Employment Beckons

It's taken me quite a while, but finally I've managed to secure a job at a fantastic company in the one journalism application i made that I said to myself that I really really wanted. Maybe that was the thing - I was extremely enthusiastic about working in the publication and the company and I'm very sure that my interviewers saw that.

But now I understand how difficult it is to start off in journalism, either magazine, web based or anything else. My CV and cover letter was worked on many times until I finally got it looking presentable and clear enough for people to not throw away into the garbage pile.

It's also the fact that all companies for journalism roles will have a big stack of CV's which they will have to get through. This applied to me as well, and I feel very good that I stood out.

It is getting more difficult, but I have to say that doing a postgraduate course was very important - most of my class are either in employment or freelancing in some way and that's great. We're meeting up again this Monday and I can talk about work related stuff which makes a change..

I have to mention the University of Westminster Postgraduate Periodical course. I enjoyed it, met some great people and props to my lecturer Chris Horrie who seems to have disappeared from the face of the Earth for the majority of us 2007 students. 

Gotta say though that it did kind of suck to see that there was definitely more emphasis on the broadcast side than us print journos. I thought that was definitely unfair - I really wanted to be able to use a video camera and to be honest I thought I was photogenic enough to practice in front of one :) :) - but hey, no complaints -  a message for the course leader who's there right now - none of us really liked you that much but wish you luck on carrying on the great experience which has helped me immensely and I enjoyed so much

Now I'm bored, twiddling my thumbs and spending the last of my high interest cash borrowing reserves. Writing about technology, finding the news contacts and getting paid for it. What a life. (Oh and the free magazine thing - they let you have any of the magazines we have for free that my company does (and there are some great titles available) is bloody brilliant. Such a simple thing.)

Two Blogs

Now I have not one but two blogs! What happened is this - this blogger website came first in support of my journalism studies. Then I thought it would be useful to have a website for myself where I can put up my work at http://www.ashjournalism.co.uk.

However, the software I'm using allows the creation of a blog on that website. It doesn't show up on a google search properly, hence the reason I've decided to keep going on this blog for all my random journalism related thoughts, while saving the other website for news and features I may be writing for myself.

I've had 2471 hits! How, I wouldn't know considering I haven't touched Blogspot since March. But I think it shows how important it is to keep it going.

So save this site on your bookmarks if you want to read about how a newly graduated journalist attempts to take on a very competitive job market. Might be useful to those who are going to start their courses in September!

Making a Podcast

I haven't been blogging as much as I have been. The Westminster website as well as other various things have kept me busy.

It's been good. Various tensions and arguments. Excellent, just like a real newsroom.

Nothing much happens in Harrow. It's very dull. Which means the news guys are doing an excellent job to get what they have done.

Features wise, I'm slowly learning what I need to do. Our audience isn't huge, but I am still thinking about what features would make more sense to the readers.

I'm looking at our target audience, just like I would in a real situation.

I tried making a podcast for the site today. In the absence of very much multimedia on the site apart from a couple of videos, I tried a bit of amateur podcasting with my Mac, Garageband Software and a microphone I borrowed from the University.

It went OK. However it's going to take some tricky editing to get anything out of it due to the fact it does sound like a bunch of friends just chatting about the news. But it was really easy to do, which I guess shouldn't have surprised me.

Trial By Shorthand

I am going to link you to this blog by Rob Davies, called Trial By Shorthand.

He is doing online journalism at the Daily Telegraph at the moment, and is quite a different journalist to me.

Whereas I am quite feature and magazine led, Rob is much more of a newspaper style journalist. His blog entries put mine and many others to shame and I guarantee you will see his name up in lights at a national sooner rather than later.

He started his blog when doing the newspaper course at Cardiff, and has carried it on while he's been working.

I've looked at his earliest entries and his latest ones, and you can definitely tell that there is a progression in style as he's improved and styled his writing.

He's looking for more traffic though. So do have a look at it.

