»14th March 2009

Leeds Guide Week 1

Welcome to another god damn blog update. This week I've been at the Leeds Guide on the first week of a two week work placement.
I decided not to do daily updates on the Leeds Guide like I did at the T&A because I thought it'd get pretty boring seeing as not as much would be as brand new as it was last week.
That decision seems to have paid off, this week was indeed less eventful seeing as it predominantly consisted of me sitting in front of the intern computer either doing work or tossing off (as in not doing any work, pervert.)
So without further ado, onto the day-to-day nonsense. A lot of this will be lifted pretty much straight from my retardiary on Notepad.

Day 1

Turned up at the office at about 9:35, twenty five minutes early. I was right to just go in the shirt and tie from last week, Annie, who did my induction basically said you can wear anything from smart to casual. depending on what particular assignment you're on you wear dress appropriate for that. Cockpit--very casual, Harvey Nichols--very formal etc. Ben Johnson, the assistant editor (?) seems to be my go-to guy in terms of work and what not.

I needn't have worried so much about what I wore because no one else in the office seemed to care. Over the next week I might see how close I can come to the hobo-clown look before anyone says anything.

Today I:
-Rang up press officers at publishers and got them to email me high-res pictures of the covers of the various books reviewed. By the end of the day I'd had pictures sent from four of the five publishers. The book of the week I didn't manage to get a photo for as the email system crashed so I don't know if I received that email or not.
-Wrote a 50-word piece 'WH Smith recomends...' just picking out a book that their website had on prominent display.
-Wrote up a list of ten new DVDs to be released. Ben was pleased I included Diary of a Call Girl (must like Billie Piper) despite it being released on 2nd March, quite a way back considering how up-to-date they want it. I also included Leonard Cohen DVD which seemed to impress Ben. Quantum of Solace was made the DVD of the week with five stars. Each piece got 30 words. I wrote up a synopsis for each one, but only gave a star rating for three of the DVDs of which I'd already saw/knew about, which were Quantum of Solace, The Day the Earth Stood Still, and Leonard Cohen.
-Helped Ben with a fashion piece on 'asymmetrical fashion', basically skirts, dresses and blouses with asymmetrical designs, single shoulders etc. I had flash-backs of American Psycho when describing clothes such as 'black wool asymmetrical cardigan'.

That was pretty much the gayest thing I got up to all week.

Not going out for lunch was a mistake since I basically ended up working through lunch.
The half five end was pretty grim, we worked right up until half five as well.
I spent three hours riding and waiting for buses, that's way too long to spend travelling.

Tomorrow is a nine o' clock start which sounds like it's going to be grim.

Travelling to and from Leeds is the single lamest thing about the placement, whilst I like being able to wave my week ticket at the bus drivers instead of fumbling with coins, I pretty much fall asleep on the bus every single time coming home and wake up disoriented in Birstall before getting off at White Lee.

Day 2

22:20 10/03/2009

Missed the 229 at 28 minutes past seven and had to get the 219 at ten to eight, got into leeds about nine and was five or ten minutes late to the office but ben didn't say anything.
not many people were in for a while, tom goodhand only came in at about quarter to eleven.
they had me doing a lot of work again today and i haven't had any opportunity so far to get out with journalists and 1-on-1 with them like i did at the T&A. hopefully, they won't just have me as the skivvy for the next two weeks.

-Had to finish off the DVD reviews, a few of them were too far ahead in the future (20 apr) for the current issue so i had to find some different films to review. this took two attempts seeing as one of the replacement films i'd chosen had already been reviewed. my name won't be put to the reviews i wasn't able to give a star rating to having not seen them. this isn't a major problem.
-had to write a profile on left-wing comedian mark thomas who i'd never heard of before. youtube, facebook, hotmail, newgrounds etc. are all disabled on the office internet so i couldn't research him on youtube. the 300 word profile piece ended up being a kind of glorified cv taken mostly from wikipedia and his own website.
-did some research on day's out in the yorkshire area. didn't finish this off.
-wrote a 400 word piece sort of themed on 'so you want to learn guitar?' couldn't finish this off, someone else with a contact at the 'leeds guitar school' (in wakefield :S) will have to do this. hopefully, i'll still get credited.

had to start asking for work to do, tomorrow i might see if i can take it easier as the work did pile up at one point and i'm not really sure how much i NEED to make a good impression.

ipod battery died so had to fork out £10 at overpriced apple shop for a cable. on way back to office, rang mum who said i had a package arrived yesterday. quite excited when i got home i was dismayed to find it was an information pack for free chlamydia screenings.

Day 3

23:31 11/03/2009

today started off slow and demoralising. didn't have any proper work to do and wondered whether it'd be worth doing the second week.
later on, ben gave me a piece to do on the leeds young people film festival. 250 words as a kind of miniature feature. i had to ring up some guy to get a quote on this.
next up my ambiguous 'research days out in yorkshire' task was discussed fairly positively with ben. i bounced some ideas around and think i was pretty helpful. later on ben sent me the structure for this massive feature which is going to be the cover feature for issue 219. he said 'fit your research around this' which sounded awfully like 'write this'. it's a 2,000 word major feature, a pretty daunting task, surely they're going to palm this off onto a more experience writer at some point.

