One of the modules on this course is Live Newsroom. It's a chance to not only learn the basics of journalism, but actually put them in practise, which is an amazing opportunity. Part of this module, then, is a live news day. This is where you think of and then write a news story, as if you were in an actual newsroom. This seemed pretty easy (I underestimated it, of course). But there were plenty of challenges from news days I didn't even consider.
The aim of the day is to produce two stories in four hours, which is nowhere near impossible. However, the part that presents difficulty is: other people are not on your schedule. For my story on one of the news days, I knew what I wanted to write about and who to get in contact with and how to reach them and the questions to ask. I had done my work around it, and I was feeling honestly quite proud that it felt like a cut-and-dry story. Of course, it wasn't. I was unsuccessful in reaching people via Twitter. If the companies had their DMs off, I would directly tweet them to no avail. So then, I moved to emails. I emailed so many companies and charities, still to no avail. And to top it off, the charity I wanted to ring was closed on Mondays. More than anything, that news day taught me resilience. I can't say I didn't want to give up and slam my laptop closed and not write the story, because by the fourth company that I couldn't reach I was tempted. But what good would that do? Instead of completely giving up, I did what I could with my resources. Although it wasn't necessarily the story I was hoping for, I was proud of myself for pushing on even when things weren't working out how I wanted to.
As I say, just because I wanted to speak to someone within four hours doesn't mean they were on the same time schedule. Often you'll contact someone for an interview or a comment and they'll think they'd be most helpful if they took some time and replied later on, when they have stopped what they're doing or they will honestly just not have the time right then. And any chance to form a network is helpful, and any response is appreciated. But sometimes when you need it immediately and it lands in your inbox four hours later, it doesn't feel great. I've learned it's always useful to have a couple of different angles for a story. If the one you're chasing isn't working, sometimes it's worth more to just change tack and go for a different way into the story. And that's certainly not a defeat. Sometimes you have to shelve the story for a bit until you make contact with the right person, which again, not a defeat. Not every story is going to work out perfectly well, and that's okay. One of the biggest lessons I've learned in Live Newsroom is resilience and perseverance, and I am grateful for those skills.
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