On cloud nine...

Week Nine...

By far the busiest day yet... before I even got to the office I had a list of seven or eight things to get working on...
1) Last week Linda had sent me an email she’d received on a local employment agency who works with disabled people to find jobs for them in the community... Possible careers profile.
2) Two career profiles from the Port of Townsville she had sent me...
3) During the week she had sent me the name of a man who worked as Santa at Casteltown shopping centre at Christmas time and during the week I had tracked him down and arranged to do a phone interview on Friday...
4) I had arranged a career profile on an animal behaviour and welfare lecturer at JCU
5) And another career profile on my housemate who works for the State Valuation Office, valuing land.
6) Last week Linda had told me she wants me to a major feature before I leave...about 800words.. on “an ordinary person doing extraordinary things” and I wanted to discuss my idea with her so I could start interviewing for that...
7) And by the time I got into the office she had emailed me another career profile on a graphic designer....
Busy, busy, busy!

I started with the graphic designer because Linda said she had her teed up be on next week’s cover... there were some quotes in her answers that jumped out to make the lead so the story came together pretty easily. It was then decided that she was going to be moved back a week and instead next week’s cover would be the story I did on my boyfriend’s boss...which is brilliant because whenever their sales go up my boyfriend gets a pay bonus...which means I get to buy more beautiful furniture for our house.... :)

I then went on with the Manager of Marine Services at the Port of Townsville... it came together really easily as well...
Then the newsroom called me in to do the Vox Pop for the youth lift-out because Tara was away...
It was 11.30 and I already had two stories down, so I headed out with the photographer (Suzanne again! Yay!)... this vox was to be done in Flinders Mall, and we had the “official junior photographer” with us (12 year old Lewis who began his photography career with the Bully with some flood photos at the beginning of the year and now hangs out with the photographers during school holidays to help out and learn more about photography...his camera is even bigger than mine! Jealous!)... so it took us 20 minutes (and one almost-sighting and paparazzi hunt of Emmanuel Cassimatis of Storm Financial fame) and I was back in the office to get the JCU Animal Behaviourists ‘ story done before my late lunch... I was on fire!

Linda read all the stories and was happy with them all. Yay! :)

After lunch I wrote the second Port of Townsville Story... about their hydrographical surveyor...I had put his story off because he had hardly provided any information in his questionnaire so I knew I was going to have to ring him... Ringing him turned out to be a brilliant option because he came up with some really interesting information and explained everything much better while talking than he had with writing the answers in the questionnaire... just like the Life Model story two weeks again I ended up getting his lead from our quick phone conversation and it really made the story.

Last week Linda had spoken to me about finding an idea to do my major feature on... during the week I had visited the Spinal Injury Association to see if they could suggest any of their workers or clients who might be interested in having me do a story on them... I met with a guy called Col who runs a peer support program for people with spinal injuries in north Qld. He has been a paraplegic for 31 years. He gives support and inspiration to people with spinal injuries (and their families... from Cooktown to Mackay to Mt Isa, though he's based in Townsville) while they transition from rehabilitation in Brisbane (which has the only spinal unit in Qld) back to home life in north Qld.

I thought I could do a story that covers his background, how he became a paraplegic, and how he got to where he is, how spinal injury can affect people’s families and friends etc and the challenges people face when coming home to NQ and how and why he helps with all this... Linda pitched the idea to the head editor in features and she said, “Sounds Fantastic”...so I rang Col to arrange a time to meet with him on Monday for an interview.

Last week’s bankruptcy accountant had contacted Linda through the week to see if he could view a copy of his story before it went to print. He had then emailed it back to her with changes... she showed me the changes and I thought they were pretty funny....as he had basically just changed a couple of things back into perplexing lawyer speak...and had also changed his job title back to capital letters instead of the lower case I was told to put it in (as no one but the Prime Minister has capitals.).....Oh well, whatever makes him happy.
Also, the artist from last week had cancelled her photo so I had to reschedule that.

Linda had to leave early and I still had plenty of ends to tie up on my stories as well as ring the Santa to do his interview... It was 6pm by the time I walked out the door, still with plenty on my plate for next week.

Oh one other thing I wanted to add... after my Indigenous Lecturer’s story was published last week I got this reply:

Bessie, You were very naughty, you made me sound like I matter. I want to thank you for the opportunity to take part in the process of being a Journalist. Thank you so much for making sense of my answers. I appreciate what you did. When I came to work today, my fellow lecturers all had seen the article and were very impressed. You are lovely, John

Definitely made me feel great about what I’m doing! I never want to leave ad-feats... In reality I have only worked there for nine days, but I feel like a permanent fixture (or maybe it feels like a permanent fixture to my life?) ..... and I only have 4 weeks to go :(