Magazine Production 17/11/09 P2

OMG I'm just loving photoshop. It's an absolute answer to anyone like me who has creative ideas, but just can't draw. 

I've been playing with brushes again today. I want to create a corporate logo/image throughout the magazine, but something like a drop of water. I've been looking through some photoshop trouble shooting books. The first one by Peter Beid Cui is all about creating the wonderful flows. I've managed to create a green blob. I lovely blue and cyan feather swirl and a white like frosty wind image. You open a new doc, put all these blobs and lines on the page, then add motion blur of 430, then put in a transform grid, manipulate the grid and hey presto - your image. Loving it! 

I want my magazine to have this additional texture, like 70's but with a etheric flow to it and the 'blow images' are perfect. The brushes element in photoshop seems to be the answer to my prayers. Although the programme takes a lot of playing with, it really is worth it. As I say I can't draw for toffee, but know what I like and what I want. I think photoshop combined with Indesign is the answer. 

Mag Production 27/11/09

Some advice I picked up off of a photoshop website. I thought very useful when considering my magazine. : D

1. Use the acronym of A.I.D.A, to check if a poster (or advert) works. 

A = Does it get my Attention? No! The name of the company very rarely will get anyone's attention. Whereas, FREE PATIO SLABS! Will most certainly stop anyone who is the market for a Patio.

I = INTEREST. Once you have the readers attention now is the time to get their interest in the product. 

D = DESIRE. Once you have created an Interest in the product you must now create a desire, tell them how they will benefit from owning this fantastic patio! 

A= ACTION. Once all the above have been addressed, tell the reader what to do! Tell them to take action. PHONE NOW! I said by one yer get one free... phone NOW! (Example?) 

2. Be careful with the fonts you use, I'm sure you well understand the power of the typeface and what it can covey to the reader. Be sure that the font provides the reader (potential customer) with the correct perception of the product or company. The correct perception is that which the vendor wishes it to be. 

3. On a poster I wouldn't consider using more than two different typefaces. And, I wouldn't be tempted to use a hand-written script type font, mainly as on a poster at a distance it could be difficult to read. 

4. Finally, if poster is in Landscape, consider Portrait before committing, on a poster the upright view usually works better. (depending on what the product is and what use the poster is to be put to. 

WRP paragraph about self

The paragraph hasn't been agreed by David, so I'm assuming there's something wrong with it?? Will email him to see what the problem is. He's obviously working on the site as I notice his paragraph has changed. There's little communication in this group at the moment. Maybe that's just my perception/opinion. Hopefully will see the other two guys and Mary Monday and find out. I've asked twice for a catch up meeting, but this isn't happening. I've a feeling I'll have to plow on with the work element of the site and just accept that Jaime's hate campaign has so far worked. 

NEWS: Notes: Media Revolution

Notes from BBC The Media Revolution programme: presenter Janet Street Porter. started as a Fashion Writer in the 1970s

PART ONE: Newspapers

Property and Recruitment advertising going elsewhere. - Online websites. 

Print: 2.25m loss of readers last year. 

750,000 readers lost The Mirror

400,000 readers lost The Sun

10% Guardian lost

500,000 readers stopped buying a sunday paper. 

Sir Martin Sorrell WPP, buys advertising round the world. 

Advertising FB, MSN, MySpace are taking lots of advertising from the papers. 

Classified ad's a previous income for newspapers have gone down by 30-35% eg.property in the last year. Moved to online websites. 

NUJ reports 500 print journalists in a week lost jobs. 

Derek Jameson started with Reuters as a runner. Newspapers have survived Radio/TV, why won't they survive the internet? 

10/12/85 Murdoch moved offices to Wapping. 

25/01/86 Strikes and riots between proprietor Rupert Murdoch and workers. HQ in NY. Controls Sun/The Times/ Wall Street Journal. 

London Sun's circulation gone up in the last year, but less than it was ten years ago. NEWSCORPS. 

