A truly love-hate relationship ... On, The Mail Online

I’ve been quite disorientated lately and it seems to be down to a number of reasons.  I no longer have lectures to help me distinguish between weekdays and weekends, for a start.  And the weather has been unseasonably nice too, hasn’t it.  Plus, the Daily Mail certainly hasn’t helped.  It’s not August is it?  No?  So why has there been a classic ‘silly season’ article plastered all over its home page this week!?

You must all have seen the article from Samantha Brick bemoaning her beauty and other women’s bitchiness towards her by now, yes.

Woe is me.  I almost know how she feels.  She and I are very similar.  We are both ORDINARY looking, you see.  Though the similarity stops there.  I would never marry a Frenchman.  Nor would I wear bootleg jeans.  Or write for the Daily Mail.  Or think that I am astoundingly beautiful.

Brick writes that her beauty has cost her friendships and promotions, but don’t worry, it’s not all bad because sometimes guys park her car for her or send her bottles of champagne.  She has endured (and I use the word endured loosely) a few days of vilification over Twitter and the Daily Mail comments section and won the website probably its most ever hits to one article.

She is, it seems, completely out of touch with reality. (Which is probably what happens when you marry a moustachioed Frenchman.)  However, credit where credit is due.  She’s made herself the talking point for the week and secured the Mail Online its most ever ‘hits’ and comments.  And a record number of ‘green arrows’ on comments too.  (My housemates last year used to live for those little green arrows!)

A friend of mine once said a rather alarming thing to me: “You’ve got to admire George W Bush,” he began. “You might not admire his politics or his personality but there’s no getting away from the fact he was a successful politician.”

The same can be said for The Daily Mail this week.  They’re the news outlet that we all love to hate.  I can’t stand their homophobic, narrow minded, belittling views on most things.  And I dislike no one in the world as much as Liz Jones (NO!  You don’t look ANYTHING like Kate Middleton!).  However, every day I visit their site to numb my mind for half an hour or so, reading up on the cast of TOWIE and the royals and seeing what those ‘naughty immigrants’ are ‘doing to us’ now.  And I’m not the only one who does so, meaning they are now the BEST newspaper/website.

It pains me to agree, but they are.  Not in terms of content, creative flair or current affairs coverage.  But just in terms of the amount of tat they publish that we all love to read.  And they, almost, cater for everyone.  Except Muslims and gays, I guess.

They consistently publish articles showing us just how achingly beautiful the likes of Kim Kardashian and Abbey Crouch are, yet just a few scrolls down Sandra Parsons is wondering why on earth young girls aspire tobe like Victoria Beckham rather than Amelia Earhart.  I can’t think for the life of me why Sandra?!  I better just spend another twenty minutes on your website and then maybe I’ll understand...

"Just get on with it!"

On the fourth floor of the Women’s International Centre for Economic Development myself and 100 other women (and three token men!) gathered yesterday for a special recording of Radio 4’s Woman’s Hour, focusing on women in business.

Though the weather was typically gloomy for a Monday morning up North we were still afforded a great view out over the Mersey and the three Graces.  But as the broadcast began it was pretty obvious that we didn’t just have Liverpool at our feet, but the world if we wanted it...

Presenter Jane Garvey and her panellists (including the founder of WAH! Nails, a co-founder of notonthehighstreet.com, a senior exec of Asda and a multi-millionairess entrepeneur) discussed everything from micro-finance to employer-employee relations to how to get the perfect work-life balance. 

Their frank and thoughtful advice instilled in the audience the confidence and drive to not only be as successful as them, but as the likes of Sir Richard Branson who was just down the road at the Global Entrepeneurship Congress, being held in Liverpool this week.

My friend Cathryn and I had gone along to the live broadcast to report on it for university.  But given the state of journalism today and the inspiring stories of the panellists I left thinking I’m definitely going into the wrong ‘business’.

Mind you, the advice that the panellists offered wasn’t just business orientated.  It seems that good advice can be applied to any field.

 “Just get on with it,” said Sharmadein Reid, founder of WAH! Nails and all round gorgeous woman and 

yummy-mummy.

