Luckily, a drawling American noticed my indecision when I got off the train (I was eeny-meeny-miny-moing whether to go right or left) and gave me directions.

“You see that crane over there?” he asked.
(The one that looks about 500kms away?” I thought)
“Just head towards it.”

Brilliant!

But luckily my sense of direction and distance is absolutely appalling. Therefore, the crane was much closer than I thought. Hoorah!

Heading into the fancy office, I confidently identified myself, was given a paper and waited.

And waited.

Lucky (are you sensing why I named this blog ‘lucky’??) I had a fellow JSchooler and two free papers to keep me company.

Perhaps it was my nerves but it really felt like a long time to wait. But, eventually, we were greeted and taken for a small tour.

First place to note? Ladies bathroom. Second? Kitchen. I’m glad these guys have got their priorities straight!

I was then introduced to the Business team and given a desk and log in.

However, I wasn’t there for long before I was swept up by an extroverted sub/journalist/workplace health and safety officer to have a tutorial with the two other interns.

We were taught how to use Cybernews and newstext – two very handy and common programs. I have come into contact with both before but it was definitely good to actually sit down and officially learn the ropes.

At around midday I was deposited back at my desk and given a couple of articles to write up. I felt confident but not up to my A-game. Not sure why, my interviewing skills just seemed to be lacking. I think in interviews it’s a bit of a tit-for-tat, if that makes sense.

My interviewee seemed a little confused and unsure – traits that made me feel like I didn’t know what I was doing either!! Nevertheless I got through two articles and have a third ready for tomorrow.

I am also joining another journo at the Commonwealth AGM. Oddly enough, I find business a very interesting sector. I know it sounds super dooper boring to some but somehow… I like it!

But bearing this in mind I should get some shut eye. I know I said it wasn’t boring but I still need to keep my wits about me.

Till next time…

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Okay, so this is going to be a tough blog. How to sum up two weeks of fantastic interning??

Please excuse my lack of details but looking back, the two weeks were full to the brim of learning curves, writing deadlines and meeting new people. All of it has slightly blurred into one swell experience!

My first week flew by in business. As mentioned in my earlier blog, I attended the Commonwealth AGM (where I spoke with a number of shareholders), reported on the burgeoning popularity of an iPad app for a superannuation conference (where I got a lot of advice on how to boost my super) and wrote a number of articles for the paper’s sunshine section.

The ‘let the sun shine in’ section in the paper quickly became on of my favourites. It gave me the opportunity to speak with locals, find amazing stories and get a number of bylines!! I heard many inspirational and positive stories thanks to my involvement in this section. Most notably, I met a man whose Christmas bonus went towards paying for his wife’s C-section, a trampoline business experiencing a jump in sales (ahhh how I love puns!) and an amazingly motivated blind man taking part in a 500km relay.

I also got to stretch my stocks and shares wings as well and learnt a LOT from the business reporters about ASX200 and the such like. I can now boast — I (almost) understand the financial market now!

So, after busing my guts for a week and a steep learning curve, I felt pretty confident about reporting. And my luck continued through til Friday…

That morning I was approached by the managing editor of the paper and offered an interview for the elusive graduate program run by the Courier-Mail. I had applied for the graduate previously but had given up hope after seeing aspiring journalist after aspiring journalist walk into the interview room.

You can therefore understand my utter jubilation at being offered an interview!!!!

Now, as with all pressurised situations, I can’t remember exactly what I said. I do remember mentioning my Mao-inspired five-year plan and list of things to do before I hit 20 though… Hmmm…

But luckily that didn’t scare them off because I GOT IT! I got the cadetship!!! And asked back for another week’s placement in business.

Joy of all joys!!!!

Naturally, the second week of internship started on a high. Even more so because I went to my first police press conference and managed to get on page four with the drugs bust story. Fantastic.

The rest of my second week, I learnt so much (always ask name, age, suburb and occupation, always look for the interesting side of the story, keep an eye out for follow up stories and stay motivated, always asking for more work.)

I have to pay tribute to the journalists I worked with and the photographers. I don’t tend to name names in my blog but they were all amazingly helpful and gracious with their advice.

I think I can safely generalise when I say all journalists are curious and sociable. And this attitude really extends to the work environment.

Earning myself the nickname “the Britt-on-ator,” I had a tremendous week.

And even better, I’ll be back in a few short weeks!!

This speech was possibly the hardest piece of writing I have had to do all year.

After all, how could I do justice to the past year without making any style or grammar mistakes?

