»2nd March 2009

T&A I: Fear and Loathing in Horton Grange



So today was the first day of what will be my week long work experienced stint at Bradford's Telegraph & Argus. It's actually the first legitimate topic for an update in a while, so I'm going to milk it for all it's worth. I had arranged this work experience way back in January during the fir couple of weeks of the job search. It was the first response I'd had to one of my stock 'please give me work experience please, please, please' emails and has turned out to be the first response to actually materialise into something constructive.

The work experience is a one week placement where I am supposed to get a taste of the various activities in the news room of the Telegraph & Argus, which if you didn't know already is Bradford's daily paper and what I'm guessing is a fairly good example of a medium-sized regional paper. The goals of this placement are as follows, in no particular order: Firstly, to get some actual experience in journalism; to talk to real journalists as opposed to ranting about student journalists; secondly, the work experience will hopefully turn into a confidence building exercise and will hopefully buoy up morale for a while whilst the job search supposedly continues; thirdly, in finding out about the T&A I might get some ideas about whether journalism is a good idea at all, and how I might go about getting qualifications or additional relevant experience in journalism. That's the plan. This is usually where things start going wrong.


I'd packed plenty of health pots and recast my buffs before going in.

I had to get up at 6:30am today, which was ridiculous. Lately I've been going to bed at 6:30am, so consequently I got very little sleep and throughout the day felt borderline exhausted and had to try awfully hard to appear at least in some way articulate and enthusiastic. After arriving fifteen minutes early for my ten o' clock start, it turned out that the Content Editor who I was supposed to meet with was out at the dentists and so the other Content Editor, who I'm pretty sure had no idea I was coming, had to set me up with something to do. It was monday morning, which is apparently a particularly hectic time for newspapers and so I wasn't given anything to do for ninety minutes besides read some papers and try not to look like some deer caught in the headlights. Everyone around me was either very busy or somehow perturbed by the fact the work experience boy was there, and he was sat in that chair. Either way, despite furtive glances towards the Content Editor, I was left sat reading the same two stories from the Times and Yorkshire Post over and over trying desperately not to appear absolutely exhausted in spite of the lack of sleep already catching up with me.

Eventually, the Content Editor, David, came over and gave me a short explanation of the various sections of a newspaper and set me off doing a 'single', which seems to be the single most hated and maligned type of piece in journalism. Basically, it's a single column piece about 200 words long and isn't much to get your teeth into. Regardless, it was new to me and I was both happy to have something to do besides stifle yawns and stare boggle-eyed at last thursday's T&A hoping to glean some insight. With my cursory knowledge of news writing I set about penning a hard-hitting piece on... an event promoting healthy lifestyles for women at the Grange Interlink Community Centre. I suddenly had flash-backs of the web design course I taken in year thirteen, during which time I started my old LiveJournal page, when I had to make countless variations on a Frontpage website about Westlife.
Feeling reassured that I had just done some journalism, the other Content Editor, Martin, who had finally returned from his dentist appointment came over and gave me two more things to do. The first was what he admitted was the 'rather boring' task of filling out dates in the diary coinciding with court appearances related to animal welfare, and another single to write on... a couple who were to celebrate their diamond wedding anniversary on thursday. I felt like Hunter S Thompson writing for Rolling Stone.

Once I'd finished these two pieces, the first Content Editor said I could take lunch whenever at some point. This was reassuring as I was beginning to feel hungry, as well as tired, but there was a problem in that I didn't know how to 'take lunch'. I sat half-browsing some websites for a while, I then decided to eat my sandwich at whoever's desk I was sat at, this seemed to be what it meant to 'take lunch'.
I sat around without much to do for a while longer, I was informed that the person whose desk I was sat at would be returning at two but that I would be going out with someone to... do something? It wasn't entirely clear. Still, it was only one o' clock and so I had to ask for something else to do and after some scraping around the Content Editors found me another single to do on... a new range of Fairtrade products at Help the Aged--another chance to fight the power.


Fear and Loating in Horton Grange

At two o' clock, Ben, the guy who I thought might also be there on work experience--and who earlier had brought me a cup of tea much to my shame (wasn't that supposed to be my job?)--approached and said I was to go with him to the Magistrates Court whilst he covered a trial. I found out Ben did indeed actually work at the T&A, much to my relief seeing as I finally had the opportunity to talk to a journalist as opposed to sit quietly at a desk typing about the free raffle at the women's health day. We went to the court and had to go through a metal detector, which was half unnerving and half amusing in that it reminded me of Spinal Tap. Once in the court we waited around for a while for the trial to start. I remarked that the court looked like a cross between a swimming baths and the underground base of a James Bond villain thanks to the preponderance of plywood and concrete and some large numbers over each court which looked like the numbers you'd see painted on the side of a concrete missile silo. As it turned out, the previous trial was running late by about an hour, so we went back to the office. After an hour of very slow work on the Help the Aged single seeing as I now didn't want to run out of things to do again, we returned to the court.
This time we actually got into the court-room where the two lawyers and magistrate judge had just started going through what I most likely incorrectly overheard as a 'hear say' (Ben didn't seem to know what the proceeding was either.) It seemed that the prosecution lawyer had made some sort of silly oversight, possibly deliberately, though whatever the plan was had clearly backfired. The magistrate judge was evidently not impressed with the prosecution and the proceeding was brought to a close. We were once again in the foyer and I got to talking to Ben who looked maybe two or three years older than me and was thus in a pretty good position to dole out some advice to me on starting in journalism. We waited there for about an hour during which time I absorbed much lore and knowledge of the workings of the paper and the job.


Swimming pool silo

Finally, the actual trial came about, the two lawyers, the defendant and a couple of Court Clerks assembled and we all had to stand as three judges walked into the room. After a short exchange between the judges and lawyers, the judge told the defendant he was free to go. It seemed the case had been thrown out over some technicality oweing to a mistake made by the prosecution. Ben was quite disappointed seeing as we'd spent the best part of two and a half hours waiting around in the court room only for the whole thing to fizzle and he be left with no story. Still, it was the first time I'd been in a court room and still quite a 'learning experience'.

After returning to the office I twiddled my thumbs for a while longer pretending to work on the Help the Aged piece seeing as it was clear there was no more work for me to do. I submitted the piece to David who said it was alright and thus I was pleased. At about quarter to five having sat around a while longer I asked if there was anything else for me to do and David said that I should probably have finished at five and he let me out. By this point I was thoroughly exhausted and after a quick trip to Maplins to finally pick up the power meter after two previous failed attempts (more on that later, probably), I returned to the bus station and got the bus back home.
Tomorrow I have to be in an hour earlier at nine and so the goal is to actually get some proper sleep tonight so I'm able to actually function normally. A rather embarassing side-effect of not sleeping was a red mark appearing under one eye which made me look like I'd been punched in the face... After getting back I realised how absolutely wrecked I looked. I'm considering wearing the V for Vendetta mask tomorrow, hopefully no one will notice.


Extar, over, out.

TCP/IP, it's fucking me off. Other protocols doing little more. Definitely got worse. Now making me curse. Removing IPX. Will it ever work? Never!