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.

When I got to the Gold Coast on Sunday night, booked myself into the local motel and unpacked, i thought this might be a long week.

My room (the size of a broom closet) had six people in it, while all the international students downstairs refused to turn the TV onto the olympics. Instead, we watched Project Runway and re-runs of the Simpsons. Instead of tearing all these philistines a new arsehole I made my way the pub next door and got slightly boozed next to a few scraggly looking ladies and gents. Not a great start.

The tough times continued on Monday when I was welcomed pretty coldly by the staff. I sat there for the first couple of hours trying to find any kind of story and succeeded when I found out that the tourism industry could be turning around after a few economic hiccups.

I chased that story for the rest of the day and went to the local Gold Coast City Council meeting which was hilarious.

The highlight of the meeting was when one of the councillors spoke for 10 minutes about how the word ‘councillor’ should always be capitalised like PM or MLA. He was quickly shut down by another councillor who was formally an english teacher. The issue went even further when the CEO of the GCCC asked for the issue to be made policy.

Needless to say, the media room was in tears…

Yesterday i went around with a fellow cadet, Adam, who has been at the Bulletin for 2 months doing stories for the Bulletin’s kids magazine ‘text 4u’. Thats where my stories will be coming from this week as I dont think the Bulletin’s editors have any interest in allowing intern’s stories to go in the paper.

Sunday 15/05/08

Freaking out about the internship and just finished packing before I leave for the Sunny Coast. Done some research on Maroochydore and have a few story ideas. Feeling a little intimidated about the whole news room thing, but it’ll be fun to be thrown in the deep end… happy swimming everyone!

Story ideas at this point in time

1)      Soccer rising as the new Australian ball game over NRL, examples of Australia heading into the world cup and the large interest in the current Euro Cup.

2)      The rise in sales of straight spirits after the gov’s 70% taxation rise on RTD.

3)      The recent closing of over 10 motels in the Maroochydore/Maloolaba area because of teh rise in land prices.

Went and bought the Sunday paper and had a flick through, there’s a strong focus on sport which would be cool to report on and it is very locally based… nervous and excited but putting on my most professional face and trying not to feel like a fraud.

Monday 16/06/08

Everyone is really lovely and the news room seems very exciting and finger on the pulse and all that.

Bought the paper before work and rocked up an hour early as I misjudged the amount of tie it would take me to get there and was happy to see their editorial that day was much on the same as the drinking article I was preparing to pitch so relevant.

One small problem, I’m stuck in advertorials, which is all PR driven, one sided  and generally a completely unethical excuse for journalism.

There’s hardly any research, misuse of quotes, meaugh!

Rang a range of restaraunts to ask THEM what THEY wanted ME  to write about their restaurants, so I wrote raving reviews about scrumptious steaks and vibrant innovative fresh seafood I’d never seen let alone eaten.

Then onto profiles about car dealers in the local area at least I got to do some telephone interviewing and tested out my shorthand skills. Having to keep a phone log was frustrating at first but well worth the effort after speaking to so many people it was good to have a record!

But generally a little disappointing.

Tuesday 17/07/08

Another day, another story… or not as the case may be.

Spoke to my kind of boss and she told me I’d be on advertising editorials all week so making the best out of a bad thing. Spun some more car dealer stories, a glowing reference of a slimming program, and wrote an article praising the ‘best’ pathology clinic in Australia… Am I compromising my integrity?

Have been using my spare moments to comprise my drinking story and last night whilst picking up a few strongbows on the way home got some fantastic quotes from the local bottle shop manager who was only too willing to help, got to love that!

So sent an email to the distilled liquor council and the federal health minister and compiled some decent quotes and wrote my article. Convinced my advertising editor to take me to the chief of staff, and turns out she really like my story, gave me some advice and told me to send the end product to the editor.

After work I hit the local shopping centre and interviewed some young locals about whether their drinking habits had been affected by Mr Rudd’s tax hike, so tomorrow we shall see what the big boss thinks.

Just have to speak to my bottle shop owner for a photo and bobs your uncle… One story!!!

How very exciting.

Most of the day was spent editing which was quite informative seeing as this is an ANP paper and using their style rather than News Limited, for example Prime Minister is the only title which is capped.

Spoke to Clare, our little kiwi classmate who has been working on a suspected murder, very jealous seeing as the highlight of my day was interviewing a local realtor which to be honest was like trying to get blood out of a stone.

The team seem pretty impressed with my work though.

Wednesday 18/07/08

Today began well…

Hit the advertising room and lined up my interviews to do for the day.

