Fifth Day :)

Today was a really fantastic day at my work placement, I had loads of work and research to do so I was kept busy all day right up until leaving time. I was initially sent out to get a copy of the newspapers main competitor "The Leinster Leader". I had no idea where the shop was but luckily I ran into another TY doing her work experience at the paper and we found the shop together.

I read through the paper to see if there were any of Liffey Champions leads after being printed by them. Also to find out if there were any of their stories that we, as a paper, needed to cover. After finding a few that needed coverage, I got researching and writing them up. Along with this I had other stories being sent in to my folder on the server, so along with having to do research for my own stories, I had to do up some of the press releases into stories.

I made a good few phone calls on this day, which is unusual because I don't often get to use the phone. I rang up a new SVP Shop in Maynooth, I rang up the CSO (Central Statistics Office), along with one of the papers photographers to find out about an event he had been attending at a local primary school. My final phone call was actually to my own school, requesting any photographs from the mini-company competition be sent to me at the paper for publication.

Unfortunately the school never got back to me, and I had spent so long on the article all about our schools success in terms of the competition, I was worried that it wouldn't be put forward for print due to the lack of images. However, I did get printed in today's (7th Feb) edition of the paper, along with four other articles. I would probably say that this has been my favourite day so far, simply because I overcame my anxieties about having to do phone research, and also was alot more comfortable in what I was doing, and I no longer felt like the TY in for work experience I felt like one of the news team. 

Finally Settling In :)

On my fourth day at the Liffey Champion Newspaper, I was finally beginning to fully settle in. This was definitely my best and busiest day of my work experience so far.
Including myself there were three people on work experience, one girl from college and one from another school who was in T.Y. she was lovely and it was nice knowing there was someone there in the same situation as me.
The day started as it was to continue, with loads of press and media releases. I had to read through them and  write them up into stories, which I really really love :)
I was doing this pretty much for the whole day, along with some research and also a phone call or two. I did give myself a few little breaks to get a cup of tea despite being super busy...
Final duties of the day were to proofread some stories that were to be printed and then hand them into the editor with any corrections underlined. They were then sent on upstairs to be corrected for printing.
I got a few things published again this week and I super pleased with that :)

Love this placement.