Idle hands

IT'S been a strange old week at Tribune Towers. For some reason I've actually found I've got a bit of spare time on my hands.

Time to do things like, gasp, forward plan. Work on projects like this blog and how to best utilise the space.

This is a very rare occurrence - normally I'm too busy get the paper out to think beyond the next deadline.

I don't know how I managed it, but on Tuesday afternoon - one of the busiest days of the week - I spent a good couple of hours thinking about new ways to engage you, our readers.

One of the main problems we have as a group - and in that I'm talking about the Tribune, the Bedworth Echo and The Hinckley Times - is our online presence.

We have so many ideas about digital media and the way forward, but we don't necessarily have the facilities to put them into action.

Hopefully that will soon change. Trinity Mirror, the newspaper group to which we belong, is rolling out a new system of websites.

They're all singing, all dancing, and the best thing is they are very community orientated.

But we're pretty ambitious around here, not to mention impatient. Yes, stop shouting all those who know me - I am indeed the most impatient of the lot.

We've led the way with our blogs and Facebook accounts, and now others are following suit.

So we don't want to sit around and wait for them to catch up.

We want to move on again, so over the next few weeks we'll be trying out some new things on here and our sister sites for the Times and Echo.

We'll be trying to maximise what we can do, but it would be great to know what you think.

Whether it's something we can do now, or in the future when we get our swanky new websites, we'd love to hear from you.

Leave a comment on the blog or on the new message forum, or simply fill in our quick survey.

Let the debate begin!

Clark Kent I ain't...

IT'S not unusual for me to be known to shout at the television.

There are a number of things that can make me raise my voice and start gesticulating like a mad woman.

Paula Abdul telling someone on American Idol they look nice, when she should be judging them on their singing ability.

Horatio Caine on CSI:Miami stopping mid-sentence yet again to remove his sunglasses for effect.

Xander getting away with something stupid for the 6,000th time on Buffy the Vampire Slayer.

But what really stirs the inner lunatic is the fictional portrayal of reporters.

As if we didn't have to put up with enough stereotyping and bad press, excuse the pun.

I remember one particular example that shot my blood pressure to new levels.

Younger readers, bear with me.

Back when Eastenders was required watching, there was a character called Polly Becker, who was, and I use the term loosely, an "investigative reporter".

She's certainly like none I've ever known, seeing as how her big scoop was about one married character having an affair and the subsequent drama around his infidelity.

Woah! Big news - not! In real life, this sort of thing would never get near a newspaper, certainly not a regional one.

If we wrote about all the affairs going on in our towns, we'd have no room left for the real news!

The only film I can remember watching with a positive portrayal of reporters is The Paper, but then the whole thing's set in a newsroom, so it should be pretty accurate.

We're either whiter than white with super powers (Clark Kent) or scurrilous and morally bankrupt.

The only super powers I have are managing to get up to 100wpm shorthand on a regular basis.

It's probably national journalists who give us all a bad name - they have a very different approach to what they do.

It's easy for them to breeze into an area, upset everyone, then disappear back to Canary Wharf.

For us, the reality is very different.

Apart from the fact that we genuinely care about our communities and want to do right by them, it just wouldn't be worth our while upsetting people with sensationalism and untruths.

We have to come back into work the next day and face our contacts again - if we don't deal with them correctly, they just stop talking to us.

In our newsroom we pride ourselves on following the mainstays of good journalism.

We always give both sides of the story, we never print something someone told us off the record and we never break an embargo.

It's why people respect what we do - despite the negative images they've normally been bombarded with.

~ Emma Ray

Women are from Venus - with reporter Sam Thorne

NOW I know that the purpose of this blog is to enlighten you all about the ever-fascinating life of a journalist.

But rather than immersing you in endless details of how we got this story and how we got that story, I thought I'd feed you a titbit of office gossip.

Well, not gossip as such, but hopefully it'll give you some idea of life behind the scenes.

A few weeks back, when I was sitting on the Dark Side (the side of the room where the editor, the subs and our chief reporter sits), we had one of those "Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus" debates.

Now it would seem that a lot of the men in our office (and probably a lot of men outside our office, too) struggle with interpreting what women mean.

