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.