The interview from Hell - Part 2

The last part of the elimination process was a face-off with one of the lecturers.

Armed with my portfolio of cuttings I was all set to impress the hierarchy of journalism academia with my experience and knowledge.

Instead it was the final nail in the coffin for any chance of getting on to the course.

I was asked who my favourite newspaper journalists were. A plethora of television correspondents flooded my mind but any broadsheet reporters had temporarily left the internal newsroom.

I was probably expected to say Woodward or Bernstein or maybe even David Leigh or Nick Davies or Truman Capote.

I managed to stumble out: “Erm…Charlie Brooker…Hadley Freeman…”

I had Catherine Townsend (ex-sex columnist for the Independent) on the tip of my tongue but I held back.

I could hear the gates to the journalist’s Mecca slamming shut as I uttered those two names.

But it just got worse. My experience was picked apart. Student journalism didn’t “count” as experience.

Clearly, my three years of writing, editing, proofreading, commissioning articles, laying out pages using InDesign, liaising with PR companies, attending film screenings and interviewing people all counted for nothing.

My explanation for how I managed to get five months experience on a regional magazine* through sheer initiative was rewarded with a sceptical, glassy-eyed look.

Despite the magazine being published by an upmarket newspaper it appears my two days of flicking through the newspaper itself were prized more highly.

Nor did it matter that I was working as a news aggregator at a financial newswire at the time.

My job entailed finding existing stories which I summarised for readers in a daily news round up. But I wanted to report and break news instead of re-hashing copy.

(During the introductory talk I was told that graduates from the course went on to work at the company I was then employed at. I did mention this to the eliminator but it was of no consequence.)

To add further insult to injury, I was smacked with a wave of condescension when I told that I was “very enthusiastic” and that maybe I should apply for the magazine journalism course.

In my head I yelled “but I want to be a newspaper reporter”. I wonder if my face betrayed my seething frustration.

The battle was soon over and the lecturer had vetted out another wannabe. You are the Weakest Link, good bye.

As I left the interview room and collected my things for the journey home I felt incredibly hollow.

All hope of getting into journalism seemed to be extinguished.

I realised then that I may have to take the most obstacle-ridden path to reach my destination. Maybe that’s what makes the satisfaction of reaching a goal all the more sweet.


*I had ended up on the editorial team of the magazine while initially carrying out two weeks work experience at a national newspaper.

The first two days at the national I was sat at a desk and advised to read the paper. I was gruffly rebuffed when I asked a reporter if I could attend a press conference with them.

It was only after pestering my minders that I was elevated to the fifth floor to work on an under-staffed, under-funded magazine set for re-launch at the end of the week.

I spent the three months of my summer holidays from university there and a further two months after I finished my degree. It was the best experience I ever had. That was my summer of education and where I made life-long friends.

The interview from Hell - Part 1

I was told that it would last a whole day and that lunch would be provided. Little did I know what I had let myself in for.

I had been invited to an interview for a coveted place on the newspaper course of an institution considered to be journalism’s equivalent of Oxbridge.

A place on this course can lead to a job at the Guardian or the BBC.

Its name on your CV is like a password into the journalists' brotherhood and you will be welcomed in with open arms. I am sure they even have secret handshake.

The interview was like a one-day reporting boot camp: only the fittest would survive and the rest would have their dreams trounced under foot.

Following an introductory talk they thrust us onto the streets to test our nous for news.

We had to find and write up a story. Our deadline was the end of the day. It was then that I wished I had worn flats.

I was suspiciously scanning around for fellow recruits who might poach a potential story when I came across two women tidying up what seemed to be a unfinished adventure playground.

I had found my story. It turns out they were working on a new recreation zone for disadvantaged kids in the area.

I wrote down the Who, What, Where, Why, When and How (okay, maybe I wasn’t quite at that stage just yet but I answered most of them) and some other details before returning to base camp.

After lunch came the current affairs test. I managed to answer the one about the Daily Express apologising for suggesting friends of Gerry and Kate McCann may have misled authorities who were investigating the disappearance of their daughter Madeleine McCann.

I was also given a list of names and asked to write down which newspapers they edited.

Thanks to Wikpedia I can now say:

Alan Rusbridger – The Guardian
John Mulholland – The Observer
Roger Alton – The Independent
John Mullin – The Independent on Sunday
Will Lewis – The Daily Telegraph
Ian MacGregor – The Sunday Telegraph
Lionel Barber – The FT
James Harding – The Times
John Witherow – The Sunday Times
Peter Hill – Daily Express
Martin Townsend – Sunday Express
Paul Dacre – Daily Mail
Peter Wright - Mail on Sunday
Dominic Mohan – The Sun
Richard Wallace – Daily Mirror
Richard Wallace – Sunday Mirror
Dawn Neesom – Daily Star
Pam McVitie – Daily Sport
Bill Benfield – The Morning Star
Lloyd Embley – The People
Nick Appleyard – Sunday Sport
Colin Myler – News of the World

Intrepid video reporter extraordinaire

This week I have been running around campus with a video camera strapped to my hand as I attempt to be a television reporter.

