Tuesday 10 April 2007

Work Placement

Easter is upon us and Im spending my week working for the wonderful Reading Evening Post. Iv only been there for one day so far and it wasn't exactly the most thrilling, as I wasn't really given that much to do and it's kinda hard to find your own stories when you havn't been to the town for months and you don't get given a password to the wonderful world of the web until after lunch. Still, at least I was able to catch up on the nationals - I must have read almost every copy cover to cover this morning!

That said, I did manage to contribute a number of stories today. Quite a few were just nibs and most of them weren't particularly exciting. However, I did manage to get a international scoop on Guinea Pig day at a local vets! Im working on a story about flight paths over Reading, apparently the planes from Heathrow are flying very low these days so hopefully that will amount to something. I don't want to say too much though...you never know who could be watching, especially as it hasn't been published yet.

One thing that disappointed me was that I didn't get out of the office today. When I worked at the Wokingham Times I was out almost every day - at inquests, court cases, vox pops and the like. Today I spent the day inside, working off the phone. I realise that this is the way of the journalism world these days, but I still fancied a trip out in the sunshine!

When I thought about it though, this is actually a practice that I tend to do myself when writing for UCE News site. If you were to watch me writing stories for the site, chances are you would see me lying in my bed at stupid o'clock in the morning researching things from websites and wondering whether 3am is too late to call somebody for a quote (unless they live in Australia it is). I like to think Im catering for our "foreign market".

I tried to adapt some of my Online Journalism skills to finding stories (when I finally got internet access!) but so far Im hitting blanks with my Technorati blog searches. Il keep trying tomorow.

Anyways, as I'll have Journalism on the brain this week, chances are you'll be reading more about my life this week. Hopefully some of my stories will be posted on their website so that I can show you all links and you can smile politely.

Bon Soir

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