Writing 'Creatively'

I really want to get my habit back of writing creatively... using words to suck you into a different world.

When i was a kid I used to do it. I had an early gift with words... My parents remember me reading the Sun when I was a kid. My parents used to run a greasy spoon when I was a bit younger and apparently I used to sit on a builder's knee and go 'corr blimey' at the Page 3 girls - go figure.

Anyway... yeah, I used to read plenty when I was a kid, and it carried on. For some reason after my GCSE's I decided to do the Science and Maths subjects when I was younger because for some reason I got it in my head that I would make a good doctor - maybe I was watching too much 'Quincy' or something.

Anyway, that didn't go the way I'd hoped so I took the English A-Level in one year and managed to get the University doing it Then I got even lazier about writing - the thing about English Literature is that yes - you're doing a lot of reading... but creative writing - it seems to get ignored in favour of writing essays in an academic style.

So I've lost the habit. And I'm not reading enough anymore, which annoys me should sort out. It's not like I haven't the time to do it. Once I'm reading something I get engrossed and you can't pull me away from it. It's just a question of actually picking it up and starting to read.

It will really help my journalism. It won't really help my news writing, but for feature writing it does help if you have a style that really pulls in the readers.

Max Clifford

At the moment for Wnol I'm writing a feature profile for the master of PR Max Clifford. Tom Hall, our resident reporter, has already attended an conference that he had at the University of Westminster University and is soon about to conduct a phone interview with him.

He's already come out with some gems. Such as "Public Relations is about achieving the best results - if you're not comfortable with lying, you're not cut out for it."

Interesting point of view. I always though that lying was supposed to be a bad thing when I was a kid. I think everybody through experience realises that is not true. By my mid twenties, I think I've cottoned on to the fact that much of what the media is says to me are bare faced lies and gossip. Sad but true.

It's not like it's a new state of affairs. Governments are never honest with you, but at least we have a certain amount of press freedom to realise that this is the case.

PR is just an extention of that. It's like advertising... it's all about image and if you believe everything you see then you're either stupid or lost to the world. Maybe that's why I was never interested in it so much.

I think that I have enough creativity, intelligence and ambition to cut in this world which I think you need, but it never hit me as much as journalism. Maybe it is because i was watching Bill Hicks too much.

By the way, if anyone here is in marketing or advertising...kill yourself. Thank you. Just planting seeds, planting seeds is all I'm doing. No joke here, really. Seriously, kill yourself, you have no rationalisation for what you do, you are Satan's little helpers. Kill yourself, kill yourself, kill yourself now. Now, back to the show. Seriously, I know the marketing people: 'There's gonna be a joke comin' up.' There's no fuckin' joke. Suck a tail pipe, hang yourself...borrow a pistol from an NRA buddy, do something...rid the world of your evil fuckin' presence

Now i would never go that far as Bill here, but maybe that's why these worlds never interested me. Perhaps it would sap my soul, but then again I would definitely be getting paid more...

Well, it's not like journalism is too far away from PR... after all, Max himself began working as a journalist before joining the EMI press office... so you never know...

Being a Feature Editor.

We had our jobs assigned to us, and I found myself in the position of being a Features Editor!

Work Experience didn't prepare me for this at all. From being the unpaid member of the office I have quite a big responsibility for the functioning of the website.

I think that this might turn out well. All of us in print seem to know our jobs and are really getting down to it properly.

Derek makes a great editor. He has in his mind exactly what he wants from the site and he doesn't have a problem with me asking quite a lot of questions . We seem to work together pretty well, because I know he trusts me with the responsibility of getting the features in all on time.

We've got to make the most of it in the next few weeks and the start has been encouraging. It'll start with the dummy run first of all and then after that will be the point that we go live.

Our job is to get as many hits from the students as possible. To to this we are doing student based news stories to get their attention, and then going on to try and pull them in with the features.

We've got video as well, so the site will be a true multimedia experience. We're using the BBC News Online website as our example, and if the quality of our site approaches that then we'll be happy.