty girl so I selected the memorial gardens in Thuringowa as I thought that would make a beautiful background. When the article and photo was published I noticed that the photo had been taken at a low angle, so the background was nothing but sky. I assume this was done so that Ebony was the focus of the photo rather then the gardens. After this experience I always had musicians, bands and DJ’s either photographed in their homes, practice space or at venues where they were playing. I believe this made the photographs more organic, while also being much easier for the talent as the environment was familiar to them.

On the occasion when I had finished all my allotted stories for the day, I would spend the afternoon reviewing Albums. This was a very comfortable practice for me as music is a great passion of mine and my ultimate career goal is to work at one of the music magazines in either America or the United Kingdom. In addition to my reviews, I was also required to do a few rewriting for pieces such as ‘cinema group’ where I would have to write a synopsis on a foreign film. On occasion I would also do mini-biographies on celebrities for Savvy Magazine. These little re-writes were easy enough as they only took 15 minutes to complete with the aid of a Google search.

On several occasions I was required to go out with a photographer to complete Vox Pop for either Savvy Magazine or topical news stories. For news stories I simply had to find two guys and two girls to answer a question that had been given to me by my mentor Isis Symes. This type of Vox Pop was very easy as it did not require me to think on the spot or do any deep digging in order to get the required information. The Vox Pops for Savvy however were much more in depth. Savvy required me to find one girl and one guy, ask them five random questions and then discover a little bit about them so I could write a blurb to accompany their photo. Coming up with the five random questions was easy enough, but trying to decipher something else from the talent required a little more thought. I chose to always start with the five random questions because this often led to an interesting answer, so I could ask the talent to tell me more about their answer. For example, one of my random questions was “What is the worst injury you ever had?” from the talents answer, I asked how did this injury happen? How old were you? And so on. The other problem I encountered with Vox Pops relates to time constraints. In order to quicken up my writing skills I chose not to take a recorder along on these expeditions. As I do not know short hand, I had to write brief disjointed notes. Even with these brief notes I found that it still took me a long jot down the talents answers. I have no doubt that there was some lost information as a result, but I figure the best way to improve my note taking skills was by going out and interviewing people on the fly. However, I do believe that it would help immensely if I were able to learn short hand in the future as I have no doubt it would be a beneficial skill to have.

The other responsibility that obviously fell into my hands was the actual writing of my features and news articles. The largest problem I had with feature articles was the overwhelming amount of information and quotes. I realise that it is better to have too much information as opposed to too little, but there were occasions when I simply didn’t know where to start. To overcome this I would start by constructing the body of the story first, leaving the lead for later. I found that once I started, the story would virtually write itself. As I went along I would rearrange and rewrite the article so that it had a better flow. I would also try and use a quirky anecdote as the lead in order to hook in my readers. While some of these tactics were employed in news writing, I did struggle a little bit more with news style.

When it came to news articles, the distribution of quotes and structure of the story was easy enough however, I found the lead intensely difficult to get right. During my 12 weeks, I only wrote four news articles, but I found these to be particularly painful. The chief of staff explained to me that my leads were far too serious, because me articles were accompanied with pictures, these are typically more light hearted stories. It took me a while to grasp what she was saying but then it hit me like a ton of bricks, I had been starting my soft news stories with hard news leads. Once I understood this, my leads did improve, but only after many rewrites.

Over the course of my internship I did run into a few ethical issues. One of the biggest ones occurred in my second week when the publicist of a hip hop artists asked if I would email him a copy of the story before it was published. I am sure this occurred because I have given him my JCU email address. I instinctively knew that I had the right to refuse but decided to consult some of the other reporters at the Bulletin. The decision was unanimous; no I should not send him a copy. I quickly wrote back to the publicist and explained in a polite manner that it would be unethical for me to send a copy of the article as it undermined my journalistic integrity. The next big mistake I made was failing to collect the contact details of my interviewees on two separate news stories. I believe I made this blunder because in the features department the contact phone numbers had been given to me, so I simply forgot with the news stories. This is a complete rookie mistake and I can hardly believe I did it. Needless to say, the one time I did not have my talents contact information was the one instance when I actually needed it. Upon returning to the Bulletin after interviewing a few army lieutenants, I realised that I actually did not understand most of what they had said. Fortunately there was a contact number on the press release so I was able to clear a few things up after that, but I got lucky.

Through out my internship I am proud to say that I met every deadline that I was given. If a story could not be completed it was because the talent was not answering their phone, and that was very rare. When I started my Internship at the Bulletin I was already a confident writer and interviewer, I had a bank load of musical knowledge which I drew on when interviewing musicians, writing and reviewing CDs. However, I also learnt some very important lessons throughout my 12 weeks. I learnt quickly that you can not depend on recording devices, as these failed me on several occasions. Fortunately I always take notes so I was able to go ahead with the story in these instances. I have since realised however that I do need to become more efficient with my note taking as it is clear that I write too slow. For the first few weeks my feature articles were heavily edited, with the paragraphs being rearranged and the lead changed completely. However, I quickly righted this by using either an interesting anecdote or the most important fact as the lead, and then allowing the story to flow from there.

Through my Internship I was able to experience first hand what it means to be a newspaper reporter and features writer. While mentors, staff and other resources were always available, it was me alone who had to research, interview, construct and perfect my copy. While support was present, I largely worked independently which meant that it was up to me to complete my set tasks and meet my deadlines. I learnt valuable lessons through out these 12 weeks as I was finally able to go out into the real world and put my textbook knowledge to the test.