She was addressing a woman having a panic about setting up her own dress-making business, but it is also perhaps the best advice I can be given as dissertation deadline day looms ever closer.

While each panel member could offer different guidance based on their own experience, the basics of their top-tips were the same:

• Dare to be different
• Learn the ‘language’ of the field you’re going into
• Don’t lose your femininity and your nurturing side
• Play to your strengths and be confident enough to ask for help with your weaknesses
• And, as said: Just get on with it (Something my mum regularly says to me when I ring home for a whinge!  She’s also a big proponent of the advice: “Katie, you don’t always have to talk!”)

Big fish in a small pond.

Just written this for the 'work experience' handbook for university, about my time on both work placements in January.  Probably makes me sound more emotionally vulnerable than culturally and professionally learned.

BBC Radio Lancashire:

One of my favourite things about being a journalist is the weird and wonderful people you meet for stories.  On my placement at BBC Radio Lancashire I met/spoke to an animal clairvoyant, an animal psychologist, a presenter of the Antiques Roadshow and a couple of ex-convicts, to name but a few.  This was probably my best part of the experience. 

That aside, I spent the bulk of my two weeks delicately negotiating the fine line between not being a wallflower but not annoying people by asking for stuff to do too much.

In the main I spent my two weeks at the radio station shadowing the news readers, show producers and broadcast journalists.  As you’d expect the BBC runs a tight ship so there was never an option for me to be reading the 10 o’clock news or writing a breaking news bulletin. 

However, I did get to write show scripts, book guests for shows and sit in on broadcasts.   And I did a lot of vox pops.  (If you’ve ever been to Blackburn you may sympathise on how difficult that was.  Not a chatty bunch.)  Those vox pops taught me a lot about how to put questions to people not necessarily willing to offer information. 

And on my last day the producers I worked with assured me my willingness to go out and do stuff that, apparently, many others deem to be below them had impressed them.  Off the back of the placement I was put forward for a BBC recruitment day at Media City in Salford so I must have done something right!

Best piece of advice for working in a small office though – take a delicious food gift in on your last day.  If they remember you for nothing else, a homemade carrot cake should do the trick!

The Independent on Sunday:

To say I was a small fish in a big pond on work experience would be an understatement.

Arriving at the offices of The Independent on Sunday was intimidating enough, but coupled with the fact that I was an hour and a half late on my first day (thanks to the London Underground for that!) meant I started my first week as I meant to go on… a little bit tearful and very overwhelmed. 

My first lesson learned from work experience was to set off early, wear a watch and wear shoes you can run through tube stations in!

My first few days were spent researching, researching some more and researching again for the senior reporters.  I had to contend with ten other work experience people for the few scraps of written work that came our way, and try not to be embittered when I saw Facebook statuses about my coursemates interviewing the likes of Professor Brian Cox and Kenny Dalglish on their placements while I had to be content with one ‘Additional reporting by…’ byline. 

Not to be sniffed at in a national mind…

It wasn’t all bad.  At all.  My second week was considerably better and all the time I’d spend silently seething the week before I soon came to realise was a ‘learning curve’.  I offered my own story to the editor – about two ex-convicts and recovering drug addicts who have become the first ex-prisoners to become paid employees of the prison service – and was entrusted to spend four days interviewing, researching, writing and re-writing the story for the paper.

I was warned on my first day that I would probably be told my work was “frankly, a bit shit” but nothing prepares you for the first time copy is thrown back at you. 

However, writing and rewriting a piece doesn’t just teach you about your own journalistic skills (what questions you should have asked in interview) and writing abilities (concentrate on the what of the story and let the who, where, when and why write itself). 

It toughens you up against criticism, much more of which I’m likely to face in my future career, and teaches you the delicate arts of perseverance, confidence in your story, how best to pitch your story and how to hold back the hot sting of tears in front of a big shot journo.

A day out in Dingle...

Daisy and I have enjoyed many beautiful days together; cruising the canals of Venice, walking the walls of Dubrovnik and, last Thursday, spending an afternoon in Dingle.