The good news is that I have finally found an idea for my three-minute package. The bad news is that I have as much technological wizardry as a potato.

That may be a slight exaggeration but my prowess with a video camera leaves a lot to be desired.

My more technologically-advanced friend showed me how to extend the legs on the tripod otherwise I would have been hoisting it up above my head with camera on top trying to get a better angle.

I have also discovered that there is a certain skill to being able to assemble the tripod and camera fixed on top at a moment’s notice.

I have as yet to be able to do this either gracefully or inconspicuously. On the plus side I haven’t accidentally whacked anyone with it.

Once I learnt where the on/off and record/stop buttons were I began my journey as an intrepid reporter extraordinaire.

My brilliant idea was to report on One World Week which is a week-long series of events to enhance multiculturalism.

Since Brunel University has around 120 different nationalities with sixty per cent of students being an ethnic minority I had myself covered for camera fodder.

With tripod legs akimbo and electrical eye open I captured footage of a literature event, international food and some Sikh martial arts.

Not bad for a last minute idea that only really came together on Tuesday.

The fun bit is trying to figure out how to edit it all together. I am slowly getting to grips with Final Cut Pro after having another session on it the other day.

I have another two video assignments to complete so I think I may need to go out and do some more filming.

By the end of this term I will submit: a three-minute video/audio/online package; a news story via one of those mediums; and three vox pops totalling 45 seconds also using one of the three media options on offer.

I have decided to use video as my medium of choice for each assignment. Hopefully, I will be able to master it. I shall monitor my progress and report back the results: disastrous or otherwise.

I may be no Michael Moore but I will give it my best shot (no pun intended).

I'll cry you a river

We all cry now and again don’t we? I mean, everybody has a little cry sometimes, right? But I think you can end up crying too much, or at least I do.

After getting my heart broken in the first year of university I proceeded to spend the next two years bawling my eyes out.

I would go to sleep with a face wet with tears and wake up puffy-eyed with a blocked nose. After realising I was still alive I would start wailing again.

I’ve got over that part of my life. But as a lingering consequence of those depressing days I seem to blub at the slightest thing either happy or sad.

Before first year it would take me a lot to shed a tear. I would have to either be incredibly emotionally distressed or in severe pain.

Now though the slightest thing can set me off. It’s ridiculous.

I will be watching the advert for Channel 4’s Secret Millionaire and I start sniffing at the kindness of humanity. It’s difficult to even sit through an episode without a packet of tissues.

I cried when a guy and a girl get back together. She walked out on him after getting fed up of his constant lateness but then he sends her text and they fall back in love. This was a 40 second advert for Blackberry. It’s pathetic.

While watching another Channel 4 favourite How To Look Good Naked, I get horribly emotional.

It’s at the bit where the person sees themselves in the mirror post-make over and realises that they were always beautiful. I weep along with them during their moment of self-discovery.

I also mourn with them in the pre-make over mirror sequence when they are stripped down to their underwear. I can feel their low self-esteem.

Saying this, I would probably cry if I had to display my unclothed body on national television.

My mum says that you become more empathetic after you have kids. I am still a childless twenty-something so I don’t know where all this crying has come from. Maybe it’s the years of crying I denied myself. Who knows.

I dread to think what sort of state I will be in when I do eventually become a mother.

I will probably be dabbing my eyes with baby wipes while changing my offspring’s nappies. Or I will have a roll of kitchen towel in one hand, to mop my tear-streaked cheeks, while feeding my gurgling tot carrot puree with the other.

Work experience

Day 3 in the humble life of a workie at the Harrow Observer and I had my first unpleasant experience.

I answered the phone to an enraged woman who became further infuriated as soon as I uttered the words “work experience”.

She lambasted me for not being a proper journalist because I wasn’t part of the National Union of Journalists. (I just haven’t got around to it yet.)

Clearly, in her world if you don’t belong to the NUJ then you’re not actually a journalist.

She then grilled me on why the NUJ didn’t train reporters properly and how people like us were allowed to man the phones.

She was about to say something about media law to which I could have responded curtly with the fact that I do have Part 1 which the NCTJ not the NUJ requires. But I thought it was best to leave it.

I swiftly passed her over to a real journalist who got an interrogation about whether his shorthand was up to scratch.

There was also something about the NUJ needing to train reporters in the Mental Health Act and unfair dismissal. (We do learn about the latter.)

When the reporter I had foisted her onto realised that she was on a pay phone, he kept her talking until the change ran out and the phone cut off.

I might hasten to add that the woman was calling to air her grievances about being illegally sectioned in a mental hospital.

