I apologise in advance, but I am going to have a bit of a rant today. For those who don't know me very well, there's absolutely nothing unusual about that.
This week I have worked quite hard. First of all I followed up the council v union dispute in Southampton, which involved interviewing the Southampton City Council deputy leader and the Unison rep. That happened on Monday. I arranged the interviews myself, and I now have good contacts within the city council as well as the unions, which makes my life a lot easier.
On Tuesday I went to Westminster to interview Winchester MP Steve Brine about Europe. I arranged the interview the previous week - well in advance. I went there on my own, paid for the travel expenses. I had to go through security at Westminster and was ready to face the possible outcome if the metal detector did beep - that policeman with the rubber gloves looked nasty. Luckily it didn't - I guess I won't find out any time soon what happens when it does. Maybe I should send an FOI...
So I did all this work. And the rest of the team worked very hard too this week which is why the final bulletin was such a success.
And today some people from the BJTC paid us a little visit. They gave us feedback after the bulletin was recorded. It seemed that they were overall impressed with the quality of our output. And then it all went downhill when the man kept saying that we were lucky. So apparently we were lucky to get an interview with Steve Brine, we were lucky that this story was happening in Bournemouth, and Michael (Connolly) was lucky to be able to film ice hockey games. I must admit, I felt slightly irritated/insulted at this point...
I imagine that he certainly doesn't see quality student work that often, otherwise he wouldn't assume that it is simply a matter of luck. We all worked really hard to get there and to make it happen. It's really unfair on us to make the confusion between hard work and luck! I understand that in journalism you do need a bit of luck at times, but most of it is organisation. I didn't bump into Brine, he didn't suggest "hey, would you like to interview me? I've got stuff to say!" No.
It's hard to produce student journalism work. People don't usually want to talk to you, because you're a nobody and have a very small audience. Like that lovely character I met a few weeks ago who said to me "Winchester what? Never heard of you" with a look of disdain on his face.
So here's this week's news report with Steve Brine:
1 comments:
That character sounds absolutely charming. We watched this news report this morning (I'm a first year), and we were all so impressed. I thought the interview with Steve Brine was really good; the audio was clear, the location was good, and he seemed genuinely interested in what he was saying. Just remember; if you're lucky, then we make our own luck! :)
Best, Karina
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