Week three

Still battling on at First magazine. After an extremely busy and exciting week at the Surrey Mirror, it has been a bit of shock. So far my tasks have been a little on the dull side. I was really looking forward to a week's experience at a celebrity magazine, but I have come to realise that while it's fun to read them from time to time (ok, a lot of the time), living, working and breathing gossip can take its toll. I have generally been doing admin work, press releases and research. I am grateful to have the experience and I understand that everyone has to start at the bottom, but I honestly don't see a lot of what happens here as journalism. Everything revolves around PR. Sadly, I still enjoy reading these kind of magazines, but something tells me I'm not cut out for a career on one of them.
Still, I have managed to use my frustration to do some excellent filing. So it's not all bad.
On a happier note, one of my articles for the Surrey Mirror, made the front page, with my first byline!

Just to say that I'll be there from around 6 tomorrow night. There's a "beat the clock menu" till 6 30 so we have to order by 6.15. If money's no problem then it doesn't matter what time. Looking forward to seeing you all x

Work experience

So, just finished a week's experience at the Surrey Mirror. To be honest, I really wanted to get this one out of the way to get on to "more exciting" placements at consumer magazines. I was pleasantly surprised.
The first day started off pretty slowly, just flicking through the nationals looking for relevant stories, but by the afternoon, I was out doing the dreaded voxpop. This was really the first time I had done this, so I was pretty nervous. I was assigned to go to the local park with a photographer to speak to people about a proposed exclusion zone. It turned out that as soon as you say you are from the paper, people are more than happy to chat, and I ended up getting some really good stuff and actually enjoying it. Back in the office, I sent them off to the editor and they were published.
I found that the more enthusiasm you have, the more willing people are to take notice and give you other things. Press releases and phone interviews followed and I was finally able to put all that theory into practice.
I really enjoyed my week at the Surrey Mirror and even ended up with a front page splash "local yobs terrorise pensioners in bongo fiasco"! The placement turned out to be a lot of fun and has really made me think that I could happily work for a local paper.
This week I'm at First magazine. So far, it's been pretty slow. The office is pretty big, but because there are two of us on work experience, there's not really enough work to go round. So far, the work has mainly be admin and writing a few problem page entries (oh my god - they make them up?!), but hopefully my constant badgering should pay off soon.

Dinner

Hello everyone. Hope your work experience is going to plan. I'm going to organise a night out for us all on Friday 25 at Belgos in Covent Garden. It's good food, flavoured beers and its cheaper the earlier you go. How does everyone feel about 6.30. It's just by Neal Street. Can you post me a comment to let me know? Thanks xxx

Office hours

The harsh blocks of buzzing light illuminate the ceiling like a Michael Jackson video. The silence sits on top of a bed of the sound of air conditioning smugly humming. Water bubbles in school canteen jugs with blue lids which laugh at the scratched brown tables. The window frames slit the walls, their hinges jut out like dinosaur heads looking on and cackling at the theatre.
Everyone is suffocated by the low synthetic ceiling and magnolia walls and eagerly watch the red second hand tick by.
Click, click, click, click, click....Rustle, rustle, rustle, rustle.....
Too shy to talk and too scared to whisper, everyone laughs nervously at in-jokes and smirks at one another.
Sniff, sniff.....
The grey machine looks on and winks its green eye at me.
ssssss, sh, sh, sh , sssss...
Black suits and grey, sullen faces. Just children playing grown up.