So that is just another day in the life of a workie. I hate saying that I am on work experience because of the connotations that go with it.

As soon as I say that I’m on work experience I can feel the warmth fade from the voice on the other end of the line.

Suddenly, they are ten thousand levels above you and you are just amoeba to them: a barely sentient being with the IQ of minus one.

They assume you are incompetent, a liability. With PR people their schmoozy and sycophantic veneer cracks and the cynical flak emerges.

Today’s incident was mildly amusing to say the least. She was a little less rude than the agent of a now Q-list celebrity who used to host an adventure game show in the nineties. The agent’s charisma might also be the reason why this celebrity has faded into obscurity.

It’s taken a while but I’ve learnt not to take it personally. As my friend from the Indy said yesterday, you need a thick skin to survive in this industry…and a hard nose as I was told by someone before being jabbed on the nose.

A decade under the journalistic influence

Ten years later and I am back at the place I first started.

I am doing a week’s work experience at the Harrow Observer but due to the shrinking budgets of local newspapers, the paper has relocated to Uxbridge.

I trudge up the two flights of stairs my 15-year-old self did a decade earlier with a strange and knowing sense of déjà vu. I am going over old ground and it all feels slightly depressing.

I remember the excitement of my teenage self. My first break into the exciting world of journalism: in a news room and learning the ropes from the hacks themselves.

I have gone so far and yet ended back up at the same place. I feel wiser than before in the years that have passed but simultaneously like I haven’t moved at all.

Maybe I shouldn’t have gone back but I need 10 days of work experience to meet the course criteria. If I get the placement I will take it.

I have already had three days over Christmas where I worked remotely from home while the snow fell silently outside.

But now here I am, physically present. Nothing seems to have changed except that there are far fewer people and the news room has become the territory of the sales staff.

The reporters have been relegated to a section near the training room. The carpet it still the same shade of faded brown, like a tea stain that refuses to leave.

There are people the same age as me who are fully-fledged reporters and there I am. I feel a childish helplessness.

It feels like all those times when I was a teenager in room full of twenty-somethings desperately trying to attain a sense of self-worth and validation, that I had a right to be there.

There are times when I have to hold my tongue in case I come across as arrogant or ungrateful or just plain rude.

I want to convey intelligence with all my years of knowledge and experience but it doesn’t seem to translate.

Then again what have I really learnt since the last time I was here?

I used to think I wanted to be a reporter on a local rag but I seem to be making the simplest mistakes.

My terrible habit of needing to call a person back repeatedly still follows me around like a piece of chewing gum stuck on the bottom of my shoe.

Sometimes I wonder what I am doing wrong, why I haven’t made it yet. Sometimes I wonder if I am cut out for all of this but then I remind myself that I love it.

I love the interaction with people, the thrill of chasing a story and the careful construction of words. It is the satisfaction of seeing the words I have written: black upon white. My name printed on the page.

Perhaps tomorrow will be better and I will have had time to reflect upon my mistakes.

Creative thinking: there is no box

My final lesson of the week was about how to think creatively when coming up with feature ideas.

Along with the three-minute video project, I have to write a human-interest feature due at the beginning of March. It is one of the seven projects that will partly induce my foreseeable nervous breakdown. It’s inevitable given the amount of pressure and lack of time I feel I have to do the best job I can.

To help the class think outside the box our incredibly sweet and endearingly geeky lecturer talked us through several different creative thought processes.

It all started with how many different uses we could think up for a paperclip. From our lists, there are more than a couple of things this small piece of stationery is useful for (apart from holding sheets of paper together). A paperclip cluster bomb was one and a sparrow’s ice skate was another.

I liked my idea that a paperclip could be a friend. If you don’t have Facebook and you’re as imaginative as a tube of toothpaste, then why not have paper clip for a friend? It could work. It’s cheap, easy-to-use not to mention environmentally-friendly.

Anyway, it’s interesting how just the idea of uses for a paper clip can spark creativity. I guess it’s all about thinking outside the box and looking at things in a different way. Also, it is about not restricting yourself and just seeing where that train of thought takes you, although preferably not off a cliff and into the abyss of despair.

But I digress. Semantics and word play is another method to get those creative juices flowing. Think of words that are similar to the topic you are looking at: synonyms, connotations, metaphors, clichés, puns, association, etc. Don't forget antonyms.

Then there’s mind-mapping.
The who, what, where, why, when, how of a topic.
The political, economical, social, technological aspects of an issue.

It’s just different ways of thinking around a topic. It’s all useful.

Although my inspiration seems to come from random thoughts I might think or things I see. Then there is feasibility. For example, for this human interest piece I am planning on interviewing someone who went on the Obama campaign trail. I know it’s hardly breaking those journalistic boundaries but it’s good for now.

Who knows, in six months I might be putting together a feature about the socio-cultural effects paperclips have had on social networking.