This is a post submitted by one of my communication interns, Ms. Bessie Blore on her blog entitled "Bessie at the Bully" (Short for Townsville's daily newspaper, Townsville Bulletin) that I have decided to feature here. She talks about her experience of working at the Bulletin (Australia) on the first day of her internship. A delightful story written with passion and zest. The strength of this post comes from the honesty of the writing. Congratulations Bessie! Proud of you.
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I just wanted to do a quick post, before I get into the good stuff over the weekend, to reflect on my feelings of how the first day of my internship at the Townsville Bulletin went....
* I was nervous... so nervous of being late that I got there 40 minutes early and read a book in my car for half an hour...
* Linda and all the other staff were nicer than I anticipated... (not sure why I didn't think they would be... will mull over this over the weekend)
* I got sent out to do a story on the launch of a Driver Training program... at first I thought I was going out with a Journalist to cover the story and then I realised I WAS THE JOURNALIST... So it was just me and the photographer and she thought I was a pro... when I told her it was my first day, my first real story EVER she took pity on me and got right in there initially pointing out who all the officals were for me and telling me background info on people so I knew who to go and speak to... I was lucky becuase the launch had organisers there specifically to be a go-between for the officals and the media, so they asked me who I wanted to speak to and would go and grab them for me...
but then after the formal speaches I was on my own.. and I felt pretty confident from the first few little chats with people that I could go and speak to anyone.. it definitly helped that I was able to introduce myself as "Bessie from the Townsville Bulletin"... after years of being "Bessie a student from JCU"...and I don't think anyone guessed that I was still a student, which really validated me. I felt like I had completed a real job, which I had!
The photographer told me I had done a good job and I found it really interesting being able to follow the photographer around after I'd done my interviews, althought I don't think Linda would be impressed if I told her I had followed the photographer around... even though I really thought I had enough for the story!
* Going back the newsroom and writing the story was the hardest part of the day... but luckily I wasn't feeling too precious about what I had written. I was actually really appreciative of having Linda rip it apart and show me how it should be done... I will definitly learn better that way.
* I am really worried about having to do more than 1 story a day... Linda said by the end of the internship I should be able to do at least 4 stories a day! I only finished the 1st one by 3.30 and the subs start at 3.....and I had lots of help from Linda to get it right...
* I was a bit annoyed that it was straight news peice that I had to do today, as my passion is in features and photography... and I know my work won't show my full potential becuase I do struggle with hard news... but I tried my hardest today, Linda was incredibly helpful, interviewing such important people by myself (and having the Bully just throw me in there) was very liberating and I enjoyed it so, so, so, so, so much!
* The other girls in Advertising-Features were all really friendly and seem pretty keen to have me help them with their upcoming stories... they have a few monthly liftouts coming up and have told me to try and come up with some stories ideas based around their general topics... so that is exciting!
* I think I felt better by the fact that Tara and Ryan were there as well...thought I only saw them for our tour for the first hour of the day... but I didn't feel like I was the only intern in the building...so that somehow in the back of my mind made me a bit more confident...
* Overall it was new and very exciting... and I CANNOT wait to grab the paper first thing tomorrow morning and see if my story is in there! :) [Mum and Dad will definitly be sent a copy to stick on the fridge!]
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