See. 

The Herald Sun- the highest selling paper in Australia is located in a large skyscraper on the South Bank of Melbourne. I know because it loomed over me as I approached the huge rotating doors and wrapped my thick coat and scarf around me.

As I sat in the large intimidating reception on some leather and chrome seat contraption I contemplated what my week may be like. It could swing either way- it could be a week of filing, making coffees and doing other journalists’ dirty work, or it could be an exciting, finger on the pulse few days jam packed with experience, adventure and maybe even a published story or two at the end of it all. I was hoping for the latter.

Initially I met the other intern, my ‘competition’ as I saw her. A small weedy looking girl from La Trobe University in Bundoora. She was a third year uni’ student, who had no idea what shorthand was, had never been published let alone been on an internship and looked absolutely terrified. Suffice to say I felt I had the upper hand .

I was taken up to the daily newspaper and given a desk and a nonchalant ‘I’ll be with you shortly’. Ever determined not to waste my week I went about writing my own story and waiting for the editor to come out of a meeting.

I approached Paul, my editor, who liked my story ideas and said I should work on them, after I had helped out James- one of the paper’s general reporters.

By the end of the day I had spoken to every single Council in Melbourne and had no time to work on my own stories.

The next day I arrived hoping not to be a dogsbody for the next eight hours. Eagerly I agreed to venture out with the education reporter and went to a fancy PR-run promo with free pastries and coffee to boot. After a few questions with the Premier and his posse we headed back to the office where the journo I was out with passionately agreed to help me with my going nowhere story.

However by the time 5:30 hit and the woman in question still hadn’t ventured anywhere near my desk I realized I’d been shafted and was very much looking forward to a slower paced and far more friendly atmosphere at the Sunday Herald Sun.

The Sunday was more my kind of paper, the pressure of daily stories was eased and replaced with the gentle grind of trying to find a good yarn.

From Wednesday to Friday I was given decent stories and encouraged to work on my own story ideas, I went out with photographers, spoke to the public, did a heinous amount of research and got along fantastically with the reporters there.

The Editor was particularly encouraging and assured me a story in The Sunday Herald Sun, and sure enough come Sunday I was awoken with screams of joy as my Mother came running into my room, paper in hand to parade my byline in front of me.

I was unsure about taking on an extra internship at Bundaberg News Mail, but after my first day I was so happy that I did.

I was worried that I wouldn’t have much to write about  in a rural area, but apparently I came at a good time – it was busy.

The weekend before I started my internship a photographer from News Mail Nigel Brennan had reportedly been kidnapped in Somalia.

I walked in on Monday morning and chief of staff Nikki Sorbello warned me not to answer any phones because media everywhere wanted comments on the matter.

Nikki was happy to give me a lot of interesting stories to work on and she was a little sympathetic when giving me picture stories and vox pops to do.

Unlike my internship at the Sunshine Coast Daily, at News Mail I got to do a lot of interviews in person rather than mainly on the phone. Some of my stories included a preview to the annual Bundaberg Multi Cultural Festival and a preview to the annual Bundaberg to Brisbane bike ride.

I wrote for both News Mail and The Guardian, their free weekly paper.

With only six journalists in the office, they were all very friendly and always involved me in their gossip sessions and gave me plenty of good advice.

I was never bored or short of something to write or do.

All the journos made me feel very welcome, but as usual just as I was really getting to know people, it was time to go home.

Not for long though – the next Monday I started my internship at the Queensland Times.

This was a huge change from little News Mail as there were a lot more people and a much bigger demand for story ideas. It was a little bit intimidating being in the news meetings. I did offer story ideas but they would often be shut down and my occasional suggestion was nothing compared to the four or five story ideas everyone else brought to the meetings every morning.

I was assured that more ideas would take time, but there was definitely a bit more pressure at the QT than my other internships.

Rob was there of course and it was great to see how he’s operating now, (very well, frequently getting page one stories)

As the intern, my daily job was the vox pop.

I was also given odd jobs like writing a weather wrap up, which was a weather report only written in the form of a news story, including quotes, which i found quite strange. I did a lot of work with the Advertiser, writing about local success stories and I did a few for the newspaper as well including a Gold Lotto story which made page two and a political feature story about what female Ipswich councillors thought about Sarah Palin which was very interesting.

Overall, after three weeks of interning I’ve learnt a lot about different news rooms and I now know my style of writing and what kind of articles I like best. I enjoyed both internships and hope my experience will lead onto a decent job somewhere similar in the future.