My real estate man, my car dealers and restaraunteers when Abi took me into news and I was told I would be here for the rest of the week!

Finally I thought some news stories… So there I sat, waiting for the chief of staff to assign me something, after half an hour of approaching her twice with my own new story ideas and being shot down, and having nothing given to me, and trawling the news room offering my services to any journalist I could find I decided to keep working on my alcohol story.

Belinda (the chief of staff) had given me instructions to ring the manager and arrange with him and the photographer a photo op.

I got hold of the gentleman in question only to be told that he had never said those things, he did not believe them, and he was damned if I would publish them, apparently one of his employees had taken on his identity and vented to me.

After I told my new boss that the only decent thing I’d produced was a falsification I was sent out on a vox pop.

My question… How will the new rate rises affect you?

What with the emmalgumation of councils up there and the recent rise in rates I was on the prowl for the public voice, however the public was not feeling so chatty. Well no, that’s not true, people were very willing to voice their opinions on the topic but when it came to having their picture taken Mooloolaba was ranked the shyest beach side suburb of 2008.

A few hours and some begging later I had my people and headed back to the office.

Started researching my story on soccer and spoke with the sports editor, the captain of the local undefeated top of the league side, and before I knew it, it was time to go home.

Thursday 19/07/08

Bright and early, coffee in hand and just as I sat down to my desk I was  handed a new assignment. I was off to the local shopping centre with a photographer for a cancer walk promo.

The angle I was to take was to focus on mini celebrity Nitro, one of channel 7’s gladiators was to be a guest speaker.  Get a picture with her and some of her adoring younger fans, and get some quotes from the kids.

Not a problem, I’m fantastic with kids… or so I thought.

We got there at 10:30 for an 11 o’clock start, the food court was covered in a sea of pink and white, giant balloons, mini pink cakes and strawberry milk all for the pinktober breast cancer event.

The local radio station, councillor and volunteers for the organisation were happy to talk to me.

The children however were less inclined, there was one young boy called Will who was very excited but actually couldn’t get the words out, he seemed happy to wave his signed picture of the gladiator in front of me and pat me reassuringly on the head and offer me the remnants of his apple juice.

But then out of nowhere my saviour… little Lilyanna. A cute 4 year old blond girl, with her face painted for the occasion and not a shy bone in her body.

She followed the instructions of the photographer to a tee and told me how excited she was to meet her tv hero and marvelled she was by her “big muscles!”

Back to the office to write up the story, another vox pop but a far more entertaining one “why do women go for bad men?” after new results from an American study implied that they do, hit a local shopping centre and primed with my media pass accosted the locals.

Friday 20/07/08

An interesting morning meeting in the news room throwing around new ideas.

Stories for today:

1)      A story about a local bowls club who has bought a school solar panels which the science students are studying and setting up.

2)      Interviewing and writing a colour piece on a volunteer from a hospice who cares for terminal people.

3)      My Sunday, find local person to interview about their perfect Sunday, what they’d do, where they’d have breakfast etc.

Started off with ringing the hospice and spoke with Jill a really lovely lady who volunteered at hospice.

I think my interviewing skills have really improved, I found myself encouraging her with certain answers, keeping up with my quotes and ended up having a forty five minute conversation with her after which she said she had felt really comfortable talking to me.

Went about writing my story with the angle of Cittamani (the hospice) looking for new volunteers, my chief of staff went over it and said it was really good writing but too long so sent me off to cut it back.

After a week of being brutal with editing it came second nature knowing which pars to clip (even if it was a little painful!)

Next I was sent out of the office on a vox pop asking the people of Mooloolaba another rate increase based question, this is another area I felt had improved. I was picking my targets carefully and got it all done a lot quicker than the first day!

Back at the office after much passing around on the schools behalf I finally got hold of someone who had some information for me, unfortunately the news was that the school had ordered the solar panels but not received them, but with no visual for the photographer (the actual solar panels surrounded by kids and possibly an old man/woman with a lawn bowl) there wasn’t much point.

The lady emailed me the information for when the panels would arrive and I filed it with another journo.

My Sunday- After trawling through the database of local people, and after a few rejections spoke to a lovely lady who was only too willing to have a chat and arrange for a photo on the weekend. Definatley feel as though I have more direction now, I knew exactly what I was looking for her to say and which way to go with her during the interview.

Wrote up my soft Sunday piece and arranged with the photography department a photo for tomorrow.

Went and saw Bindie (my chief of staff) who had completed my evaluation and managed to tell me that she thought I was a diligent, talented writer who would go far… pretty stoked with that! God that woman is a busy woman!

