Gainsborough mum 'cracks' at Severn Trent

My work experience story about a single mum trying to get compensation from Severn Trent after outside seage works caused cracks all over her living room appeared on the Gainsborough Standard website.

I was amazed at how evasive press officers can be: it took me the best part of three days to get such a bland quote!

Other stories include a GP text messaging service, a local charity car wash and parents worried about an absent lollipop lady.

Gotta love local journalism!

Standard stories and complaints about my research skills

A story I wrote about the Gainsborough District Scouts St Georges Day parade appeared online today.

Also, a one about fundraising runners presenting a cheque to a Reading MS society.

Over at Sam Ellis' blog, the chairman of Retford Model Flying Club attacked my research skills for a critical comment I made about the club's objection to Cottam Wind Farm proposals.

I particularly like the polite address to Sam: "It's so easy to say 'they could easily find another flying site' before you make comments like that you should do your research."

As opposed to the, erm, less polite address to myself: "Suggest you get your facts right, then again I suppose journalists are notorious for getting it WRONG!"

It's taught me that, as a journalist, even when voicing my own opinion and not attempting to report facts, I must still expect to be thought wrong. Useful to know!

Encourging jobless journalists

I subscribe to many mailing lists (too many really, they clutter up my inbox) but I was particularly taken with the subject line of today's journalism.co.uk emailshot.

Celebrate! Your new journalism job is here it boomed jovially as my inbox loaded.

Indulging its marketing lure, I clicked the email open. Unsurprisingly, my new journalism job was not there. I didn't have an offer from any of the many jobs I've applied for, nor was there news of a miraculous new training scheme.

The only actual jobs in the email were the financial reporter in Frankfurt gig they've been pushing all week and managing editor for Singapore magazine Flight.

J.co.uk often have come-hither subject lines: Your new journalism career starts here and Journalism job du jour regularly crop up.

But the order to Celebrate! made me wonder why recruitment agencies and middlemen like j.co.uk feel they need to generate enthusiasm for jobs.

Yes, the industry is struggling, but that doesn't mean that jobs aren't being filled - quite the opposite. Students on my course scan j.co.uk and holdthefrontpage daily for new vacancies, as well as trawling media guardian and countless agencies. Demand is most certainly not the issue.

Are they trying to lift our spirits? Or do they really think we are gullible enough to believe a personally tailored job is waiting just behind a weblink?

Self-justification for Newsbeat's tabloid behaviour

At the BBC's The Editors blog, Newsbeat's Rod McKenzie defended his decision to constantly refer to Britain's Got Talent contestant Susan Boyle as a virgin.

He said:

"This is not some salacious reporting of sex lives or lack of them. It's a crucial part of her back story and one she herself has highlighted on many media interviews. She's never had a boyfriend and these details are unusual and interesting. Worth reporting, I would argue."

Cue vitriolic comments about Mr McKenzie's "fatuous self-serving nonsense", "peice[sic] of pathetic drivel" and "constant pandering to the salacious, vain and vacuous elements of our culture".

One poster, Dotconnect, said:

"Absolute rubbish Rod. You're not fooling anyone, other than perhaps yourself. She's not had a boyfriend, so rather than referring to her as a singleton, you hone in on the 'lack of sex' angle? What's wrong with just saying "who's never been kissed", which is how others are more respectfully describing her, and how she described herself? Please don't tell me time constraints mean you have to be more succinct than that.

Just be honest. This has everything to do with "virgin" being a more direct statement of her sexual history, and that being more "sensational" to a youthful, more sex-obsessed audience. Absolutely no different to kids brought up on Skins, insecure of themselves, and laughing at "the virgin" in the playground."

The commentators are genuinely angry, seemingly more so by Mr McKenzie's blogpost than the orginal sexual definition.

I have very little interest in the private lives of contestants on any reality TV show, but it's true to say that without an interesting background they get far less airtime. Newsbeat was capitalising on this, as they often do, to get the attention of Radio 1's 'young' audience. I wonder how old all the commentators are?

Work experience with award-winning journalists

For the last three weeks I've been work-exing at three different news organisations: INS News agency, the Reading Evening Post and Gainsborough Standard.

The Post's investigative reporter Anna Roberts has been shortlisted for Press Gazette's Regional Young Journalist of the Year. Over at the Standard, Chantal Spittles won the NCTJ's Best News Interview Paper Award for her NCEs. So depsite all the doom and gloom, some journos are still recognised for their good work!

A couple of my humble offerings (sans bylines) have appeared on the Evening Post's website: a call to landlords to quiz the council and notice of a photo exhibition. Not sure the subs properly read this story about a fundraising Midnight Walk for Sue Ryder Care though! It gives some idea of how far the Post trusts their work experience students with 'real' news...

Print vs web journalism: ink, blogs and COPY!

Just found The Landline's Print media gets a lifeline video on YouTube.

As a up-and-coming, multimedia-trained and web-savvy journo, I can't relate to it at all.





...COPY!

Moonlighting as a professional: graduate media blog

I've got a new blog running over at TopEmployers about different graduate media roles.

New post contemplates the changing role of journalism in the face of UGC and citizen journalism.

