Be sceptical and don’t take no for an answer are just two of a raft of useful tips from ex-ABC staffer Ray Moynihan on how to be a good journalist. Joining the ABC in 1986 Mr Moynihan worked with Radio National and Triple J, in addition to doing a five-year stint with Four Corners. Formerly(…)

After having a day off from the internship on friday, I cam on Monday saying I would start fresh and a new outlook to my slow days (if you remember my last blog, I had to get myself known). But I was so worng, for a few hours I was looking around for small stories(…)

One thing I have noticed in my internships, when you want a story idea of yours published the best thing to do is say this: “If Iwas a reader I would want t know why.” I’ve found myself saying this as well, by no means is it a sure fire way to get a story(…)

It’s been a busy few days for me since I touched down in Sydney on Sunday night. I was fortunate to fly down with the wonderful Qantas (no product placement here), although I will have to mark them down for serving spinach for dinner, which would be my least favourite food in the world even(…)

Another week has begun and new stories are coming up, well I hope! Yesterday I’ve done two stories, one was kind of hard news, which I thought would have been published today, but unfortunately did not end up in the newspaper. First of all, because there are so many stories done by day that it(…)

To anybody who has seen the film then you will probbly see where I’m going with this. So I just finished doing a story about the iPhone 5. So I wrote the story, and then wrote an opinion piece to go with it (my top five phones of all time). But anyway, so I wrote(…)

My two final days at the Queensland Times had the most pace: final wrap-up of my stories, pic stories, vox pops, and an interview with the editor. It was a thrill to finish the final interviews and write-ups for three stories I had pitched last week. I’ve not had active feedback on my earlier work(…)

CHANGING PERSPECTIVE An Idiots Guide:Part 2 My inability to do nothing has been a problem throughout my life, the biggest symptom being boredom. Luckily for me, there is almost always something to do in a newsroom with an editor, a journalist and a sports journalist who is there twice a week.  On my first day(…)

Today was day one for my return to the ABC news radio team on the Gold Coast, and the timing was magic. Looking through the daily papers for stories to follow up, there on page 4 (or it could have been 6, or 8… one of the even pages anyway) of the Gold Coast Bully(…)

Final day started without hiccup, got ready faster and earlier than normal and made my way to the train. All the paper’s staff, including the editor were busy with deadline so I wasn’t given as much to do. All-round a pretty slow day and it was quite sad to leave in the end. The staff(…)

I could discourse for hours on the subject of bylines, but life is short so I’ll take just 90 seconds. One of my better articles wasn’t bylined. Why? Not enough space, so the least significant thing (from the sub-editor’s point of view) got deleted – namely, my name. I’ve included this article in my portfolio of published pieces(…)

So the darndest thing happened on Friday night. Frazer Pearce (editor) called me into his office after I had just submitted my last few stories for the weekend paper. He said he had made an adjustment to the lead of one of the stories and wanted me to have a read to see if it was(…)