Monday 23 March 2009

Radio Bulletin

This task was alot harder than i anticipated. Unfortunately I had the misfortune of reading the bulletin out, here my group had made a massive error of judgement.

I feel that my radio voice is quite okay but on the day it was my nerves which got the better of me. I stuttered three times and I feel this was due to the fact that some of the news stories we used were too long in sentence structure (me blaming others, lol), so the combination of having trouble reading them and my nerves proved to be my downfall.

I addition to the fact that I made some errors, I also overan in the time we were allowed. We were supposed to keep the bulletin to two minutes but i overran by twenty seconds. This happened because another member of my group had prepared the bulletin but I was the one reading it so our differing delivery speeds were not taken into account. WHOOPS.

These mistakes aside, I did feel that our group gave it our best shot, and judging on how the groups performed (i can only guess how they performed by hearing them say how badly they messed up) I believe that we were one of the better groups (beep beep).

If I were to undertake this task again, I would definitely meet with my group an hour or so before so that I could make sure that the bulletin ran more smoothly and effortlessly.

Monday 16 March 2009

Journalism: A Financial Minefield

Journalism is indeed my passion. I wouldn't be studying it if it wasn't right? Right. But I can’t help wondering what the future holds for me as a journalist. I mean sure I could be a journalist but there is a clear line between one who has made it and one who hasn’t.

Since undertaking this course I have learned a massive array of skills ranging from short hand to producing radio bulletins but does this acquisition of skills outweigh the impending doom which decimates many a journalists’ career? This “impending doom” of which I speak could fall under many categories. Firstly, one of the first things I can remember which truly unnerved me in one of the newsroom lectures in the first semester was when I was told that most journalists rarely start their trade earning more than £12,000 a year. Argh.

This is frightening to me. It was also frightening to other students as the chorus of gasps in the lecture theatre suggested. Earning £12,000 a year and having a comfortable standard of living seem to me to be somewhat of a paradox, particularly when you throw that tiresome word “recession” into the equation. The thought of being a journalist and never earning more money than this is truly terrifying.

On top of this, the threat of getting sued for libel is apparently quite high. I’m not entirely sure how dangerous the risk of libel is as I can’t decide if its our lecturers being overprotective of us by putting the fear of God into us or whether the big bad world is indeed just waiting to sue a pathetic journalist. Either way I’m scared lol.

I won’t speak for too much longer as I feel that this blog has again turned into a rant, but I must point out one more thing… FATAL ERROR SYSTEM… nuff said.

Although I have had a bit of a cry I still aim to be the best journalist the world has ever seen so ha.