Just thought I should spread the word. Go on, take a look. What harm could it do? Disagree with me and lets get a dialogue going! ;P

Lush Cosmetics cameo on Apprentice episode 4

In such dark times as these, we turn to the media for entertainment, and for me that means switching the box to BBC1 at 9pm on Wednesdays.

I'm an unashamed, diehard follower of the Apprentice, even though I claim to despise 'reality TV'. I won't try to defend my passion by claiming the Apprentice promotes business, or introduces a younger audience to entreprenurism, or even has a sensible premise. It's as fake and constructed as Big Brother and the X factor, but there is something alluring about the format.

Every time Surallan walks through the studio 'Boardroom'/toilet door, I'm gripped by what (scripted?) acidic putdown he will utter. I adore Margaret's expressive eyebrows and Nick's incredulous glances. I lap up the Apprentices' (Apprentici?) bullsy self-sales pitch with glee (Noorul's "I look posh and I sound posh" is the best so far, although Kimberly's "rough, tough, cream puff" line is a close second.)

In short, I laugh and snort and make derisive comments about a group of overconfident attention-seekers who only prove that their bullsy self-sales pitches are complete nonsense. I cringe at their mistakes (series 4 kosher chicken corker springs to mind) and feel vindictive glee when they inevitably turn on each other in the Boardroom.

Most tellingly of all, I'm usually on annap's live Guardian blog, reading snarky comments as the action unfolds.

But last night was even better. My other great passion, since my student days in Reading, is Lush. You know, the shops you can smell a mile away because they make their products from fruit and ten tonnes of essential oil?

Imagine my delight when, tasked with creating a new soap, the Apprentici arrive at Poole, Dorset. There was a glimpse of the telling green logo, the familiar font on essential oil bottles, and then to top it all the lovely Simon Constantine turned up. I was squeeing like a H/H shipper.

The cedarwood/sandalwood debacle was so bad Nick had to warn them before the boardroom showdown: against the rules but only humane in the circumstances. Team leader Paula and crony Yasmina mistook 3% for 3 grams, and thought £700-worth of sandalwood oil would only cost a fiver. Mistake that cost them the task. But what struck me was not the money - an abstract figure - but the difference in volume. Okay, they thought they were paying for 3 grams, fair enough. But shouldn't something have clicked when they poured a huge tub of oil into the mix? How much did they think 3 grams WAS?

Lush obviously cashed in to the exposure, sending out a special Apprentice-themed email and splashing it all over their website.

What I particularly like is the promotion of -you guessed it- Sandalwood oil and Honey Waffle soap - yes Ignite, you can make successful soap with a honeycomb centre!

The spiralling dilemma of journalism students: class of 2009

It seemed too good to be true - a media organisation running two graduate schemes?
In the middle of a credit crunch? Seriously?

But it was not to last. The Press Association has officially cancelled its Multimedia Journalist Traineeship for 2009.

Now, according to the Guardian, applicants were sent a letter last week. As I'm on work experience at Reading I haven't seen mine, but I'm sure it's waiting for me on the doormat. I found out about the whole thing from Journalism.co.uk yesterday.

This leaves only the Times and PA's production journalist scheme left for those hoping to get onto the nationals.

As another door slams shut, the chances of finding meaningful employment in this sector I so dearly want to work in seem slim. Already this year, the Telegraph and Guardian have cancelled their schemes, and Trinity Mirror froze their trainee recruitment last year, although interestingly their website doesn't mention this. I guess Dianne Reilly had a lot of students to disappoint.

The Daily Mail, while apprently keeping its traineeship, was so swamped with applicants that most were rejected immediately to get the numbers down.

So what is left? Ben Spencer tries to keep upbeat and positive but basically for new starters, fresh out of university with few contacts and no money, the future looks grim.

I almost feel sorry for the Times HR department.

A jigsaw of information: news agencies, national and local press

I'm nearly at the end of my week with INS News Agency, and it's been something of an eye-opener.

INS is quite large and supplies copy for the national tabloids (amongst others), focusing on court reporting and quirky stories in the South East of England.

As with all media organisations there is a lot of office work, but I'm encouraged by the amount of time journalists spend away from their desks, whether in court or door knocking as the case may be.

What this week hammered home to me is the fierce inter-connectivity of media. The nationals take stories from the locals, the locals trace national stories back to their area, and the agencies float between the two, harvesting information from one and passing it to the other, and vice versa. While the pressure is still on to find original stories and sell them to the nationals, a large part of agency work seems to be getting information across as quickly as possible, regardless of where that information orignally came from.

Editorially the week's been a real lesson in audience understanding. The demands of writing for national dailies are completely at odds with local audiences, and my carefully written NCTJ-style copy has been shredded into INS style, which amuses me no end.

Holiday? What holiday?

Easter holiday has descended, and Sheffield University students are free of responsiblity for the next three weeks in recognition of this holy festival. Sheffield Journalism Postgrads, however, shall not be relaxing, as we are all on Work Experience.

I've just arrived in Reading to start one week with with INS News agency and a second at the Evening Post, which should be interesting given GMG's plans to cut jobs at the paper.

I have high hopes for the next fortnight, as I feel I know far more than last year when I workexed at the Reading Chronicle for a fortnight. This time I'll be a useful addition to the newsroom, rather than a nervous presence hovering in the background.