Firstly, I would like to give a big HELLO to my Jschool peers. I hope it is all going ok for you all, with the array of newspapers we are at I’m sure we’ll all have cool different stories to tell when we get back to class.

Day One
Needless to say when i turned up on Monday morning I was pretty nervous. None of the buildings here are marked on the outside, so I stood in the staff carpark thinking which one of these 3 massive buildings is the editorial dept in. Anyway I sorted that drama out and after a security induction got right into it.

I was placed with the police reporters, who have a seperate room (but the doors always open) on the side of the newsroom. So although its seperate I can see all the goings on in the newsroom. Met a few cool people in the newsroom before I was put under the wing on Maria Lewis, a 2nd year cadet (the chief police reporter had a day off). She was (and still is) really nice. It was a pretty quiet Monday morning so for the first hour or two I was listening in to the scanner. Nothing too exciting, it scans all of QLD pretty much so sometimes I got excited because there was a fire or crime… but it ended up being in some country town. Bummer.

After that I went to the GC Hospital with Maria to do a story (the paper just mainly wanted a cute pic tho) on babies born just before the census, wearing “I just made the census” or something like that. Then it was onto vox pops in Southport mall, back to the office then off to Dreamworld to cover the arrival of a new baby red kangaroo. The father red kangaroo was the ugliest Australian animal I’ve seen in my life.

Back to the office and everyone was buzzing about the day in politics (Quinn was the MP for Robina which gave it a big local slant here). I made a few phone calls for people and even found time to make a few phone calls about a story I found myself on the census and homeless people. A few crisis accommodation agencies on the coast said they were turning away up to 40 people a day on average so it was a pretty good story, the chief of staff said it was good but it didn’t get a run in Tuesday’s paper. Maybe it will for Wednesday but who knows.

Day Two
Was nice and early in the police reporters room again listening to the scanner. The head police reporter Tony Wilson came in soon after. He is a really great guy, he was extremely busy because of his day off and alot of good crime type stories on the coast recently but he took alot of time to help me with stories during the day and also explaining everything he was doing. Soon afterwards Karl Condon, the chief of staff (a cool guy) gave me my first solo news story, I was to go with a photographer and look at the erosion at Main Beach from recent wild weather. The photographer was great, had 20 years experienced so got alot of handy tips from him.

Back to the newsroom, made calls to the council and QLD meteorology re: erosion (scarping they all call it) and got my story done, got some greats pics and quotes so fingers crossed it gets a run. Tony read it and liked it too, woohoo. Then it was off to St Hilda’s school to cover the launch of the Bond Uni ASX stock exchange game. Finished that story pretty quickly, good photos with that as well but I think its going to be held for later on when they are short of stories.

In the downtime between these just helped out as much as possible. Lots of phone calls, seem to be on the phone a whole lot. I can’t beleive I’ve written such a long blog. Anyway I’ll go before it gets to big. I’d just like to finish by saying what a big operation the Gold Coast Bulletin is. The newsroom is MASSIVE, the advertising offices even bigger and a huge printing press. Lots of people in the editorial dept. to meet and greet but I’m getting there.

Speak to you all again later, bye!
Zane