My (Not So) Secret Addiction

Hi, my name is Ashleigh and I am a journalism student. “Hi Ashleigh”.   I am addicted to journalism. I get my fix from my laptop, my high from public praise and my comedown from my personal critique. There are worse things to be addicted to sure, but this is a public and not so secret(…)

Census offline: Country goes mad

To wade through social media over the past few days, you’d be forgiven for assuming Australia had been plunged into the depths of mayhem; into the abyss of cyber hackers and Governmental mismanagement in an epic scale. Puhlease. The census debacle is a beautiful yet frustrating example of how uninformed social media opinion rapidly becomes(…)

Fear And Loathing At A Dinner Party

Am I crazy? Every time. Every. Time. I say I’m an aspiring journalist, I’m met with the same flat-pack, freeze-dried, just-add-water, asinine response: “Huh, you sure it’s a good idea to try and join a dying industry?” After dusting myself off and being accosted by my partner (apparently, grabbing someone by their squidgy bits until(…)

Pokemon GO Methadone

I haven’t played Pokèmon GO today. I don’t know if I’ll make it much longer without it; I’m currently experiencing stomach cramps and cold sweats. Sometimes, I catch my hand drifting towards my phone to see if there’s anything around before I manage to catch myself. I’ve even tried to become enthralled in a new(…)

It gets easier, really.

My first interview for a story was as nerve-wracking as I imagined. Asking questions to a complete stranger; praying I would get the answers that I was looking for, and hoping I wouldn’t say something that might offend them.  It was a story on food outlets being prosecuted for not following food safety regulations so(…)

Pauline Hanson warns media with new iPhone app. So not scared.

Pauline Hanson warns media with new iPhone app. So not scared.

Pauline Hanson is demanding a “fair go” from newspaper journalists. In a bizarre video uploaded to her official ‘Please Explain’ Facebook page, Ms Hanson threatened to boycott reporters, instead opting to chat with citizen journalists via the ASX-listed app, Newzulu. “It’s no wonder that your newspaper sales and ratings are going down,” Ms Hanson said(…)

NSW Health Minister: Why she shouldn’t resign

NSW Health Minister Jillian Skinner is in the middle of a career crisis, with calls for her resignation following a tragic hospital mix-up caused the death of a newborn. A second infant has suffered serious brain damage, after both babies were treated with nitrous oxide, rather than oxygen following their births. Understandably the family who(…)

Can’t See the Forest for the Trees

Earlier this year I was on vacation in Kerala, India. Over rice and curry and Kingfisher longnecks I got to talking to a Russian bloke. He was ex-military and the conversation drifted to recent geopolitical events involving Russia and the West. He was adamant that the Russian media was reporting facts and that Western media(…)

Sport in Newspapers

When I was living in the UAE and UK, boxing stories featured quite heavily in daily newspapers. Many lead stories were fight reports or breakdowns of upcoming fights. Even fighters who were from outside those countries would have stories written about them. In Australia a lot of people don’t know fighters from outside Australia, which(…)

Ethical Journalism and Writing

Currently I have two lives: one as a journalism student, the other as an animal attendant. In the world away from writing, learning and chasing stories, I look after dogs, cats, guinea pigs and rats at my local shelter, cleaning, feeding and showing these homeless animals some TLC before they finally are adopted. All of(…)

Telephobia in the Journalist Student

As a journalist student, you’re expected to make lots of phone calls as part of your training. But what happens if you have phone call phobia, or as it’s also simply known as, phone phobia? (Well, its ‘technical’ name is telephobia). Don’t laugh! It’s a real thing. This makes making a phone call to get(…)

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