We are now ‘community reporters’ for Liverpool Echo, charged with bringing the good people of Liverpool all sorts of heart warming stories from Dingle and Aigburth.  We had gone for a ‘walkaround’ with Stephen Mumby, one of the local councillors for the Riverside ward, to acquaint ourselves with an area which, until offered the patch, we had never heard of.  He very kindly introduced us to local businessmen, vicars, parishioners, community workers and young people - all with interesting stories to tell.

Mr Mumby has been councillor here for 14 years, during which time he’s seen the area undergo alot of transformation, from the little things like hanging baskets to brighten up the area to residents turning their lives around and making good.  He may not be paid for his councillor work but almost everywhere we walked people waved from their cars or windows, and you can’t put a price on that!

When I was at The Independent on Sunday some of the other work experience people looked at me with more than a hint of pity in their eyes as I said I’d love to work on a local paper, sourcing stories about real issues affecting real people. 

On Thursday we heard a plethora of beautiful stories; the community centre who’d been granted funding for a new play area by a Siberian glamour model, boys from disadvantaged backgrounds signed up to Everton’s youth squads after playing for their youth centre’s teams, and a man who’d only secured his first job at 50 years old!

This, to me, is real life and reporting on it is real journalism.  Going out and meeting a vicar who is immensely proud of his parish or a man who has created jobs for nearly 200 local people is a pleasure to do.  It might not be as glamorous as working in Kensington for a national publication but you can actually see the difference that your story can make to people.  It’s not news that you can hold at arms length and forget about once the paper has been put down, it is stuff happening on your doorstep that a whole area can be proud of or make a difference to.

From the walls of Dubrovnik, the views over the city and out over the Mediterranean are beautiful.  Sailing through the veins of Venice, peeking into houses, hearing music float down alleyways and the smell of rich food all around, is glorious.  The sights and sounds and smells and tastes of these cities bring them to life, adding flavours and experiences anew.  

Now, Dingle might not be the most aesthetically pleasing of places, but it’s the people that make the place, right?!

Occupy Valentine's Day

‘Occupy Valentine's Day’

That was my status on Tuesday.  I am not anti-Valentine's Day.  Nor am I pro-Valentine's Day.  I would claim to be apathetic to the day but since I am writing a blog on the topic, and I’ve exchanged cards with friends, that would be somewhat contradictory.

I wrote the status mainly in the hope of amusing a few friends, but also in agreeal with Jeanette Winterson writing on The Guardian, and now in hindsight I stand by the notion due to Tuesday night’s events.

On Tuesday I wrote ‘Occupy Valentine's Day’ thinking that it’s time we took back love, and celebration of it, as our own, rather than as a commercial day.  The day seems to have evolved and warped from a day of sharing love with your partner to sharing what gifts your partner showered you with on Facebook.

Today I believe ‘Occupy Valentine's Day’ because we need to take back love as a way of acting between all people, rather than just between a couple.

I lost my phone on Tuesday night, it hasn’t been returned to me and I’m looking at a bill of about £350 to replace it.  Money I can ill afford. 

Love is many things.  On Valentine's Day love is romance and giving.  At Easter love is chocolate and new life and Jesus.  At Christmas love is food, family and home.  For me, love is always family, friendship and laughter.  

It is also honesty and integrity, not being afraid to speak your feelings to someone.  Love is sharing, turn taking, listening, remembering, it is gestures like driving safely, holding a door open to someone or acknowledging the checkout assistant in Asda, it is helping others, putting in hard work and being able to reap the rewards of that.  It is so much more than a day.

Love is also doing the right thing.  Love is handing in my bloody phone!

Walk of shame? Or stride of pride?!

It’s funny, this blog writing malarky...When I've got time to sit and write I feel I've nothing interesting to say, other than to rant about stuff like the lack of temperature control in the library. And when I've interesting stuff to write about they invariably take up all my time, leaving none to write in. 