And should I use the inverted pyramid style? Or go for a punchy one-liner to start the speech?

Would John care if I accidentally left a participle dangling?

But before I started to stress, I realised it was Jschool that gave me these options. It is through everything that we learnt this year that I was even able to consider these introductions.

Because we now know what is newsworthy, we know the difference between a straight article and a feature and we know how to fix a passive sentence.

We know our ethics and boundaries but we also know when to push for answers.

And I guess that’s what journalism is all about – getting the balance right.

During the year we became persistent yet polite, approachable yet professional, good writers but even better communicators.

Megan Lloyd, the editor of South Australia’s Sunday Mail, once told me that all journalists need to be fixated on the word ‘why.’

And I think everyone sitting here today, all of who look fantastic in black robes, is fixated on this word. We all look at the world around us differently, constantly asking questions and striving to learn.

Now, journalists can cop a lot for being untrustworthy, unreliable and lazy. But I know that every 2011 Jschool graduate always has and hopefully always will work their hardest to be the best journalist they can be.

As the year progressed I think – and I hope John and Desley won’t contradict me here – we became great journalists with great potential.

We are a fairly unique class. Perhaps one of the most original that Jschool has ever seen.

After all I don’t think any other year had Jarrod – our very own male model.

We also had Luke, a vegan who was almost arrested by the police at KFC, an adventurous group who decided to take a mid-week break to Byron and Rhianna. I mean Ryanna. Rhiannon? We had her too.

Craig provided the class with regular wise insights; a habit that eventually got nicknamed “Craigisms,” Tash added a little spice to each class debate and Brayden even got John say “yea yea yea” once.

We even had a class romance of Broliver – a completely fictitious relationship between Oliver and myself.

Unfortunately, we did lose a couple of valued members of the class. PK, the favourite to give today’s address, was especially missed during the year.

But everyone here today deserves to be here. We have worked hard, made contacts and impressed editors during our internships.

We found the courage to ring councillors, chase prosecutors in court and confront strangers for vox-pops.

So thank you to everyone who helped us get here today. Thank you to the guest lecturers, who taught us about the courts, parliament, photojournalism and various other journalistic skills.

Thank you to Dave Stuart, who is here today, for passing on some of his filming wisdom.

Now if Desley and John could come up to the front?

Thanks to Desley. Desley, who had us frequently shaking in our boots before a news conference, was simply amazing. With her constant pushing and high expectations, we all read the papers, took notice of the world around us and worked hard to improve our writing. Good luck and have fun in retirement, Desley. Jschool next year will not be the same without you.

And, of course, thank you John. You taught us so much this year and gave us an amazing opportunity to become great journalists. Thank you for bearing with us when we got a bit rowdy and thank you for joining in on the occasion.

Finally, thank you to my classmates. You have all been a fantastic bunch of people to see everyday. I sincerely hope none of us forget what we have learnt this year and continue to strive to be better writers.

A lot of what 2012 will bring is up in the air. But I think Doctor Seuss sums up the promise of next year perfectly in his book “Oh the places you’ll go.”

“You have brains in your head. You have feet in your shoes. You can steer yourself any direction you choose. You’re on your own. And you know what you know. And YOU are the one who’ll decide where to go…”

With the knowledge and enthusiasm we have today, I hope every one of us will be able to succeed in making a difference.

Thank you.

First stop, an internship in Canberra’s corridors of power, was disappointing.
“The whole political reporting gig left me cold.

“It was such a pretentious and contrived piece of theatre and the reporters took themselves far too seriously.”

So she joined up with Australian Volunteers Abroad.

And landed in Sri Lanka.

She didn’t want to return to Australia to work on the local paper doing ‘Mavis-Funkle-wins-best-lamington stories’ so when her AVA contract was up the young reporter got a job with Sri Lankan English-speaking newspaper, The Midweek Mirror.

AT 23 Linda Brady was the youngest Western journo to cross the border to interview the LTTE politburo officials, but she was too young and raw to fully appreciate the opportunities that were knocking in a country embroiled in civil war.

“I didn’t have the grasp on Sri Lankan politics I have now and there was more interference from editorial management than I would be comfortable with now.

“If I had that interview again it’d be a damn sight better.

“Of course that will never happen.

“In fact our talent was blown up just a few months after we interviewed him.”

The road led back to Australia, to APN newsgroup, to a job as Queensland Times’ COS which morphed into APN sub Editor and Designer with the Centro West team.

It’s a long way from Sri Lanka – “crossing the border, getting stuck in live-fire riots, running to escape bomb blasts” – to Ipswich.