He spoke of these unaccountable governments gaining power via coup d’etat and suspending the constitution so they cannot be impeached.

His list of ‘survival strategies’ which would be ragearded as general knowledge for a Nigerian journalist such as never sleeping in the same house twice in a week and travelling using different modes of transport to and from work seemed unbelievable.

I couldn’t ever imagine putting my life on the line for a job. You’d have to ask yourself was it worth it? But in the grand scheme of things life was restricted by such constraints then we as journalists have to be the ones who stand up to the government and demand accountability for the rest of the nation, for the greater good.

When asked why Levi would want to be a journalist in such a volatile area he humbly and matter-of-factly stated “These people come into office and no-one votes for them, they don’t have the right to be there and they believe that critical comment is destabolizing to society but that is your job. You can’t just sign away your conscience.”

So willing to be branded a national security threat and indefinitley imprisoned for fighting for freedom this Nigerian journo’ definitely taught us a thing or two about the easy run we have reporting in a western democratic society.

If you enter the local watering hole on a Friday night, it brings a whole new experience to going out and getting drunk!

The smell of diesel and dust fills the small over crowded pub as miners and cowboys come together to mingle at the local for what will be described the next day while they sit around the crib room or on their horses as, “hey mate that was a bloody good night, Damn it was good mate.”

“Live music” means some band has just dusted off their instruments and is trying to belt out a tune for a song I have never heard of and everyone is “full as a tick” or “full as a boot” and it’s not even eight o’clock yet!

You don’t have to worry about how you’re going to pull up the next day as there is no such things as hang overs in this town.

They are hard working country lads and tough miners and this one thing you will never hear them says, “I am never going to drink again,” but you will hear this, “Mate I out did ya last night, how many did ya get down?” and yep they are already thinking about what a night next Friday is going to be at the Nebo pub.

Talk about being caught in the middle, one side of me I have a guy who has the worst case of miners disease, telling me about how good he is, how much money he earns, how many houses he owns, how he likes to spend his days off on his jet ski which is toed by his supped up V8 4×4.

While my left ear is going to sleep by some cute little cowboy who thinks is going to make it big time telling me how he could stuck it to a good bull for more than eight seconds if they would only let him and his ideal date is wrapped up in a swag with his misses under the stars. Bartender quick I need another rum!

But if I use my charm right I don’t have to open my wallet and I still get to go home empty handed and free of a miner or cowboy, just the way I like it and I guess I can now join the group “I have partied in Nebo for a night” on facebook.

Welcome to a Friday night in Nebo!

“Hi Luke, it’s Tony Edmunds from the Maitland Mercury, just returning your call.”

“Hi Tony, I was just ringing to confirm my internship at the Maitland Mercury for next week.”

A brief shuffling of papers ensued in the terrible silence, pregnant with foreboding.

“Luke…uhhh…we…uhhh…don’t actually have you down for any internship next week. Who did you organise this with.”

I proceeded to explain that I’d organised it with Liz Tickner, the actual Editor, more than two months previous.

Tony, the Deputy Editor, finally assured me that I would be able to do the internship.

It was therefore, on the Monday when I walked into the Mercury’s office, I carried with me a feeling of apprehension in my stomach.

The feeling wasn’t entirely unfounded.

Arriving at 9am, I had to sit through an OH&S initiation, which is the most soul-crushing experience in my life yet.

Coming out of that, I had to wait another hour, until 11am, for the sports editor to show up, being assured she “would definitely have something for me to do.”

When the time came, Michelle the sports editor didn’t have much for me to do to begin with, but as they began to realise that JSchoolers aren’t run of the mill, the workload picked up comfortably.

Rebecca Berry, a Walkley Award-winning journalist for the paper, was off sick, and it fell to me to do her daily feature-article segment, entitled City Life.

The feature writing was probably the most enjoyable part of the internship, as I got to get out and perform fairly lengthy interviews with generally interesting characters in the area, and pretty much got to write how I chose.

I found the experience to be humbling in a sense, as people I had interviewed hours or days before would occasionally come into the office to talk to me about other concerns both for them personally and the community as a whole.

One thing I learned about Maitland is that the average Joe hates your guts when it comes to vox pop.

Wearing my biggest and best smile, I’d go out day to day to perform this dogsbody’s job, pretending I valued people’s opinions.

