It's time to suck up to a new boss

AFTER months of waiting, speculating and gossiping, the Tribune finally has a new editor - hurrah!

Surprisingly, it's not John "Scoop" Harris, who has been making some strong claims for the hotseat over the last few weeks.

These have consisted of only being five minutes late for work every day instead of 10, colour co-ordinating his ties, and taking long "lunch meetings".

He also promised to advocate new working hours which would see us start at 10am and finish by 3pm.

Alas, we don't work to set shifts, so he was always on to a loser.

Our working practices are far more ad hoc. Some days we might start at 7.30am and work right through to 6.30pm.

Other days we might start at 8.30am.

Then of course there's the night meetings and other evening jobs to factor in, plus sport commitments.

For instance, last Thursday I started at 8.30am, went home at 5pm, then headed off to the elections at 9pm.

I was there until 1.30am when it was back home to input all the results so they could be uploaded to our website ready for when everyone else was getting up.

A few hours sleep later and I was back in work to write up all the interviews from the night and start work on the next week's paper.

Working like this means on Thursdays and Fridays, our least busiest days of the week, we have less people around because we're all catching up on our time owing.

We do have an unusual way of letting everyone know it's time to go home, though.

Instead of the message going up that sufficient work has been done for the day, Mitch Irving, office stalwart, gets instructed to "blow the whistle".

This involves him sounding a referee's whistle as if it is full-time at a football match.

A couple of Christmasses ago, Mitch's secret Santa bought him an old-fashioned bike horn - one of those ones with the rubber ball on the end that you squeeze - so he likes to have a good honk on that intermittently as well.

Yes, we're a little bit strange, but we're creative people so we can get away with it.

Hopefully, new editor Simon Holden won't be changing the going home hooter - although those 10am to 3pm days sound interesting...

~ Emma Ray

Creatures of habit

JOURNALISTS are creatures of habit. We like our coffee just so, we only use certain types of pens, and we've got a mental note of the best people to ring when news stories are thin on the ground.

Our habitual nature doesn't always extend to working practices, though.

Like any other office, we have the neat freaks and slovenly slobs.

In the immaculate corner is Sam Dimmer, who has the tidiest desk I think I've ever seen.

At the opposite end of the scale, John Harris is the poster boy for chaotic mess.

You'd think that this discrepancy might have something to do with the relative amounts of work done by said individuals.

Not so. Young Sam is a prolific writer with no less than 10 stories on the go at any one time. John...well, John's on sport.

I fall between two stools. My desk fluctuates between regimented tidiness and complete anarchy.

I let it get to a certain point of unruliness and then have a mass tidy-up. This generally has to happen every week.

It's really hard to keep track of everything we have on the go at any one time.

Take the process of writing of story. I may get a tip-off from a member of the public.

I'll take notes on their views, then have to investigate the issue. That could entail internet research, phone calls, consulting our archives.

It's pretty inevitable there'll be another side of the story, and I'll then have to try and get that.

If it looks like that could take a while, I might start writing the story with what I've got, then leave it waiting for a comment from someone else.

And that's just one story - there'll be many more like that in a day, so at any one time there'll be lots of news sitting around on my desk or computer in various states of completion.

Keeping track of everything means a little bit of organised chaos.

But there are times when I'm ultra organised. One of those will be tonight, when I go along to cover Nuneaton and Bedworth Borough Council's elections.

I will have all the wards and the candidates typed out so that I can just write in the results - it's crucial to make sure everything's taken down properly, and there's no point fiddling about with a notepad when the numbers start geting read out.

~ Emma Ray