It's been a hard day's night...

I'm starting to get a taste of what this is really all about.

Since my last blog I've changed jobs and moved house. I sort of stumbled across my new job at Central FM, and love it. It's proper journalism and proper radio... with live news reads and a decent sized station.

Instead of one council I now have three, one football team has now become seven and the bulletins are now three minutes to fifteen minutes long.

I'll probably remember the last two weeks for quite some time.

My news editor was off on her hols for two weeks. And of course... that's when everything decided to go wrong. One newsreader was off sick, the replacement was also sick and the replacement of the replacement couldn't do it.

So the shifts went from the usual nine hours to eleven.

Then there was an ACTUAL news story to report on:

Click here to hear it

So I was up 'till midnight reporting that.

Then my Nana died.

But it's made me realise I'm perfectly capable of running a news room with everything going against me. Which is good to know for the future.

News editor's back this week and the funeral's been and gone. So hopefully I can concentrate on being a reporter again for a little while.

I should be sleeping like a log.

Superiority complex?

This blog is about competitiveness in journalism. No between person to person, but between different media outlets and different organisations.

I'm documenting this, because I wonder if in 10 years time when I look back to the beginning of my career, I still feel the same.

Whenever a journalist gets called out to a press conference/outside broadcast/big event, there's usually other media-types there (yes, even in Perth). And as the reporter of a new station, I've found this experience very humbling.

Other organisations just can't help but act a bit smug when I turn up. I'm not sure if its because they're older than me and have worked in the patch longer, or if they think they're better than me, or if they just think the paper/station is better, or they all just seem to think they have a better job than me.

Maybe I'm being paranoid, but the following things have sprung to my attention over the last 9 months:
a) A journalist who work for a TV company looking down her nose at me and IGNORING me when I tried to make polite conversation.
b) A journalist calling me a 'glory hunter' when I reported on one of the last St Johnstone Games of the season as they won the first division.
c) A journalist from a local paper saying the station should 'walk before they can run' with regards to sports stories.
d) Journalists at a music festival approaching musicians press officers AFTER I've spoken to them, and then stealing my interview slot.
e) One journalist who actually interrupted my conversation with an MP (who approached me) and FLIRTING with him whilst ignoring me.
f) reporters at the races calling us 'tragic FM' after refusing to help me plug in our equipment. (Really professional).

It seems like staff at networked radio stations think they're better than independents, staff at papers think they're better than radio stations, staff at TV companies think they're better than everyone and everyone thinks they're better than everyone else.

But everyone has to start somewhere. And I think I'm better than them anway.

Expenses 'not important'? (The time Stephen Fry upset me)

Okay, I'm a little late with this one, but been meaning to write it for a while.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/8045040.stm


So Fry claims Journalists are ‘venal and disgusting when it comes to expenses’. And that expense stories are a ‘journalistic made-up frenzy’.

Don’t take the piss.

Stephen Fry, you are a witty, intelligent man who is well respected, but you’ve also been very lucky in life. You hopped from Cambridge to star in University Challenge to become a massive entertainer in your own right. Not all of us get that break.

As I'm a journalist whose salary is £800 a month after tax is taken off, I think it’s disgusting for Fry to suggest that journalists are the worst for fiddling.

My HUGELY needed £200 going to the taxman each month is being spent on a floating duck island. Thanks Sir Peter Viggers, I can’t go on holiday this year. I hope your ducks are happy.

Whilst I do claim expenses, I get back what I’m due – petrol and parking. And with rising fuel prices, I probably get less back in petrol expenses than what I spend.

Fry may think it’s ‘unimportant’ that MP’s are pissing our money down the drain; I think it’s a disgrace. It may not be important to those on a high wage who can afford to give this money to a bunch of selfish, pathetic, arrogant money-grabbers. But I’d rather keep it to survive on, thanks.

Plus, it is a journalist’s job to report the news. MP’s claiming expenses for banal things with our hard earned cash, is a news story. It WILL be reported.

Keep the MP’s that haven’t abused the system. Get rid of those that have. If they were average citizens, they would be prosecuted.

A Long and Short of it interview with... Ian Stark

One of the many interviews I did at the Central Scotland Horse Trials with eventing legend (and my childhood hero) Ian Stark.

Click here to listen.

Particularly interesting if you're a horsey person!

DJing, horses and an hour of stress.

In my job, I often find myself doing things well out of my job remit. I'm doing a news editor's job whilst employed as a reporter for starters.

But nothing prepared me for my first experience as a radio DJ.

Lack of staff and an advertising deal forced me to take to the airwaves for an hour last week. I had to talk about horses and interview three-day eventers. “How hard can that be for a horse lover?” I hear you ask. Well.

