Kirstie's job log: 37

The story so far... Kirstie gave up her job in sales to pursue her dream of a career in journalism with a Masters at Westminster University.

Greetings from sunny Liverpool!

During assessment week last week I found out that I will be doing work experience at Radio City in Liverpool. Then followed a huge rush to find somewhere to live for three weeks that didn’t cost the earth!

So I am staying in university accommodation, courtesy of the very nice and very helpful people at Liverpool Hope University. I am very grateful to them for helping me out: at one point I thought I was going to have to spend three weeks living out of a suitcase in a hostel, miles away from where I needed to be. This is much better, and I even have internet connection!

Reporting week went well at university, and I’m even feeling vaguely optimistic about the outcome of the law exam. After cramming the night before and the morning of the exam I wasn’t sure how well I was going to do, but I was able to write something for every question, even if I was a little vague. I did, however, manage to write completely the wrong answer to one of the essay questions, but apart from that it didn’t feel like the nightmare I thought it was going to be.

The following day we attended a pretend press conference with a commander from NATO, and had to have a story written by the end of the day on the information that came up in the conference. We’d been given some background information of the fake scenario, featuring the countries Northland and Westland (they could have been a bit more original!) It was great fun, although it was a little difficult working out what he was saying, but there were some great stories to be written about once you got round all of the jargon.

Finally we had to find a story that would be suitable for a London audience, and write an in-depth report on it, making sure we got across both sides of the argument fairly. Being a biker I decided to write about a protest that was going on that week (perfect timing!) against the new motorbike parking charges that were being introduced. I got a great interview with the campaign leader, and then managed to speak to one of the councillors involved in the charges. I was pretty happy with the outcome of the report, and I think the week went well!

Radio times

At the weekend I was driven up to Liverpool and dropped off with all my belongings, and because I haven’t brought much with me the room looks very bare. The students here are a friendly lot though, and within the hour I’d already been invited to come and hang out with a group of them. I can see where I’m working from my room, and although it looks a long way off it’s only about a mile away. I’ll be doing plenty of walking over the next few weeks!

The first day was manic, getting to meet everyone and desperately trying to remember all their names. I got to follow a reporter who was following a murder investigation, and it was quite interesting, though heartbreaking to see the family of the victim. It’s quite hard to stay detached from stories like that.

Since the first day things have been a bit easier; I’m learning who I can have a joke with, who is great at showing me what to do, and who I should avoid during stressful moments! It’s great to be in a real newsroom covering real stories, and I’ve been able to use a lot of the things I learnt at university already. I’m not sure yet whether I prefer writing to radio, but hopefully by the time the placement is up I’ll be a lot more certain about what I want to do.

Over the next couple of weeks I’m hoping to learn a lot more about how a radio newsroom works. As I originally took the ‘print journalism’ course, I don’t know as much about radio as the broadcast students so this is a great opportunity to find out more. I’ve had a little bit of work experience in a paper’s newsroom and it’ll be good to compare the two.

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