It doesn’t matter how prepared you think you are for the newsroom, nothing can prepare you for the excitement you feel in the whirl wind of a newsroom.

 

The Cairns Post is centrally located in the heart of Cairns city in a big beautiful old white stone building just one street away from the Esplanade.

 

It is a prime location as nearly everything is in walking distance although if a tidal wave struck the dominating media of Cairns would go under the wave or looking on the bright side they would be able to cover it first hand!

 

The Cairns Post was nothing like I expected, in fact it was far from it. I was expecting a huge newsroom with a grumpy old editor and chief of staff with journalist who had one foot in the grave but to my surprise it was totally the opposite.

 

The newsroom of the Cairns Post is very small with news, sport and features all within arms reach away from each other in the same room. It is a very friendly environment with six or seven news journalists and a very young editor and chief of staff.

 

Like past Jschool student Edmund said a few weeks ago, “you can always tell by working or sitting beside a journalist if they are good or not.” From what I have observed in the newsroom of the Cairns Post all their journalists give 100 per cent and have a passion for journalism.    

 

The week started off slowly but by the third day it started to get exciting. I was told that it was a “full on news week” compared to some weeks.

 

My first story made it on the front page! Something that started out what I thought was only a small story turned into front page news. It was a story about a record high fuel price hit over the city of Cairns. Once I knew it was going to be front page news, a senior journalist helped me work on it.  

 

Wednesday really throw the newsroom into excitement.  A chopper full of greenies crushed in bush land followed by several other crushes including car accidents and cane train accidents and a major drug bust.

 

During my week I have covered community news, been to court, chased airplanes around the airport, watched fuel prices, seen the insides of a research ship, watched children dancing, went behind the scenes of Shakespeare and of course the good old work experience vox pop task.

 

I cannot wait until we are together again to share our newsroom experiences!