Apart from a lot of people not registering what the Mercury was even after I’d told them, I think my best strike rate was 1 in 6. I’d had better luck in Ipswich.

The Maitland Mercury still functions from its original building, where the newspaper was founded in 1843.

Although the building is old, the workplace did carry some vibrancy with it, helped along with some charismatic individuals, notably Cath, one of the photographers, and subeditor Mal, a monster of a man.

Everyone was really personable and friendly, even Alan Hardie, who I believe was slightly deaf and would yell into the phone. The phone calls were then interspersed with loud humming. You had no choice but to get used to it, and no-one else seemed to notice.

I finally got to go to Maitland Gaol, which I’d been wanting to do for over a decade, and interviewed one of the staff there.

Because the newspaper’s cars were often in short supply, my geographical knowledge of Maitland has increased tenfold.

One of the things that struck me was that, although Maitland City was growing at a rapid rate, the Mercury itself often seemed too understaffed to handle many potential stories.

This struck me as odd, because they had a huge advertorial staff.

All in all, I enjoyed my two weeks at the Maitland Mercury, and got to know my local community a lot better.

But I have to say that the Sunshine Coast Daily surprised me as well. However, my surprise was totally different.

Indeed, considering the number of people it represents and where it’s located, the paper is very good. The Sunshine Coast is the home of “only” 300,000 people but its paper has no reason to be jealous of the big city paper of Brisbane.

Local news obviously represents a big part of the paper but national and international news are as well represented as in the Courier-Mail.

And about the gossip, most of them are allotted to the additional magazines of the SCD.

And all this is done with all due modesty! Go SCD! Go!

The weather was just perfect and Chris, the photographer, had many different jobs to do. Perfect day to drive around the Coast!

We went to the funeral of a local rugby hero, we took a picture a local breast cancer association, of people chosen (almost) randomly walking long a beach pathway etc…

Watching at Chris in action was really interesting.

My job was pretty much limitated to holding the flash occasionally when he needed an extra arm… But the only fact of watching him work was worthwhile!

 It was really interesting to see how he is using everything that is around him. It can go from the fence he is climbing on the get a better angle or an unused piece of pipe left by workers in a local man’s (former) garden to give the photo a bit of perspective.

I was also suprised by the number of photo Chris took and the very low number of actual good photo that remained at the end.

The last thing that amazed me is the fact that the pictures representing people are, as far as possible, representing good looking people. For the beach pathway pics, we waited at least 20 minutes to get “semi good looking people”.

I wasn’t expected that from a local newspaper and for a random story that finally ended up to be on page 20!

Anyway, apart from that I really enjoyed my day and the fact of being outdoor and in contact with “real” people. I hope I’ll have to occasion to do the experiment again

It definitely didn’t. Five days was more than enough of the dirty, half-deserted town that felt like it would cloud you in a layer of deep depression if you lived there.

The inner city was shrouded in a feeling of hopelessness. People walked around past bargain stores and scores of empty shops and groups of drunk, abusive homeless people.

Even during the day I didn’t feel safe walking to and from work.

The work I was given mainly consisted of picture stories, briefs and press release re-writes. It was a good experience to see how completely differently APN and News operate.

The week went fast and I can’t complain but honestly I was so glad when Friday afternoon rolled around and I could walk out of there knowing I didn’t have to spend any more time in Townsville!

But it’s always worth seeing places and now I can say I have been, seen and will try my best never to return!

The first was the Bike Week opening where we stood around for an hour looking at some of the most powerful motorbikes in Australia. Steve, one of the journo’s i went with knew nothing about cars and bikes so he really didnt know what was going on when they got into detail about the bikes on show. I had a chinwag with the event organiser and some of the most stereotypical bikies around but got some good quotes just shooting the breeze.

The second story was the start of the construction for the Indy 300. We had to go to talk to Miss Indy and the event organiser. Since i was the newb i had to hold one of the camera flashes as they had a photo shoot with Ms Indy. Not exactly the worst job in the world.

The third job was basically a PR piece for a Belgian Chocolatier who had a chocolate making class at the Sheraton. Not only was this the best chocolate i’ve ever tasted, it was the most beautifully presented food ive ever seen.

Kate, the girl i went with said she didnt like chocolate so I took full advantage and tucked in to some truly amazing confectionary. While I was there I saw her using short-hand and my god was she fast. She said she could do 120 words a minute easily.

After that i finished off a couple of minor stories, thanked the editors and took off home.