By all accounts, what women say and what women actually mean is something of a minefield.

So, probably rather jokingly, I was challenged to write a blog on the intricacies of the female mind. (Yes, we really do have one.)

And so here it is. Men, sit up and pay attention now - this really could change your life.

Perhaps the biggest mistake guys seem to make is misinterpreting the words "no" and "yes." How hard can it be?

Well, in female terms - especially following an argument or when we flounce out of the room with a quick toss of our hair and our hands on our hips - yes means no and no means yes. Got it?

Next up, and for us girls, "I need (fill in the blank, usually with something shoe-shaped)" invariably translates as "I want."

Similarly, "we need" also means "I want." We ladies can be pretty demanding creatures, you understand.

Now you've got that, here are some other vital lessons for you wannabe lotharios.

"How about a movie tonight?" translates as: "If I spend one more night between these four walls, I will start frothing at the mouth!"

When a woman says, "do what you want," this is generally a sign of great danger - trust me guys, you'll pay for it later.

Similarly, if a woman sniffs, "I'm not upset," it almost always means, "of course I'm upset, you moron."

If a woman asks you how she looks, always ALWAYS reply, "beautiful, but you always do, darling." Tread carerfully here, guys - even the slightest hestitation can get you into big trouble.

Finally, beware the fuming woman who asks (sorry, screams) "Are you listening to me?!" If you've tuned out her rantings for even a nano-second, you will need to do some serious grovelling. Trust me on that.

Sam Thorne

Working anything but 9 to 5...

IT'S been a hectic old week at news central, but we're just about seeing the light at the end of the tunnel.

There have been a few late nights and early mornings - all work-related, nothing at all to do with fun, you understand.

Last week's full council meeting was okay for, oh, the first three hours, but then the reporter's bench took the unanimous decision to down pens in the hope it might bring a swifter conclusion to affairs.

Half-an-hour later, and we were away.

It's a good trick and 90% of the time is one that's a sure-fire winner.

We're currently working a bit hand to mouth at the moment, because of the continued absence of reporter Ed Stilliard.

Incidentally, his nickname in the office is Eduardo - despite the fact that he's from Sandhurst, not Sao Paulo.

So of course he was the first person I texted while watching the Arsenal game last week.

Unfortunately, he couldn't shed any light on the link between the name Eduardo and broken legs. (For those out of the loop, he's currently recovering from two broken legs.)

Anyway, this week young Ed called to ask me to send him on some press releases by email, because he felt up to doing some work.

Ah, the wonders of modern technology. Someone 125 miles away can turn press releases into newspaper stories from the comfort of their wheelchair.

He did, however, warn me he might get tired and not be able to complete the task, but I guess that's what happens when you absent-mindedly leave several pints of your own blood on the A47.

Unfortunately for us, the work doesn't slow down and we still have the same amount of pages to fill, and the same amount of meetings and night jobs to attend.

This job has never been, and will never be, the subject of a Dolly Parton hit record.

It's one of the reasons we all signed up in the first place - the unpredictability and the sense that you never know what you'll be doing when you come in to work.

Take yesterday for example. I left work Tuesday night knowing exactly what I had to do the following day, and what stories were going where.

The next morning, I'm writing about an earthquake that shook every bed from Newcastle to Southampton.

It certainly keeps you on your toes - and journalists are nothing if not adaptable.

Personally I think I'm well-suited to the job - mainly because I've got the attention span of a goldfish!

Paper planes

WHEN we kicked off this blog I promised you some newsroom gossip and as regular readers will know, that's been in pretty short supply.

Well, it's about time I made up for that.

I'll start off with the young tyke sitting next to me, Bedworth Echo sports reporter Johnny Harris.

John-boy is the king of many things in our office, from the singing of football songs throughout the day (and I'm talking all day, every day) to philosophising about the wooing of women.

The latter involves a night watching football on the telly with a Chinese takeaway and a few beers.

It's the Bedworth way apparently, and it seems to have worked for him as he's been with his good lady for seven years.

But by far what John does best is annoy photographers. Admittedly, this isn't too hard as they are grumpy by
nature.

It's like the old adage about goalkeepers being crazy. Happy snappers (a phrase guaranteed to raise their blood pressure) are miserable so-and-sos by birth.