Graham Dudman, MD. Sun, Says great journalism is still selling the paper. Has cut it's cover price against the Mirror. RM has increased investment in Editorial and production. Printing has moved from Wapping to London. Prints all his papers faster 30,000 p/h before. 86,000 copies an hour in full colour. They print £23m newspapers a week. Printing more economical and delivers newspapers so quickly and in full colour. 

Media Analyst, Paul Gooden. Prices going up, but can keep loyalty by giving away a book or CD, DVD's. 

McFly set up own record company and instead of releasing it they gave it away free with a newspaper. It boosted their sales and the band £2.4 had the album, and extra 300,000 more readers/listeners. 

Offsetting advertising losses with new giveaways. 

Free papers are also picking up the advertising. Targetted young people with disposable income, good for advertisers. 

Freesheets are accused of dumbing down news. Supposed to be 55% news, but in an onstreet survey people still wouldn't pay for it. One person said 20p. Junk newspaper. Freesheets cannot deliver news indepth. 

RM Chairman and CEO - young people are living on their computers. RM totally neutral about where the news is read, tv,web,print. 

Alan Rusbridger Guardian, says the print presses they have are probably the last presses they will ever buy. 

People want to see news as it happens, pictures, audio, opinion all at once. 

Daily Telegraph, Britains biggest selling daily. Has overhauled it's offices. Images projected across the wall and also a realtime number of how many people are reading articles online. 

Edward Roussel, Telegraph. They are making more video than they used to. EG financial programmes. Feel they have a younger audience metropolitan audience on the web. You find they're not so different after all (young and old news readers)

New Media distinctly unprofitable - no-one wants to pay to read news online. 

Tim Bowdler - If it's online we should have it for free. 

20m unique users 2m abroad - Guardian. £7m p/month log on from USA. to Guardian newspaper. British news is popular. 

Cameron Yuille, Agent 007, need to change the way the newspaper thinks about their audience. They got to figure out how to sell to the global audience. Reader specific advertising. 

Guardian going for US, and India. 

Amazon - the kindle, can have books, newspaper subscription, whole paper. 

Newspapers have to find the funds to weather the recession and invest in digital technology. 

Newspapers will not die, because it's a good way of reaching large sections of the population, like TV. Our appetite for news is not diminishing. 

PART TWO: Books. The Fight, Libby Potter. 

Who's profiting from the boom in celebrity books?

Books have been cheap, delivered to your house next day - what's not to like, Will Self

Booksellers are telling publishers what they will sell and what they won't. 

£1,500 - £100,000 being paid to booksellers to highlight their book. 

£200m books bought last year in the UK. 

Rise of celebrity books, 5 of last years top 10 books were written by celebrity's. 

Patrick Janson Smith, Publisher. gave Dawn French (for her book) - £2m advance, but how many books need to be sold to recoup that? 

Fiction and Celebrity are popular books. Paul O'Grady was paid 'seven figures' for his book. Larry Finlay MD. If you have the books that are generating the money then you have money to help new authors. 

Carole Blake, Literary Agent, 'celebrity take up a lot of bookshelf space, marketing, and smoothing ego's'. But only one out of ten of these books will make it. 

Fay Weldon, Author, feels the Celebrity books are affecting what is being published. The quality, history and standards are going downhill. 

Stephen Page, Faber and Faber. Says other books are being overpriced to fund the celebrity books. 

Neill Denny, Editor in Chief, says celebrity books is helping other books by using profit from their books. 

Book world, price wars, competitive wars. Gerry Johnson, MD Waterstones. People have to feel confident that our prices are as good as they can get anywhere else. 

PD James are not selling as much now. Used to be £15 is now £10 for a hardback. 

A £20 book is now selling at around £8. Publishers are losing out. 

Newsnight, WHSMith 26/9/95. 'Net Book price' collapses. Now a free for all on what the market can charge. 

