Kirstie's job log: 38

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. A placement at Liverpool's Radio City is part of Kirstie's learning experience.

Radio bulletin 

While the snow seems to have hit the rest of the country, it has managed to miss Liverpool completely. Instead it’s just very cold and rainy!

There are only a few days left of my work experience, and I’m starting to look forward to heading back to London. The radio station is great fun, I’m enjoying everything I’m doing but I’ve found it very tiring starting work again!

I’ve been given a real look into how a radio station works over the past couple of weeks, and I’ve been lucky in that everyone has been very willing to help out and make sure I understand what is going on. At first I was just watching a lot of what everyone else did: I went out with the reporters a couple of times to see how they go about covering a big story, and also sat in on a few bulletins.

In the last week I’ve been given a few stories to cover myself, and have arranged and done several interviews over the phone. For radio, it sounds better if an interview is done in person so I got the chance to go out and meet a few people. At first it was quite scary; it’s all very well interviewing people for my course because it’s not the end of the world if I don’t get a great interview.

However, when it’s going out on air and is quite important that I get something pretty decent, I spent a lot more time making sure the equipment was working and I had plenty of decent questions to ask so I could get some good quotes! I learnt how to use the editing software and over the past week it has started taking me less and less time to realise what are the good clips to take from an interview and which are the bits that won’t work.

I’ve really enjoyed what I’ve done so far, but I don’t yet know if I prefer radio to writing. It’s fun getting clips and editing them, and then hearing them go out on air along with a script I’ve written for the newsreader to read. But sometimes it feels as though you work hard to get a good interview, get some views from the people and write a script, only for it to be over in a couple of minutes when the news goes out and you have to start all over again. Hopefully when I get back to university next week I’ll understand a bit more about what I want to end up doing.

Northern exposure

Also this week I met up with Graham and Matt from Prospects for a drink in Manchester. Because I live so far south I’ve never had the chance to meet anyone from Prospects, so I took the opportunity while I was in the north. It was really good: we went to a bar in Manchester called Odder (which seems to live up to its name!) and had a long chat over some food and drinks.

I’ve really enjoyed living in Liverpool: it might just be my imagination but everyone seems much friendlier and willing to help out if you ask than they are where I live, and especially in London. The city is also amazing, there are plenty of impressive buildings to see everyday, and you can see why it was named capital of culture for 2008. Over the weekends and sometimes in the evenings, I’ve taken the chance to look around the city a bit: I’ve seen both the cathedrals as well as various other famous buildings.

I originally thought living in Liverpool would be a lot cheaper than London, and I might save a bit of money while I was up here. Unfortunately the shopping in Liverpool is also very good, and I think in two weeks I’ve already bought myself an entire new wardrobe. In all, the time I’ve spent up here has been really good. Plenty to think about when I start back at university next week!

Read my previous blogs

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