I dragged best mate and boyfriend along as helpers/photographers/reporters/all round saviours.

Barry the salesman was there providing jokes, crisps, sweets and rubbish interviewees.

We had an hour to set up. Plenty of time. Until the head guide of the Palace we broadcast from took it upon himself to construct a crazy phone line that lead the whole way round the Palace so we could be in room that wasn't particularly special anyway.

He barked orders at all of us despite the fact I knew more about the equipment than him and it was my job. He also forgot my name twice, almost ruined our equipment, put everyone in a mood, rewired the phone line fifteen minutes before we went on air and made us half an hour late.

Never mind. Eventually we moved to the gift shop - which is were we planned to be anyway - set up and got on air. Needless to say by this point I was so terribly stressed that I was rubbish. I ummed, ah'd, didn't know who half my interviewees were and talked rubbish on air. I said "fantastic" about eight times.

I told the listeners of Perth that I was eliminated at a cross country course and fell off my horse. I also told the same story to Olympic Champion Ian Stark (an idol of mine) and a 17 year old who'd just been round the grueling cross country course.

My interviews with the riders and competition winners were fine. Just a shame the interview with the Polish spectator who Barry found trailing his wife and child round the gift shop didn't care abut horses. Oh well.

Next time I want everything to be set up four hours in advance, more expensive equipment, even more helpers and preferably someone else doing the DJ.

That said, I'd do it again.

A life of stuff

I succeeded in the getting a job bit. But it meant moving back in with my parents. Which sort of undermines the fact I’m finally salaried and have escaped the grips of studentdom and dependence on the parents.

So it’s with glee that I can announce I’ve moved out of the family home and in to my own love nest with my other half.

So far it’s been a happy time. We unfortunately had to do a (earlier than expected) meet the in-laws dinner, as his parents drove the whole way up Britain with a rent-a-van.

There have been a couple of arguments over who’s done the most unpacking/cleaning/important jobs in each room, but generally we’ve shared the burden.

But the main bone of contention I have is the amount of STUFF my other half has. It was my duty to unpack the box labelled ‘ kitchen’. One would expect pots, pans, plates and cutlery. We had those. We had them by the plenty. But we also had little silver canapé dishes, tiny little bowls presumably for detailed table arrangements, a variety of metal tankers with names and dates on them, little glass jam pots with cork lids (x4), enough kitchen roll to paper the walls in the kitchen, six ugly soup bowls and five tin openers. I mean, we like convenient living, but five tin openers is just unnecessary.

Then the other ‘stuff boxes’ (admittedly we all have them – the plastic boxes we fill with miscellaneous things we can’t bear to throw out). They filled up two whole massive storage cupboards. We have a table, four chairs, a wardrobe, various cameras from various eras, a turntable, records, camping equipment for 50 people, big rugs, small rugs, hairy rugs, smelly rugs, mouldy bed sheets… I could go on.

Really. What are two journalists with limited cash flow going to do with all this crap? So the mission is to a) sell it, b) take it to Oxfam or c) recycle it. Tin opener, anyone?

'The great snow break'

It's dark. It's cold. A flake of snow falls from the sky and settles gently on the pavement. A little girl gasps and looks up. There's more! It's snowing! And by god, it's settling! Suddenly, the whole street come out and bask in the white flecked glory. No one knows what to do! They've never seen this fluffy, cold, flaky substance before! Soon they're gathering it up and rolling into a ball in their fists, fresh white frost combined with murky particles from the street. they joyfully throw it at one another. A snowfight! The joy!

But no, it's not Africa. Unbelievably, these joyful idiots are in Britain. What's more, they're from the intelligence capital of Britain, the hub, our capital, London.

One would think the cockneys have never seen snow before.

The front page of every national paper shouted IT'S SNOWING! Like it's never happened before.

BBC news readers are huddled on busy roadsides, wrapped in winter coats ad outdoor gear fit for mountains. Stood in an inch of snow and declaring it's snowing but, unbelievably (!), the cars are still making it onto the roads.

Documentaries are made about a terribly icy driveway that was missed out by the gritters.

The tubes and buses stop running. Boris declares it congestion charge free day.

All this because of a bit of snow.

And up in Scotland, I'm at work, as usual, in the office. And like every other day of every other year in the month of February, it's snowing. I had to defrost the car as I always do and drive carefully on the way to work because the village has been missed out by the gritters, as it always is.

Everyone left a little earlier, because the buses were a little slower than usual dropping the kids off to school.

IRN described it as 'the great snow break'. It's only 'great' because London declared it to be. But you aren't fooling anyone up here.

It's snow. Get on with it.