Asda etc introduced their discounting skills to books. Will your author take a minimal price, but higher quantity. 

Booksellers dictate to publishers what will be sold and how much of. 

Amazone and rise of books on internet has had a massive impact on the bookselling world, competing with price and availability. 

Christopher North VP of Media, Amazon. Basic idea was to be able to offer the entire selection of books which wouldn't be offered on the high street. 

Has discounting gone too far? Amazon's discounting is same as other retailers large. 

Haschette has recently refused to sell their books at the discounted price Amazon requires. 

Aggressive discounting has left smaller independent booksellers unable to compete and have had to specialise or close. Nearly 100 independents have closed in the last year. Independent bookshops can't compete on price as can't hold the same amount of stock. 

Will Self, Author, says the customers are starting to wag the dog. Buyers reverting to independent bookshops. Although, TV daytime programmes such as R&Judy bookclub has had a phenomenal impact on the book industry. Will's been asked to butter up Amanda Ross to help the trade! 

Amanda Ross - MD. Cactus TV. idea to set up a bookclub on daytime TV. She chooses the book by what she likes. Oprah Winfrey also did on her show. 

Daytime TV has got the right demographic, Richard & Judy recommendation. 

22/1/04 Star of the Sea, Joseph O'Connor. - started climbing after the show and went to number one after the show. Bob Geldof's recommendation sent it sky high too. 

Must secure foreign sales too. Bookfairs in Frankfurt, Brit titles in big demand there. Booksellers and buyers across the world meet to April/Oct. All manuscripts delivered month before bookfair. 

Carole Blake, she has back to back meetings all week selling foreign rights to her authors books. Independent publishers don't have marketing budgets like the 

Tindal Streeet Press, Luke Brown, - small publisher. Have to be more inventive and more passionate. Go for books that the larger publishers miss. EG Catherine O'Flyn What Was Lost sold 7m copies. She was told that the book lacked commercial appeal by the bigger publishers. As it didn't fit in the pigeon holes they felt were selling. 

Conscious of the market you're selling to. Agents aren't looking for: completely mad letters suggest completely mad people and Carole Blake isn't interested. 

Cost of a title can dictate where the book is sold. EG 3for2 deal tables hold a small marketing fee and will make the book sell thousands more than it would on shelf. 

Transworld Publishers. Larry. pay £1,500-100,000 to get their book in prime slots in booksellers. 

Pressures of market, industry is now mass market and mass market ideals. Therefore, a lot of books have been pushed down this format. Profit from publishing is being concentrated to big commercial houses/multi-national conglomerates. The big book selling chains are winners. 

Losers are the independent booksellers, small publishers and authors who couldn't get their work out there.  Serious literature is supposedly being printed less. 

The consumer is winning, not just the educated elite buying books, wide variety, cheaply. 

PART THREE: TV Analogue to Digital as prfound as moving from b&w to colour. 

Britain invented it. 

Hells Kitchen, UK Idol, 

Still funding TV as if it were 50 years ago. 

Who wants to be a millionaire started from a home quiz show. biggest profit. 

What will keep TV alive? 

Rod Taylor, Head of International TV, 2waytv, Executive Producer, Who Wants to be a Millionaire. Being made for Cosovan and Albanian TV. 

Needs to consider viewers and advertisers. Young male presenters attracts women. 

Max Flint - reporter. 

TV competing 

25% share of advertising held by internet. 

Google will be as big as ITV. 

Reaching £4.50 p/adult - used to be £7 from advertising. 

Has to find new sources of funding to meet new landscape. 

Wayne Garvie, must have an international strategy and can you access international funding. 

Britains done well with it's format. EG Freemantle Media. Tony Cohen. Format has tears, laughter and a resolution. A format can be repeated. 50% of formats across the world are from the UK. Because UK commissions original ideas and can then export them. 

EG: Strictly has been screened across 40 countries. Each country has own judges and contestents so it is adapted to each culture. 