Having said that, the two lads in our office are pretty good on that score, but John knows how to find their photographic finger - it's like their Achilles heel, accept more annoying.

At any given time, John will have a mound of screwed up pieces of paper on his desk.

He stockpiles them for a time, balling up whatever waste paper he finds, then unleashes across the room at the photographic department.

He tries to find the most inopportune moment to do this, and generally succeeds.

Scoop, as he likes to call himself, also likes to make paper airplanes so for Christmas I bought him one of those desk calendars that has a different plane for every day of the year.

It has proved to be a rip-roaring success and our office can sometimes look like an airshow in miniature when we all let fly when the pressure of work becomes too much and we want a bit of a break.

It's the little things that get you through the day.

Newsrooms are quite different to your normal run-of-the-mill office, and that's part of why we love our jobs so much.

So if you see a low-flying paper airplane coming your way, it probably took off from here.

Jargon busters

IN THIS week's edition of the Tribune, we have two in-depth features on major issues affecting the area.

The first is about the proposal to co-locate North Warwickshire and Hinckley College and King Edward VI College on a new town centre site.

The second is about the new Virgin Trains timetable which will see a drastic reduction in fast trains to London from Nuneaton.

Both of these stories are having a major impact on people's lives.

The college could herald a bright new dawn for learners, but there are also concerns it could cause traffic chaos and parking havoc.

On the issue of trains, protestors believe that cutting fast services to London will seriously damage the local economy, not to mention inconvenience travellers.

Train bosses say it's all about demand, and we don't have enough of it.

Both these stories are complex and in circumstances like that, the key thing for journalists is to make sure everything is simple to understand.

You have to be a bit of a jack of all trades to be a reporter.

You must be able to understand everything from council agendas to law courts, and Mothers' Union reports to House of Commons debates.

Sometimes it's easy to get seduced by the jargon and terminology we have to deal with every day, and the danger is that we pass that on to the reader.

But we need to avoid using things like "traffic impact assessment", "capital receipts" and "regional spatial strategy".

Some people, used to working with these terms, will be fully aware of what they mean but a golden rule for journalists is never assume - it makes an ass out of you and me.

We try and simplify these kinds of phrases to get to the heart of the story.

That means we report the facts in an easy to read way, and that should mean you all get the information you need to keep informed on the issues at the heart of our community.

Never put all your stories in one basket...

I'VE been in journalism now for 12 years and in that time I've seen an awful lot of changes.

Although the essentials of our trade are a pen and a shorthand notepad, we have become increasingly reliant on technology.

In my first job, scalpels were as popular in the editorial department as they are in an operating theatre.

That's because when stories had been subbed and pictures sized, they would be printed off on special paper called bromide.

It then became an exercise in jigsaw completion. The stories and photos would be cut out with the help of a very sharp scalpel, then arranged on a piece of card that represented a single page, with columns marked on to aid design.

These would then be driven by van to the printing press.

At my next job, things took a slight step forward.

Our stories from the Nuneaton Evening Telegraph could be sent via computer to the head office in Coventry - but the catch was only one person could transmit at a time.

That meant when you had completed a story, you had to shout "anyone sending?" at the top of your voice, then go for it if they weren't.

The problem was, some people used to forget this vital step of the process. Naming no names, but Derek Brown was the main culprit.

If you tried to send when someone else was, it would mess up both procedures and you'd have to start all over again, furiously typing transmission codes into your computer.

Eventually, we were given new computers with, to our amazement, personal e-mail addresses and internet access.

Since then, news gathering has become far more of a reactive process, with most stories or tip-offs coming in by e-mail, closely followed by phone calls. Faxes and snail mail trail in behind.

It's great from a speed point of view, and can make life a whole lot easier - not to mention kinder on the planet.

But if you have a tendency to be a big clumsy oaf, like I am on the odd occasion, it can spell disaster.

At any given time I have at least 30 stories on the go via my e-mail.

So when you wipe out every folder in your system with one errant click of the mouse, well, the shock can leave even me speechless.

When it happens on deadline day, stay well away.

We've never put out a blank newspaper yet, though, so rest assured your Tribune will be there in all its glory next week.