But instability of a different sort has taken over as the media keeps one eye out for technological revelation.

Linda reflects on an idea she heard in a radio doco.

That 24hr media has contributed to our loss of trust in politicians because politicians now seem always to be in election mode which “distracts and detracts” from the job they are meant to be doing.

What really bothers her is the demise of investigative journalism.

“I think it’s disappearing, out of this need for instant news and instant updates and the focus on keeping up with the competition.

“It’s pulling resources away from those investigative pieces that break the really big stories.”

She sees a trend towards ‘fluff’.

“We’re putting extra ‘fluff’ in our newspapers and not focusing enough on the stories that matter.”

‘Mavis-Funkle-wins-best-lamington’?

“You know good journalism when you read it.

“You know bad journalism when you read it too.”

She says two of the best people she ever worked with were two grumpy old subs up in Rockhampton – Len Lester and Barry Eggleston.

“If anybody made me appreciate that newspapers have a responsibility to uphold some sort of linguistic integrity, it was them.

“They had that real old-school knowledge of language and they were only too keen to sit you down and roast you over your tangling of the language.

“They had an excellent grasp of language and there really isn’t a lot of that around now because people move through the system so quickly.”

The use of colloquialisms doesn’t bother her.

“People need to communicate and if that’s how you communicate with your readers, that’s fine.”

But she laments the ‘Americanisation’ of our language.

“I know, from a newspaper sense, it means you’ve got one less character in the headline but to me, verandah without an ‘h’ is just laziness.”

Her taste of war reporting hasn’t left her but Linda’s interest is more humanitarian.

“…the refugees, the broken families, the orphans, the humanitarian cost, the way people fit their lives in around security checks and curfews, what they teach their kids, the ethnic tension.

“Even now I prefer the ‘small bloke’ story rather than the overall political or military ramifications.

“Although I admit I do look at Sally Sara occasionally and sigh!”

For a select few that purpose is played out when winning a gold medal at the Olympic games in front of 80,000 cheering fans, an important moment no doubt.

For others it’s busting a gut in a shed, shearing sheep all day so the kids have dinner on the table that night, commendable no doubt and important, equally.

Christina Ongley is one of those people with a purpose. She had a script and walked her path and now happily sits behind the editor’s desk of the Bundaberg News-Mail.

It’s a long way from, as a child, making rudimentary newspapers for her dad to read, which Ongley readily admits makes her a bit of a “journalist nerd.” But it’s what she was born to do.

She was editor of her high school newspaper in grade 11 and co-student editor of the Queensland Independent while at university.

Then after working with the News-Mail for four years, she boarded a plane and travelled around Europe ,before accepting a job as editor of a newspaper in Essex, England.

The 33-year-old says it was her experience working five years in England which landed her the editor’s job with the Bundaberg News-Mail, a job she loves and would struggle to leave.

“When I graduated from uni I had great stars in my eyes. I wanted to work for metropolitan papers and I guess scale the big heights of journalism,” Ongley says.

“But I think after having worked in local papers for such a long time, I really value the role that they perform, and I really object to the idea that if you work for a local paper…you do a lesser kind of journalism.”

She says having a good mix of hard news, human interest stories and public information is the key to keeping local readers happy.

And when looking for story ideas, never discount the local shopkeepers or next door neighbours – “If they’re talking about it, chances are most people are too,” Ongley says.

Was this a rock star turned news hound? Or an alcoholic red-eyed hack?

We entered his barely-used official office and with his glasses perched on his head, I learnt that he was just nursing a sore right eye.

Sherwin turns out to be a straight shooter and not one for flowery conversation like you would expect from a rock star or wino.

Our interview was short and sharp, similar to the daily news conferences he leads, where he doesn’t suffer fools gladly.

Sherwin emigrated from the UK six years ago after visiting his wife’s family in Brisbane and getting tired of the rain in the motherland.

Beginning his Australian career with News Queensland, he worked on the Courier-Mail and the Sunday Mail.

He was one of the online news editor for the revamped CM website, when Fairfax launched the Brisbane Times competition.

He made the move to the QT in 2009 and I questioned his motivation.

“I wanted to be my own boss…I always aspired to be an editor,” he said.

The Queensland Times has a rich history and is the state’s oldest surviving provincial newspaper with a Monday to Friday readership of 19,000.

Sherwin’s inspiration for the news began at home.

“I brought up in a house where we always had tons of newspapers,” he said.

His Dad was a humble plumber, who bought at least two national daily newspapers and the three paid-for weeklies of the local area, plus an evening newspaper.