And my last assignment for the week… my interview with magazine editor, Lucinda Dean who had been my boss for the first half of the week.

Lucinda had actually started the same day as I had so it was good to have a fresh outlook on the position, so was able to speak about her vision for the magazines and her previous jobs.

After the interview packed up my stuff and said my goodbyes whilst collecting a handful of business cards for my contact book, Desley would be so proud!

After two weeks away enjoying the lad back lifestyle of the north, it is back to reality but coming back to reality wasn’t a fun experience.  

Here’s a tale of a male at 30,000 feet:

I experienced first hand and I now understand why people want to bring in “fat taxes” on airplanes.

Don’t get me wrong I was always against it and thought that it was a stupid idea but I am now for fat taxes.

The guy sitting next to me was very obese and took up his seat plus half of mine.

I paid for one seat, he paid for one seat yet he got one and a half seats and I only got half a seat.

My mother always told me life is not always fair, well it certainly wasn’t fair that I only had half of my seat when I paid full price for a seat.

In an effort to gain back my half of the seat I started to elbow him but I doubt he even felt it.

So I decided to lean against him, pushing him with all my might to try and get the message across that he was half on my seat but my plan went terribly wrong and ended in me being very red faced and my stomach turning.

He thought I was trying to get close to him in a very friendly way so he started smiling at me with a flirtatious look in his eyes. 

What do you do or where do you go when your 30,000 feet in the air with a fat dude taking up half your seat and thinks you are cracking onto him?

This is when you suddenly remember the book that’s been in the bottom of your handbag all holidays that you’ve been meaning to pull it out and read for the book review that’s due next week becomes your saviour!

Cheers to fat taxes!

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!

I honestly thought I would have plenty of time to write my blog and I would have nothing to do here.

was i surprised???

They gave me plenty of work to do and made sure I was really busy..

I was determined to write something before I finished my internship here….

cant wait to meet the rest of the gang on monday and share our work experiences…

maybe after i get to brisbane i could write more

-sandhya

Luke

Unlike other internships, this week has been a perfect blend of work and chinwagging. Whenever I’ve been less than preoccupied, a story has magically popped up and I’ve got in the car and gone off and done it.

The great thing about the Satellite is that they’re constantly throwing around ideas for stories and they don’t just cast you off to the side. If anything they were asking me what I thought or whether I wanted to go out and follow up on something - but without being really aggressive.

People like Griffith Thomas (the sports guy) is constantly talking with me about designing pages, new and upcoming sports players and my opinion on certain events. An internship is so much more enjoyable when people are willing to let you do some of the work.  

Today I did a story on a 21 year old woman from Papua New Guinea who qualified for the 50m freestyle. The interview went for about 10 minutes and it turned out to be a really interesting piece since she trained with Alice Mills and Jodie Henry(from the Australian swimming team).

By tommorow afternoon I should have four stories published for the paper next week, so these four days have been pretty productive. I also had my interview with Kelly Daniels, the Senior Editor, in the car on the way to a story which was spur of the moment. She had a full ticket today so I thought it would be the best chance to have 10 minutes to talk to her.

All in all, a good week.

The other people in the hostel include a group of 8 German girls who eat huge dinners and love ‘Greys Anatomy’ and ‘Neighbours’.  There is another big group of Euopeans- their country of origin i can’t quite figure out as they spend most of their time working somewhere or watching dvds in the movie room.

Okay moving on to the the journo related stuff , the Daily is almost an hours walk from my hostel or 2 short bus rides.

I’m working in The Entertainer, a little magazine that is published once a week in the fridays paper, it’s a great section to work in, i’m really enjoying everything I’m given to do and am always busy.

My boss is Nate Cooper, he’s sarcastic, has great taste in clothing and is pretty fun to work with. He loves to give me all the work that he doesn’t want to do, such as filling in the gig guide which constantly needs updating,  updating the ‘top ten’ lists, and packaging up childrens prize packs and calling them to let them know they’ve won the various competitions. 

Although the gig guide is tedious, i usually like these little jobs as I always have something to do [and the kids are so cute on the phone!]

On Monday I interviewed and wrote a little story about an opera singer who will be performing in Caloundra this Sunday, Tuesday I went with a photographer to interview some staff from Budget Direct who were planting trees [i quickly learnt not to wear heels when interviewing someone standing in the mud] and I wrote a feature story about an ex USC lecturer who is opening an art exhibition soon.

Today i’ll be interviewing the band Goodnight Nurse who are touring Australia in July.

 I don’t know for sure if any of my work so far will reach publication as most of it is for Fridays paper, but i hope so…just one byline with my name on it would make me very happy.  

Grace W