The Scottish Parliament and the Fife Free Press this week launched a competition offering a week-long placement for one journalism student in Parliament’s Media Tower.
The competition is open to final year and postgraduate journalism students studying at Scottish colleges and universities.
According to a release from Scottish Parliament the winner will get to work alongside top political correspondents and file copy for publication in the Fife Free Press.
BBC political editor Nick Robinson has admitted he was close to “walking away” from Downing Street before announcing David Cameron as the new Prime Minister because of exhaustion.
Speaking in an interview with BBC College of Journalism, Robinson shares some of the challenges he faced covering the election.
At the end of the five days there was just the sense of total exhaustion. I had planned really to go to bed after staying up for 24 hours on air after polling day closed and suddenly discovered I couldn’t because of all the ups and downs (…)
When it finally came to Gordon Brown leaving Downing Street I remember being so cold and so tired that I actually said to Laura Kuenssberg, ‘you do it’ and she looked at me as if I was completely mad. I was so exhausted that I briefly thought of walking away. But it was a great story to do.
Robinson also discusses how he dealt with surprising exit polls live on air and how he wants to encourage more debate via his blog but first needs to tackle “abusive” comments.
The Parliamentary Press Gallery has launched a diversity scheme aimed at getting journalists from a black and ethnic minority background into political journalism.
The scheme places the journalists in the role of a temporary member of the Press Gallery, for around three months. Applicants must be from an “established media organisation” which they will be expected to file stories to while on the programme.
You will get a desk, security clearance and a warm welcome. The first few days would include being shown around the facilities for reporters in Parliament and introduced to useful colleagues. The Serjeant at Arms’ department has offered to arrange a tour of Parliament for each person taking part.
The rest is up to you. After a settling-in period, you will need to find fresh news stories to keep your employer happy. There are plenty of reports, interview opportunities, fascinating statistics and lively debates to report at Westminster. The scheme is aimed at self-starters with a mature attitude who can manage their own time, although help and advice will always be close at hand.
Video from Sky News showing how it put together its coverage of Gordon Brown’s resignation and the post-election coalition talks between the Conservatives and Liberal Democrats.
Video also available at this link…
Related reading: Sky News’ Niall Paterson on “bigotgate” and the parliamentary press pack.
The BBC College of Journalism’s Jon Jacob raises some interesting points about journalists’ coverage of the UK’s new coalition government:
When can the media stop referring to it as a coalition government or is there a danger in doing so?
John Rentoul, or @JohnRentoul, chief political commentator for the Independent on Sunday, sums up how he uses Twitter and the impact he believes it has had on political reporting in the UK (managing to avoid the hyperbole of many other love notes to Twitter from journalists):
Most of the time, however, Twitter is like a news service. It is different from social networks in that links are not necessarily mutual. People can choose to follow each other, but the Korean research found that four-fifths of links were one-way. This means that hub Twitterers with a lot of followers act as diffusers of news. When I started on this newspaper as a political reporter in 1995, the main source of UK “breaking news” was the Press Association wire – short bulletins of news, as it happened. Now Twitter fills that gap, as journalists and citizen-reporters let each other know when someone has left their microphone on, or has ruled out standing for the Labour leadership. When Adam Boulton started to lose his temper with Alastair Campbell on live television during the post-election negotiations, people tweeted to tell others to put Sky News on – to catch the best bits. William Hague announced that the talks with the Liberal Democrats were back on on Twitter. It is a way for politicians to speak to – or beyond – the conventional media. But it also offers journalists other ways of reporting.
POLIS director Charlie Beckett looks at the challenges a hung parliament poses for journalists:
The likelihood of a hung parliament raises all sorts of interesting procedural issues for journalists – especially the BBC and other Public Service Broadcasters. How do you report impartially and proportionately and how do you avoid getting bogged down in procedural detail? And how will our partisan press respond?
Generally, governments are given the dominant position in news coverage and allowed to dictate terms and set agendas because they have the popular mandate. New governments also tend to get a honeymoon period where the media allow them to set out their stall and give them the benefit of the doubt.
Forget about the politicians and their wives, which journalist has done it for you during the general election? In this completely unofficial set of polls, let us know whose coverage you’ve enjoyed the most. If you’ve got notable mentions to add, drop us a line [judith at journalism.co.uk], tweet [@journalismnews] or comment below. Nominations were compiled using our readers’ suggestions – but add your own to the poll too!
You could be forgiven for forgetting who was at the centre of this general election campaign.
As blogger Max Atkinson noted, the BBC 10 o’clock news ran a seven and a half minute report on Monday’s Citizens UK event, with 22 seconds from each of the leaders’ speeches; and 123 seconds of political editor Nick Robinson. Private Eye reported in its latest issue that one onlooker wasn’t sure which Nick was going to make the speech during one part of the Lib Dem election trail.
And of course, the thought that it might not be Us Wot Won It has sent newspaper journalists and bosses into election influence overdrive: storming newspaper offices and frontpage scaremongering like crazy.
So, forget about the politicians and their wives, which journalist has done it for you during the general election coverage?
Tomorrow morning we’ll be running a few polls to establish just that. But first we need some nominations. Here are the categories:
Please comment below, or send nominations by tweet (@journalismnews) or email: judith [at] journalism.co.uk. NB: Category suggestions also welcomed.
Creator of TV political satire The Thick of It, Armando Iannucci on bigotgate and what it says about the UK’s media:
The journalist from Sky News was in some kind of hysterical state of tumescence as he cackled “Gordon Brown’s done a gaffe and we wondered if you’d come on to respond. You’ve got to see it!” on my answering service, and I’m sorry I deleted it rather than release it in to the public domain. The BBC was no less sensationalist in its pokey recording of Brown sitting listening to his own surreptitiously recorded voice played back to him.
It’s at these moments that you stand back and see, not a nation debating its future, but a pack of shrieking gibbons.
Thankfully, though, Bigotgate seems to have had no impact on the polls. This has restored my faith in this election as a sober, sincere and considered affair, though it’s shed a light on what the media machine can do when it’s taken too much Red Bull.