Similar to way films are funded. Patchwork of various funders and participants/companies. 

hit film Slumdog Millionaire has shown how ingrained one of our shows has become. 

London's Capital Radio started Who wants to be a Millionaire. David Briggs worked to turn show to a TV show. Prizes got from premium rate numbers. Once international companies heard they wanted to buy, never got any answers, so prices kept going up. 

WWTBM has been broadcast in 107 countries. 

2waytraffic was bought by Sony for £7m 

Peter Bazalgette, after WWTBM US were knocking down his door for next new format. 

UK US, Russian and Eastern European Companies take it on. 

When they sell a programme it includes a bible to producing the show. 

In a lot of countries it isn't £1m. In Cosovo it's 50.000 Euro's as this is 2o times someones annual wage and will therefore change their life. 

Albanian and Cosovan's are bused to the gameshow. 

Lee Bartlett, ABC 92-99, says they can film in London and still fill the audience with whatever language they want. If you go to the country and produce the show yourself then you get to keep the production fees. In US the production fees are very lucrative. 

$100m a year Granada TV US. 

The BBC have offices in US and own American Idol show. Fox screens the show. American Idol has been number 1 for last five years. (FremantleTV). 

Simon is part of the british original . - A nasty britishman seems to increase ratings (Gordon Ramsey). 

Wife Swap, What not to Wear, Antiques Roadshow, Top Gear have all been taken to the US. 

The Office, NBC Universal, Ben Silverman - says Britain invades US with Shakespeare, music-the Beetles. 

Product Placement is being campaigned for as imported programmes are allowed to. John McVay says domestic programming can't use this. 

Merchandising - v.comp in kids programmes - NEVER! - Tele Tubbies going on tour, in China huge themed kindergartens are being opened. Anne Wood co-creator of Teletubbies. Lucky if you get quarter of funding, have to go out and get 75% yourself. It's made more diff by counterfeit merchandise. 

Piracy of digital content. Video sharing on the internet - this threatens the corp from exploiting the show across different platform. Therefore, jeopardising the production of this type of show again. 

Director of Content and Production Worldwide. Wayne ... & Ben Silverman say if other people are counterfeiting the programme, work out a way of doing the same thing, so they can't. 

Bebo experimenting by having TV. Joanna Shields Ch Exec. Bebo. Drama Kate Modern, 67million views worldwide. Advertisers were brought into the show, ie Cadbury's Cream Egg suit worn. 

Future, may be able to choose what adverts they will see. Can sell their time of watching an advert for 20sec's then they get certain amount of time to watch free content. 

Millionaire into Afghanistan 2009? 

30-40 yrs TV has shown itself adaptable to new technology and new viewers. 

Transmedia - content available in lots of areas. 

Movies didn't disappear when TV came in. 

Work Experience Express & Echo/Features

My second Women in Business Feature went in today. It was a column the Echo have been running for a little while and Gordon asked me to have a go at. I wrote the piece in the first person after interviewing Celina West. I'd interviewed Liz Hodges the week before and done the same thing. 

Liz Hodges article was harder to interview easier to write. Celina was easy to interview, but harder to write as she had so much more riding on the published article. I was pleased to see they published my article on their website too. www.sarahwestrecruit.co.uk

Gordon had changed the order around. This is something I keep coming up against. The paragraphs seem to be fine, but they're in the wrong order, ie. the priority of which to put first, second etc isn't always right. I was glad to see he hadn't really changed the wording, just the order. 

Strange to see something in print you've written. If it gets changed it takes away that delight for me. I wrote an obituary, and it was changed around slightly and they spelt my name wrong. After that it didn't give me the same pleasure as reading a very short article I'd written which had been put in word for word. Something about pride and the fact that it's printed word for word being equivalent to a 'tick' on a marked piece of work. 

Anyway, the article has gone in, it was a professional which I recommended us to interview and I was pleased it hadn't been pulled. :D

Mag Production 17/11/09

Today for the first time in a while I felt like a 'real' student. 