The 'some guy' I had to ring up worked for Mediafish (I think that's what it was called) based at the Town Hall who organise the film event.

Day 4



Thursday consisted mostly of slowly--and I mean really slowly--working on the 2,000 word epic piece.
I decided to ditch the suit, tie and waistcoat that I'd been wearing all the way through the T&A and first three days of the Leeds Guide and go with something more casual instead. This basically ended up in me assuming my lumberjack costume which could possibly have sent out the wrong message. Hey, I can't help it if I just happen to like checquered shirts.
Throughout the week, occasionally writers would come into the office and work on one of the computers at the end of the group of computers where I'm sat with Ben and Tom Goodhand (the editor). One such writer on thursday was this Simon O'Hare character, who I'm guessing was at least in some part irish.

[Simon] gave me some more work today, he seemed very grateful i was helping him out, perhaps guilty about loading undesirable work onto the intern. either way, i'd like to make a good impression with him, i like him. the work was writing up some property piece for city living bigging up some new development.

That was quite late on in the day and so I didn't really have to make a start on it then and there. Earlier on, Tom had given me another piece to do, or rather to sort out. The magazine had a regular column called something like 'Week in the life of...' where an LG reader wrote in what they had got up to in the week, about thirty words per day. The then-current issue (217?) had some über-trendy girl who did something crazy and different every night. Clearly, I wouldn't be a very suitable candidate for this column (without lying anyway) so I had to find someone else to do it. Usually, I get stuff handed to me to do so it was nice to give something back so to speak.

Day 5

23:29 13/03/2009

today i mostly worked on the big day out/do something different... feature and just grinded along with it. i'm going to sail way over the word limit on it.
didn't get round to doing the property piece for simon, will have to do that on monday.

ben gave me a bit to add to the big day out feature relating to newcastle for advertising reasons.
at the pub, i had a very short conversation with ben and one of the design guys which tom and ian the sales guy chimed in on, asking about why everyone there was so young, (they basically said it was a springboard to greater things)

One kind of unusual thing about the placement is how no one in the office looks like they're over thirty. In fact, most of the people there don't look like they'd be over twenty seven. It's like Logan's Run or something, kind of unnerving. Where are all the old people? The oldest person I seen must have been some kind of managing director or something like that, someone who gets their own office. I'm supposing that this figure looks down on us all from behind one way mirrors and has a tendency to laugh manically. The fact that at the pub, the reason given as to why there was no one that old working there was that people went on to 'greater things' gives an added level of sinisterness. I probably should try to ignore the weird sounds of drumming and chanting that you can sometimes hear coming from below the floor in the toilets or the fact there's a huge sealed metal door obscured behind some shelves in the store room.



Sitting around idly in the office not doing work is harder at the Leeds Guide because of the fact so many sites are banned, even ones that could realistically be used for legitimate purposes like YouTube. It really puts a lot of pressure on Slashdot, I've had to start reading entire comments pages on there now.

I've still not been able to figure out why I've been given the 2,000 word thing to do. I mean it's the bloody cover feature for the next issue, surely that's a little too much responsibility for the intern? Maybe it's just to keep me busy so I'm not asking for things to do every couple of hours... It's hard to say, it would be cool to see my name at the end of a gigantic multi-page piece like that though as opposed to a series of 50-word bits of crap.

In other news, as a kind of birthday surprise, the Job Centre sent me a letter last saturday (my birthday) informing me that my Jobseeker's allowance was to be stopped dating from about two weeks previous to the letter been sent. Great. Presumably the reason is that the Job Centre see something inherently wrong with me doing work experience, seeing as, you know, it might actually help me to get a job. These placements are costing me money, they're unpaid of course and I'm having to pay to get in every day and to feed myself, even if I am saving some money there having persuaded my mum to make me sandwiches. So of course, I sent a letter back to the Job Centre asking why the payments have been stopped and I've yet to hear any reply. As you can imagine, I'm not very pleased with my treatment by the Job Centre. I really need to type up the article I wrote for the T&A last week that got censored sorry, pulled by the deputy editor.

Dear Fuckos, I am writing to enquire as to why my claim for Jobseeker’s Allowance (reference: [redacted]) has been stopped from 24th February stated in the letter I received dated 4th March 2009. I can only assume the pay has been stopped because of the work experience placements I attended at the Telegraph & Argus last week, and the Leeds Guide commencing Monday 9th March. I am not in contravention of my Jobseeker’s Agreement so can see no valid reason why the payment has been stopped. I am under no contract or obligation at either work experience placements, will receive no pay of any kind from either work placement and I am still actively looking for work as per my Jobseeker’s Agreement. Furthermore, I cannot understand why I was not informed earlier that the Jobseeker’s Allowance would be cancelled in taking up these work experience placements. I have been candid and open about these two placements and yet at no point—even at the 13-week interview I attended on 25th February—was it brought up that I was not meeting the requirements of my Jobseeker’s Agreement or that the two work experience placements would affect it in any way. At the 13-week interview, I arranged to sign on the first working day after my placement at the Leeds Guide had ended, which would be Monday 23rd March. I assume that I am still expected to attend the Job Centre to sign on on that day. Yours faithfully, Michael Mouse.

You hopeless, hopeless idiots.


Extar, over, out.

"most of the people around the leeds guide office are usually oiled up and wearing a loincloth"