Sometimes, I'll think up a topic but it’s too glaringly obvious to bash out 400ish words about - Facebook, perhaps, and bemoaning why saying “woop woop” has become at all acceptable.  Or else I'll start writing about stuff that's not quite suitable for a potential employer/boyfriend to read about – as expertly evidenced by my friend Gaz’s suggestion: “Write a blog about doing the walk of shame!”

However...here I am about to embark on a blog about the walk of shame...

I have a charming view from my bedroom window.  It overlooks a car park and a little housing estate and I can just glimpse Smithdown Asda.  Many a happy hour has been spent watching the two squirrels that live in the car park; scampering about, finding nuts, storing nuts, checking nuts, eating nuts, etc.

And every so often I also get to feast my eyes on someone doing the old walk of shame.  Or stride of pride as one friend calls it.  

Harvey Nichol's used their Christmas advert to suggest that it's quite alright to do the walk of shame provided you're wearing the right dress... They were wrong.

Now, let’s be frank.  We’ve all woken up in unfamiliar houses or unsavoury bedrooms and had to trudge home.  Not necessarily after a night of passion, sometimes just when you’ve outstayed your welcome at an after party and woken up clutching a toilet roll and nursing a bleeding lip.  

But walk of shames seem more to be characterised by the shoes than the dress...

The best walk of shame I ever witnessed was a lad sitting on the 86 bus with no shoes on at 11am one Thursday morning.  Good night at Med?!

And imagine the joy when my housemates and I found a pair of hideous heels outside our front door one Sunday morning.  We live very near a few takeaways so can only assume that carrying the heels was detrimental to being able to eat ones chicken salted chips on the walk home one evening.  The shoes simply had to be sacrificed.  (We kindly left the shoes with a note, in case she returned.  She did.  She didn't reply though.)

When I see, from my bedroom window, girls waiting for taxis of a morning I look upon those clutching their shoes with pity, and those wearing them with admiration. 

Arriving home with the soles of your feet dirtier than the night before's activities is never a good look.

Work experience musings...

Bit of a long'un but here's how I got on while on placement at a national newspaper...

Wednesday - What could possibly be worse than arriving an hour and a half late to placement? Thank you to signal failures on Northern line. I arrive and have a ‘welcome’ fag with my mentor who tells me "Our standard is up here... your writing is down here. I'll set you some research to do, might give you a bit of writing to do, probably tell you it’s shit mind, but you will learn something, I promise." With that I'm put at a desk and set to work on Titanic research. Later in the day the editor makes a comment about being late due to tube delays is not good enough. However, he also seems to vaguely compliment my scarf so I decide the two cancel each other out. Over tea and biscuits he commends my research then tells me to do more.  It should also be mentioned that my ex is working in the same office this week...

Thursday - More Titanic research, interspersed with my own dissertation research and chats with some of the ten other work exp people. Some have loads of experience, some have little. Some have loads to do, some have little. I have lots of the former, little of the latter. My ex is the polar opposite, annoyingly. And he looks incredibly handsome. He also tells me my face "has got rounder". Most other work exp say they're not interested in working in local papers.  Ambitious or stupid?!  I would actually love to work on a local -  meeting all kinds of odds and sods, thats real story telling.  At 5:10 I think I have found a great story - UK's biggest Jewish school allegedly 'teaching' pupils to 'cure gays'. Editor seems to love it. Showtime?!  A bit of digging around throws up that this seems to be a few disgruntled students disillusioned by teaching styles rather than actual institutionalised homophobia.  Oi vey!

Friday - I carry on with a few leads for the Jewish story and find that the school in question may go to the PCC about reports so am v.glad I didn't take it as gospel from the publication I found the initial report in!  Ex brings me some shortbread from an Arsenal press conference he has just been to.  This will not help my ‘chubby’ face.  I want to stab him.  Start on some research into the Costa Concordia disaster.  It’s interesting finding original statements then seeing how news outlets from the Daily Mail to the New York Times to BBC have manipulated and used them to fit their own agenda.  Listen in on a phone conversation a tough senior reporter is having with someone about the Milly Dowler voicemails.  Lots of swearing.  Really interesting!