I saw Russ this morning for a tutorial and was pleased to see I wasn't as behind as I thought I was. I then went to both of the learning resources centres to try and register for the library. Forty minutes later I was 'in'. I'm official, it's real and I'd better get on with it now. 

We'd been talking about the magazine this morning and I want to do a women's spiritual magazine. I was so pleased to see at the library a book by Anna Gough-Yates, 'Understanding Women's Magazines'.  How 'meant to be' was that! NB: Do you put a ? after a retorical question, or a full-stop? 

Anyway, moving on. I'm sat in my bed, alone with the pc/a book and some chocolate biscuits- I'm officially a student ha. 

From the small amount I've read so far I can feel the neuron's start to flick and ignite already. Gough-Yates talks about the fact that she feels the magazines have been putting out an image of a 'new woman' since the 70's, but more so in the 80's and 90's. An almost superwoman, who runs the home, but is mostly a middle-class young, professional woman. She talks about how some magazines are now (2005) trying to target women they had previously targeted as younger women, but who are now in their mid thirties. 

It got me thinking, firstly how if the market is moving their content to fit with a certain set of aging women, that obviously there were some ingredients (culture,class,opportunities etc) that made them predisposed to purchase magazines or a certain type of magazine. The eighties and nineties, as I remember were growth periods for my career and during this period I was very much career and lifestyle orientated. It becomes a chicken and egg question, what came first the type of woman or the magazine which promoted 'being' a certain type of woman? I do remember seeing my Mother with her copy of Woman's Own and from a young age being quite repulsed by it and it's articles. Especially, anything which seemed to want to teach me to be a better 'housewife' - YUK. Although now I'm a parent, I do sometimes think it would be quite useful to know how to make clothes out of old curtains, like The Sound of Music's, Maria. 

Initially, I looked on the County Council website at the local demographics and found out 18-29 yr olds were prevalent in this area of the country. So I had thought I would aim a magazine at that age group. However, because the magazine is a spiritual/women's magazine it occurred to me that most women interested were not 18 year olds. Although there are younger people interested, mostly people come to looking at their spirituality after a variation of experiences. When I say spirituality, I don't mean religion. This magazine is not about following certain rules or ways of life. I've always said the 'simplest person can still hold the strongest truth'. In a nutshell, spirituality, to me, is about helping people while finding and spreading happiness in everyday situations. 

This led me on, today I had been plotting out some ideas for articles, to make it easier to plan the number of pages for the magazine, what artwork, photographs and graphics I might need. The ideas I'd come up with were, in no particular order, an interview with Nicki Ravenscroft about what it's like to be the woman behind the musician, an article on depression - a life coaches perspective/answer. Parenting - teenagers and 'crystal/rainbow' children, how to develop psychically, mah-jong horoscopes, Interviews with Reiki/Homeopathy teachers locally, etc etc. BUT, tonight, I realise that Gough-Yates is trying to say that people buy images/icon's and read magazines about things/people/etc they want to be like or are like. So, I realised it was a tougher job than I thought. Although I had decided the concept of the magazine I haven't fully considered the image that the reader is buying into. At the same time, I don't really like the idea of an image. Maybe I can have a non-image as this would fit better with the magazine. IE. Here are a series of articles which you may or may not feel an affinity with or find useful. The main aim is to boost confidence, self-esteem and start opening the reader to possibly new concepts and ideas. Like a catalyst for change. MMmmm 'Catalyst' is that a good name for the magazine??? 

