»6th March 2009

T&A V: Libellous



The last day at the T&A started with a trip with Ben to the Magistrates Court again to report on some inquests at 10am. This was obviously a pretty sombre event. The first inquest was a forty-nine-year-old who had died from kidney and liver failure brought on by an accidental overdose of Paracetemol; the second--and most depressing--was for a forty-one-year-old who had been on secure ward and managed to hang himself with shoe laces from a 'low level ligature point'; lastly there was an eighty-nine-year-old man who had died after falling over in a bathroom. The first and last inquests were pretty short as there wasn't anything particularly unusual about the circumstances of either deaths, however the second inquest because it was a suicide had a witness who was some kind of supervisor from the NHS and stated how there was an inquiry and how 'low level ligature points' had been removed in two rooms for patients at risk of trying to commit suicide. Ben remarked afterwards on the difficulties of approaching the families after the inquests to ask if they wanted to make any statements. All three inquests were over pretty quickly and we were back in the office probably by about half eleven.

When I got back to the desk I had my things at, Emma from features had left a print out of my piece from yesterday with some comments on it. It said she'd been over it with the Deputy Editor and decided it was just too libellous to be printed. This shouldn't really have come to me as too much of a surprise considering the basic gist of the article was that the Job Centre is a crock of shit. Either way, she had said earlier that if I had time I could come over and do another piece for features so after Martin had reminded me that I still had to do two hard-hitting pieces on the new animals at Ponderosa.

Once over at features and logged in and with my reputation as reporter of the issues that matter who won't compromise on delivering the truth, I got onto the Ponderosa pieces and tried putting some of the skills I'd picked up yesterday into practice. Consequently I realised how sketchy my notes were and that I didn't particularly have much to go on. It was only the text for two picture stories though so I didn't have to do much besides remark about the Gopher called 'Gordon' and the Degu's which are apparently native to Chile.


"Think we can get a two page spread out of this?"

With the Ponderosa bits fired off over Scribe, I had to set about coming up with a new Comment article, which was pretty tricky seeing as I was so awfully short on ideas after my one good one was shot down for maybe insinuating that the Job Centre isn't totally fucking awesome. Anyway, I stared vacantly out of the window and generally had my thinking face on for an hour or so writing down all sorts of crappy ideas. Hard-hitting issues like 'Long hair for men', predictable and boring issues like 'Life for graduates in the recession', 'What is the northern identity?' (Red Riding was getting a lot of talk in the office, mostly negative seeing as half of the people in the office were journalists in the seventies.)

These ideas were all kind of half-arsed and lazy and I wouldn't be able to really sustain any of them properly over an entire article.

So after much consideration I decided to go with a half-arsed and lazy idea that I wouldn't be able to really sustain properly over an entire article! The topic: the British Film Industry. The reason: Slumdog Millionaire cleared up at the Oscars and t' Red t' bloody Riding was on t' TV last nigh t' (I really ought to watch it' at some point.)

It was only five hundred words but I really laboured it out. The point I think I vaguely made was that it would be better if there was a real home market for British films, like there is for French films in France. There were a few stray points in there also that didn't really tie into anything, but overall it was probably more cohesive than some piece about men having long hair would be.

So it was about twenty past four and I had fired off the Comment article on Scribe. Emma came over and kind of suggested that I ask Martin if there was anything to do before I should go, i.e. that perhaps the work experience boy shouldn't be hanging around at quarter past five as had happened on a few occasions already in the week. So after a quick summary with Martin saying how I'd enjoyed the experience and some well wishes from Martin and Emma and Jim on Features I made an exit. Metllica's 'Ride the Lightning' was listened on the bus back with the coda of 'The Call of Ktulu' neatly coinciding with stepping off the bus in Heckmondwike.

What have I learnt? Well seeing as I've been fairly restrained on silly HTML tags and seeing as I'm going to have to recite this to the Job Centre, I think it's time for an UNORDERED LIST


Okay, so a lot of those aren't particularly helpful things that I've picked up. There are of course more useful things I'll have to come up with for the Job Centre, but concentration is really lapsing now and you're not the Job Centre, are you. Hey, you got five fucking blog updates out of this in one go so show a bit of appreciation eh? It's my birthday tomorrow, my plans are to sleep, eat cake and actually finish off all these stupid blog updates. As of writing, none of them have pictures yet and a couple of them are awfully boring (actually, I probably won't do anything about that.)
Arhhh I can't even wrap these things up any more. I AM YOUR CLOCK!


Extar, over, out.


In the long run, we are all dead.