Saturday - I fear that I've enjoyed the best bit of my day before it has properly begun. On my 90min commute I get chatting to a girl about my book, The Slap, by Christos Tsiolkas (it is brilliant!  Recently adapted for TV and shown on BBC – iPlayer it). We both agree it is brilliant and fill a Central line carriage with our chatter about the characters and their various merits and faults. By 10 I'm in the office and by 11 I'm reading a legal report about the prosecution of the captain of the Costa Concordia. I send my research over to my editor who, ten minutes later, barks my name across the office.  I scuttle over and, I think, he says “Great work!” but I cannot be sure as I’m still retrieving my stomach from my mouth after having my name shouted across a national newspaper office!


Wednesday – Office seems very empty now that almost all other work exp people, including my darling ex, have left.  I end up sitting next to my mentor which means far less time spent on Twitter or Daily Mail all day.  I pitch him my story idea – about two ex offenders and recovering drug addicts who have turned their lives around to set up a social enterprise, ‘A 2^nd Chance’, to become the first ever ex cons to be employed by the prison service! – and he seems to love it.  Set to work, researching the story and later spend an hour and a half interviewing the two men.  They are quite possibly two of the nicest, most inspiring people I’ve ever spoken to.  I’m completely taken in by their story.  Later, share a cup of tea with my mentor and tell him how excited I am about this story and he says I must never, ever lose this enthusiasm for the job.


Thursday – Begin the day on the phone to a Lord, who has been an advocate of the work done by ‘A 2^nd Chance’.  He was an absolute delight to chat to and commends me for giving them a voice and publishing their story.  Yes!  Wish that my shorthand notes could adequately reflect his fantastic RP voice!  For once my mentor comes to find me rather than me seeking him out, as he does I’m doing an interview and furiously scribbling down shorthand.  Hope he is impressed!?  Interview a few others related to the story but struggle to get anyone from the Ministry of Justice to talk.  Write up first draft.

Friday – Other than an interview with an ex offender who ‘A 2^nd Chance’ have helped, I do little until lunchtime.  Mentor buys me lunch and then picks apart my first draft – begins by saying I’m a ‘great’ writer and obviously have a ‘talent’ but that I’ve been restricted by writing ‘tickbox’ journalism, too busy concentrating on getting in the right amount of Who What Where When Why and quotes in, to just tell the story.  We go for a fag, well, he has a fag and I drink my tea, over which he tells me that the most important thing to remember is ‘to tell the story...everything else can be added later...primarily tell the story’.  I know that this is probably the simplest and best advice I’ll ever be given.  (Other than that of my mother who says “God, don’t talk too much!”)  He sends me away to rewrite and, in telling the story, I produce a 1500 word feature rather than a 650 news piece as he has asked for.  There is so much to this story.  Two men, two lifetimes of criminality and drug addiction, death of a parent, a suicide attempt, six hard years of recovery, relationships being rebuilt, schools/hostels/rehab centres and youth centres being visited, 100 other ex offenders being helped, trips to the House of Lords, meetings with various government agencies, MPs and Lords, a degree being done, a business being set up, a social enterprise being successfully built up and invested in... all this needs more than 650 words.  But that is my brief, so that is what I must do.

Saturday – The office is bloody freezing on a Saturday!  Mentor has a look through my second draft and says it must still be redone.  I am not yet a national newspaper journalist.  This is not only evident in my writing but also in the fact that I go for a little cry in the toilets between drafts!  I write and rewrite again, then submit it and watch the Man Utd v Liverpool game on mute while waiting for the next lot of feedback.  At 8pm, just after deadline for tomorrow’s edition of the newspaper, my mentor comes over and says some of the kindest, most inspiring and sensible advice I have ever and will ever be given.  (He assures me that I am one of the best work exp he has ever seen!)  I am told to never stop reading, apply emotional-intelligence as well as intelligence-intelligence, being able to sift out the bullshit from interviews and to never lose my enthusiasm for story telling... and also to rewrite my intro.  And just like that, it is all over.  Placement done, lessons learnt and a story to be published in the Independent on Sunday in the next few weeks.  Bangin’!