There are a few on the shish kebab of names at the moment, 'Shhh', 'Power of She', 'Shine', 'Independent', TRY (The Real You), but I'm not 'feeling' it. I thought about Ohana - it's a Hawian name meaning 'family', but again, parenting is only a subsection of what the magazine is about, so I don't want to give the wrong impression.  To me the mag's which make it, have one word catchy names, Elle, Red, Hello, Psychologies, Cosmopolitan, Glamour etc. In some ways I like catalyst better, it has scientific connotations as well as other more general associations. Catalyst, is something which happens that CAUSES something else to happen. I like the thought of the magazine giving someone/a woman a spark of inspiration to make a change. I am passionate about living a motivated purposeful life. Through these two things I've achieved and got through things I never thought I would. I like the idea of the magazine being a bit of on-hand motivation. It's not the run of the mill Closer/Hello type magazines, but it is better to die standing than to live bending (an albanian proverb).

WRP paragraph about self

Hi, I'm Julia, the Editor responsible for the Work element of the WRP website. 

Providing bread and butter on the table ie: our working life takes up such a large part of our time that I feel it should have an element of fun to it. If you're looking for a job, looking for some guidance as to what to do next this is the area for you. 

There are links to other sites as we couldn't squeeze it all in here and I'm not pretending to know it all just provide a structure around which you can start to think about short and long-term career goals, or consider other available options.  The journey's important, so I'm not going to do all the work for you, make sure you have something to take notes with and remember to send in more specific questions to the work Q&A area :D 

My sins also include studying for the Fda in Journalism and Practical Media, I'm a freelance journalist and a loan parent of a five year old son.  My career in short has given me experience of training, recruitment, health & safety, security, employment skills, sales and management. If you'd really want to know more about my career to date I've included a brief history in the work section. 

I have 12 years experience of managing and facilitating and in short as long as fun is included on the work schedule a lot more gets done. I hope my section is a lighter way to help you through the career maze whilst still holding on to what else is important to you. 

'The best things in life, aren't things'. Art Buchwald

BRIEF CAREER HISTORY: 

My career has been varied starting when I finished a B-Tec National Diploma in Sports and Leisure Management. I taught myself to touch-type during the two years and temped for a while when I left College. 

TIP: Having office skills of some description will always keep you in work, even if it's only a temporary gig. 

I then worked for both the Police Studies Centre within Exeter University, progressing to Office Manager and took high ranking Police Officers around Europe to study European Policing. Eventually a mortgage and an increased sense of social responsibility attracted me to a management position within a Drugs Project. 

It was an 'interesting' time and within five years I was part of the management team that grew the project from eight people working within Exeter to seventy people working all over Devon and Dorset. Responsible for staff, security, health & safety administration and finance the post was varied and pretty stressful. I frequently worked seventy hour weeks. When I left, I was proud to be informed they had to replace me with three people. I had been offered a commission with the RAF, however a horse riding accident put an end to my 25 mile a week running and fitness regime. Changed my destiny in a split second. 

I was then offered a promoted position with Avon Health Authority as Facilities Manager, responsible for a £2m budget, 11 team leaders and 70 staff.  This was great, but although I was good at my job I realised my heart wasn't in it anymore and the work was no longer challenging. 

I went to a local recruitment company TACT Personnel to find alternative work. Surprisingly, impressing the manager so much she offered me the Account Manager's job at Howmet recruiting and managing temporary staff.  We quickly changed the recruiting processes and went from one to one interviewing to group interviews of up to 40 people a session, three sessions a week. It was so successful I was quickly earning £30k a year. Little ole me, in little ole Exeter - anything can happen. I can honestly say, I've never enjoyed a job so much, the buzzy atmosphere and the social life I had working in recruitment was phenomenal. 

Nothing lasts forever, 9/11 put paid to the American owned company Howmet's growth and 212 temporary staff were whittled down to 30.  I love a challenge and responsibility for thirty staff was not. I moved from recruitment to self employment and took up a contract with a local training agency, whilst also working as a door supervisor and running a small door security company. 

Becoming a mother put work on hold temporarily and when I returned I craved some stability, so took up a position as Advertising Account Manager for the Sidmouth Herald.  Here, again, I was successful and within three months offered promotion to a larger paper, but working for Archant I realised I wanted to be a journalist and an old dream resurfaced. 

