My seventh heaven...

Week Seven...

Still running off the adrenaline of last week’s windfalls I was pumped and ready to go this week.
My ‘teaser’ on the front page of Saturday’s paper turned out to be HALF the front page, it was phenomenal.. and they also ran a shorter version of my story on page four, with a note directing people to purchase Thursday's paper to read the full story in Catholic News... it was amazing.
When I got to the office in the morning (with Catholic News only being published yesterday) there was a buzz of happiness and success among the girls...
I was really keen to speak to my Catholic News buddy about how much I enjoyed reading through it and how worthwhile it all seemed once it was printed... She was stoked when I thanked her for putting me onto the Mary MacKillop story and the subsequent front page story it turned into... she was pretty excited herself, “I know! It’s the biggest thing to ever happen to Catholic News!”
“Are you kidding! It’s the biggest thing to ever happen to ME!” I laughed.
It was a great start to another very productive and enjoyable day.
Throughout the day I worked on a story for Linda about a Townsville company who won an award for getting injured workers back to work. The photos had been taken for it the week before, which meant I had a visual reference for what I was writing which doesn’t happen that often.
My next piece was a “pic-yarn” for the newsroom on 3 young siblings who had won a swag of awards at the Townsville Eisteddfod. Few changes were made to either story by Linda. (Note: I noticed when the Eisteddfod story was printed that the last three pars had been condensed and/or deleted.)
I then did a career profile that I had teed up myself, on a woman who does life modelling for arts students at JCU... it was a really interesting story and Linda thought it was great. One thing that really stood out for me with this story how the quality of information you get from your talent can change via email or phone. The Life Model had initially filled out the standard form that we email to people for career profile, but when I rang her to check a few points and arrange a photo I asked a few extra questions and the best quotes just started flowing out... I ended up grabbing my lead and some other major sections of the story from the quick phone interview instead of the questionnaire answers.
I had a look at the photos that had been taken during the week for Hume and John’s career profiles and was so excited by how great they both looked. Linda told me she had decided that Hume’s was going on the cover of next week’s guide because it was so beautiful...but I was sworn to secrecy! (Sorry Hume!)
By time it was mid afternoon (and we all usually leave around 4.30 anyway if we have all our work done)... So I filled in my afternoon with some more party book stories... two little pieces on Christmas in July and How to Make a Pinata! Party Party Party!