In at the deep end
By Morag Macpherson

Morag Macpherson has been enjoying a six-week work experience placement at the Sunday Herald.
Here she shares her experience of working for a weekly newspaper.

I’ve nearly completed my six weeks work experience at the Sunday Herald magazine and I would have to say it’s been completely fabulous.

When I arrived I felt a bit like I had been dumped straight into the deep end, but I must admit I’m not the world’s best person for initiative so it gave me a kick start and something to get my teeth into.

By the time I had been there half an hour, I was typing up restaurant reviews and arranging the details for a journalist to go and report on a weekend away. By the time I had been there for two weeks I already had my own column – albeit a very small one but it was important to me.

It wasn’t on the area of journalism that I’d eventually like to get into, but all the same I found it interesting.

It gave me experience of phoning up complete strangers (which I didn’t like doing before) and dealing with professionals. It also had fantastic perks (if you are a girl! – it was the beauty column!).

I’m now five weeks into my work experience and I think I have a lot of information to take away with me.

One thing is to ask. Whilst the editors have plenty to do and want to see you getting on as best you can on your own, they also know that you haven’t been doing this for years and you’re likely to be unsure of what to do from time to time.

All you have to do is be a good judge of character – if the editor looks stressed, try and work out how you would solve the problem yourself, if that fails, try and ask a fellow journalist and if they don’t know take the plunge and ask the editor – it usually isn’t as bad as you think it will be.

Another thing is to not be intimidated by other peoples’ knowledge. I know I read articles from journalists in the Sunday Herald and get completely freaked out by their background knowledge and style of writing but then I have to remember – they’ve researched it well and they’ve been doing it for a lot longer than me so if they didn’t look and sound professional then they aren’t very good journalists.

I’ve been very lucky; the people I have worked with have all been very friendly and have given me lots of pointers. Although there are still a lot of things I probably don’t know – I at least feel I have the groundwork knowledge to get started.

The only thing I would have to say is that because I have been working for a weekly publication I have been able to take a little more time to get used to things and feel my way about – I would say that if someone was looking to get some work experience and haven’t done anything before then a weekly is the best way to go as the pace of a daily newspaper may just be a bit too daunting.

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