The rest of my career is, 'in progress' so to speak. I've returned to University, proving the key to success is to never stop learning and it's never too late to start again. :D 

Whether you're hunting or gathering stay happy. Julia :D 

How NOT to: :D NB:

NB: Don't put what I wrote in my 'witty writers' application - It didn't work - no response lol. :D

You may wonder why I'm laughing and just think 'silly woman, of course she wasn't going to get a response'. I don't think life's all about getting it right every time. If we really think about it, we all know what's 'right', but if you don't make a few harmless mistakes how can you ever find new solutions or new ways to do things at all. 

I feel that we should never be afraid to lose. Obvious reasons are that we don't get/have the things we want, but also because there's a lot of learning in the losing. Mainly, staying positive and knowing it wasn't meant to be. 

Random Poetry for the Magazine 16/11/09

Just some random poetry: 

Here we are, monitors of the outcome. 

Weighing the difference between chaos and calm. 

If it were said that chaos was ahead, 

would you smile and forgive? will you make sure you live? 

'Love makes the world go round', 

hate drives love into the ground. 

You decide, LOVE? ... or hide?

Work Experience Express & Echo Concluded

I'm such an all levels person that working with the E&E on the lead up to Armistice Day was quite emotional. For some reason this year seems to be more prominent to people. It was reported that more people turned out to the various memorials and much younger people. It doesn't feel too many years ago the media reported people fearing the loss of interest in marking Armistice Day. 

The people I worked with were all lovely. Hannah Hope (Features), 'Fletch' John Fletcher (Court Reporter), Tom Bevan (Reporter), Gordon Richmondson (Business Section). They all really helped and were so friendly. Watching Fletch, Tom and Gordon doing telephone interviews with forces and ex-forces service personnel was quite touching. They've all got great technique and seem to know just when to ask questions, how to get people talking and able to show the right levels of respect. It was one of those moments when although I know I have a little bit of talent, I realised I'm still leagues away from being a professional. I never felt like I was treated me like a work experience bod, more like part of the team, which I liked. 

I had done various articles and was feeling a little bit more confident. However, I was given a small article to write about the timings of the parades etc and asked to include all the various contingents in the article. There was a list of twenty or so different regiments, charities, community forces and companies. I couldn't tell which one's would be more important to mention and which ones to leave out. It was obvious in the case of Royal British Legion versus St. John Ambulance, but I have to say I made a right hash of it. I seem to be more comfortable writing in a feature style. 

The editor Patrick was also great in loads of ways, encouraging, supportive, helpful. He gave me a story about a local man to who has terminal cancer. His friends and family raised £5,500 for the family. I spoke to Paul from Bridge, I spoke to Andy from the Kings Pub in Cowick street and asked Paul to contact the family to pass our number on so we could speak to them. I wrote the story and the editor was very happy, said I could have a byline on it. The photo's we'd got from Rob, someone at the fundraiser, were too poor a quality to print in the paper. So Paul was finding us some better photo's. All of a sudden he seemed to have cold feet and when I rang him, kept going on about how the family didn't know about the story. I asked him again to pass our number on. I spoke to Patrick and told him about Paul's (cold feet) issues. 

Patrick was quite clever and said that if the man's wife contacted us and said specifically she didn't want it in the paper then we wouldn't print it, but we wouldn't retract the article just because Paul had cold feet. I rang Paul and asked him to get Janice to ring us by 8pm that Friday night. We heard nothing, but then Saturday I got a phonecall on my mobile of Janice having small fits about the story being in the paper. I got the message at 9pm, so rang my parents to see if the article had already gone in - it hadn't. Then I rang her back and said I couldn't guarantee it wouldn't be in Monday's paper already, but that I had spoken to the Editor and he had asked for the family to ring us. She said Paul had only just given them the message, then she proceeded to rant about Rob and how he shouldn't have given us photo's etc. I told her he'd given us the bare minimum and that most of the information we had included the amount of money raised had come from Paul himself. She seemed to calm down then and wanted to know more about what we'd written. I talked to her for a bit and said that we didn't want to upset the family, the E&E weren't about that, we had just wanted to print the story as it was about the fact that one man had made such a difference/impact on so many peoples lives that such a fundraiser had even been possible. 

