Summer 2017 Work Experience
In May I was offered a work experience placement at The Lincolnite, an online news website for the Lincolnshire area. The overall experience was amazing and I got to see first hand what being a journalist is really like.
No two days were the same, each day I was taking part in different activities; I got to interview the police force and the Mayor of Lincoln, create a short news film, had my own articles published, dropped everything to interview and take photographs of breaking news, helped out at a business expo event, experience a graduate fashion show and many more.
From taking part in work experience, it has majorly improved my confidence skills. At the start of the placement the thought of having to interview a stranger gave me massive anxiety, but by the end I felt so comfortable and confident representing The Lincolnite and communicating myself as a young and professional individual.
Other skills included time management, for instance being given a press release and having to produce an article in half an hour to be published and creating interview questions before rushing out to cover a breaking news story.
My overall experience was thoroughly enjoyable however, it made me realise how demanding it is to be a journalist. Throughout my usual day at the office, so many articles were published every single hour and there was a constant pressure to produce work regularly for the public to read. When you’re a journalist you're not writing in a way that you personally will understand the story, you have to ALWAYS remember that you're writing for the general public, they are your target audience. Your audience has to be able to understand the article. Sometimes they can be negative or even criticise what you’ve wrote as I saw happen to other people in the office, although you never ever should take it personally.
My time working for The Lincolnite has been tremendously rewarding and I will never forget the opportunity that I was given. It was such an amazing feeling when I had an article published, it gave me a real sense of pride that my work and my name was out there.
Below are some screenshots of the articles that I had published.