“I always had a fascination with papers and the news.

“What I always been interested in what’s going on in the world,” he said.

Sherwin studied history at university and began his career at a weekly paper in the UK roughly 15 years ago, then progressed to Chief-of Staff at a evening newspaper.

He has a well-rounded skill set, also wearing the sub-editor and page designer hats.

“A lot of editors don’t have production as well as the news thing.”

This helps him give direction to his staff as he has been in their shoes, apart from the photographers.

He paused for a moment when I asked him about his vision for the QT.

“Good stories told well, and that’s basically it…that’s essentially what people want from a newspaper,” he said.

“You don’t want to be entertaining people to sleep,” he said which made me chuckle.

“Ipswich is a very good news patch. The best news patch in Queensland.”

The parent company APN has a group editorial director who also has a vision for the stable of papers, but Sherwin said he concurs with his ideas.

He believes the area has a bright future, with a motivated mayor, Paul Pisasale leading it.

His wisdom for green journalists is to go the extra mile.

A recent job opportunity attracted 100 applicants.

“Get as much work experience as you possibly can,” he said.

Write off your own back, do the unpaid stories, they will pay off in the end – this was displayed by the successful candidate.

Just doing a course and working in a coffee shop won’t cut it.

Sage advice indeed from the mock rock star editor.

“We were working on a book about attitudes and activities in conservative party members and the research manager was looking at doing a course in journalism and I was thinking about what career I’d do and after I had a chat with him I thought it would be a good fit for my skills and after attending the National Council Trainee Journalist college I learnt how to write a story, structuring, interviewing, law, public affairs and shorthand.”
This experience confirmed that he was interested in becoming a journalist and with more hard work, he got there.

“You needed to get a degree at one of these colleges before you could work in a newspaper. So I applied, did the degree, passed and then started blitzing newspapers.” he said.

Persistence was the key as Tinkler applied to 200 newspapers and eventually landed a job at the Burton Evening Mail which was the smallest daily newspaper in England with a circulation of around 25,000.

After spending about three or four months there, Tinker moved on to a paper called the Evening Herald, a regional daily paper of a higher circulation of about 80,000.

“I worked there for around three or four years, also spending some time at the regional daily’s before I found an Australian girl and found myself moving there.” he said.

And like many journalists before him, finding a job in Australia was hard so he found himself at local rag Leader only being allowed to work at a paper for six months at a time before looking elsewhere for work.

“The likes of the Herald Sun won’t take someone on for six months at a time so I found myself at Leader who were able to sponsor me as I didn’t have Australian citizenship. I ended up staying there for a year and a half before I made it over to the Sunday Herald Sun.” he said.

From 2001 to 2010, Tinkler has seen many historical events occur whilst at the paper including the devastating bushfire’s.

“Black Saturday was pretty full on. I was CoS at the Sunday Herald Sun and obviously because it happened on Saturday which is our breaking news day we actually had people on standby overnight in case the fire lines broke and I got a call from one of the reporters who was calling emergency services every hour to get updates that about 4am the containment lines had broken around the State Forest and we got our first team out at about 4.30am to get them on the road,”

He remembers the day being a frenzied day where reporters were risking their lives to report the facts.

“It was literally chaos with reports coming in of new fires and people panicking. A lot of misinformation being spread around.” he said.

“There is a famous picture of a fire truck driving away from a wall of flames coming toward it and that picture was taken by our team who were with the fire truck trying to outrun this fire which was just terrifying.” he said.

And with such events being so emotionally traumatising, does he take his work home with him to speak?

“Yeah you can’t ignore that sort of thing and all those sorts of story affect you. The recent story involving four year old Ayon Chol who died from the pit-bull attack and how Ayon was just hanging off the mother’s leg as the pit-bull attacked her really is hard as I am a recent father and you just think what if that happened to me?,” he said.

“When you get the personal story about children such as the Daniel Morcombe story it certainly affects you as well as the Black Saturday story. I was in the office managing the resources so I didn’t have the go to interview the families who had lost family members and it certainly takes an emotional toll.” he continues, pausing at times reflecting on such horrific memories.

After such devastating stories to cover, Tinkler does appreciate the lighter news that occurs and talks about how working as a journalist can be difficult at times but it is also the ‘thrill of the chase’ that gets him coming back to work day after day and is something that he would pass on to journalists starting out in the world of media.

“Never assume anything, never take anything on face value, always question things and the more time and effort you put in, the more you’ll get out of it.”