I dealt with her with kid gloves, thought about how I would feel about it and thought there was probably a few reasons why she wouldn't want it printed: 

1. Once something's in print it becomes 'real' maybe the family felt there was hope and did not want to tempt fate? 

2. Death of a loved one is a very personal experience and something you may want to go through without everyone stopping you in the street saying 'I read about it in the paper'. 

3. Cynically, perhaps they're on benefits now, as she had to give up work, and did not want the benefits system to know how much they'd got as it would effect them. 

4. They didn't want to feel like a charity case - pride. 

Either way, it definitely wasn't worth pushing the story into the media just for my own ego to have a byline in the paper, at the expense of someone's feelings. If it had involved crime, dishonesty, fraud etc - I'd have been right there and not caring about their feelings, but not this one. It was good to discover an experience to prove my ethical boundaries, something which writing for College doesn't provide without real work experience - real self knowledge. 

As I say, everything comes to those who wait and by the end of the week, possibly because of the way I dealt with the other scenario, I was given an obituary to do and to contact people who knew Major General Marston Tickell, another sensitive situation. I got my byline. tbc. 

Work Experience Express & Echo Day 1 and 2

I've completed a couple of days at the Express and Echo now, and I'm glad to say - I love it! 

My son was ill Monday and Tuesday, so I couldn't start till Wednesday, but I can go in Monday and Tuesday next week to make up the time. I've been put in the news team with Hannah Hope, John 'Fletch' Fletcher, Tom Bevan and Gordon (who I only met today so don't know his surname). I started off being given some press releases to turn into fillers between 150 and 300 words. They ranged from being about 8 yr old Brownies looking for ex-members to Skate Parks in Teignmouth, to talking to someone who had put together a fundraiser for his friend who has just been diagnosed with terminal cancer. 

It's interesting to see the varying responses to the press. Some people like agents for the Hotel Barcelona in Exeter are VERY cagey and won't give away anything. Even when I said we were wanting to do a positive article. Contacting people about news is very much like sales, you have to ring them and ring them, never leave a message unless you absolutely have to. Once you've left a message you take away your right to keep ringing back lol. 

This afternoon I went into Exeter for Hannah's 'What we're wearing' feature which appears in the E&E on Saturday's. She asked me to take four photo's of 'fashionable' people walking around Exeter High Street and get details of their name, age, occupation, where they bought all their clothes, their favourite shops and any style icon's. Initially I was a bit nervous, mainly as I don't have much of an idea about 'fashion'. Funnily enough, the people I thought really were 'cutting edge fashionable' wouldn't speak to me lol. I ended up interviewing people who mostly shopped in Primark, New Look, River Island and Topshop. They all seemed quite chuffed to appear in the paper. I was getting a bit desperate to find some people who would take what I thought Hannah might think were 'good' photo's. So after I'd taken photo's and got details of six of the general public I accosted two Sales Assistants and asked them if I could take photo's of them. The first a guy from Moss Brothers, the second a woman from Jane Norman. 

I was quite disappointed with the quality of my photo's. After looking at the photo's I noticed most of them weren't smiling warmly. Most looked terrified in their first photo lol, so much for me putting them at ease. All those seasons watching America's Next Top Model - wasted! :D Apart from all that I did actually enjoy doing that 'assignment'. So I HOPE Hannah Hope likes my photo's. 

Anyway, it has made me think if I want to be a journalist I really need to address the poor quality of my photo's. Unsure exactly how to do this outside of reading books and getting photographic magazines. I can't afford another course and don't have the time.