NEWS INTERVIEW
- 243 candidates;
- 174 passed - 72 per cent

The spring 2005 interview was about possible devil worship at St Mary's Church, Oxdown, and an attack on the vicar who interrupted proceedings. There was also news of another similar incident recently at the town's Roman Catholic Church. The vicar made an appeal for witnesses.

Markers were looking for reports to combine these angles along with detailed information of the vicar's attack and what was discovered appertaining to the devil worship. Good reports would also have included a fair summary of the previous incident at St Joseph's.

Most candidates produced good newsy intros combining the devil worship and attack on the vicar. Exceptional intros, of which there were a few, included the previous incident. Unexceptional intros started 'Police are investigating...' 'An appeal for witnesses...' 'The vicar of St Mary's Church...' With such a good juicy tale, there were plenty of emotive openers to be used rather than these tired, old bores.

This time round, there were more high scoring papers that were a delight to read. Indeed, editors would be proud to see some of the high standards achieved by their reporters.

A good number of stories were well-written, leading the reader through the sequence of events in a logical manner. Many included excellent direct quotes and well-crafted reported speech. However, there were examples of candidates putting all information in quotes, failing to appreciate direct quoting and reported speech techniques. The 'bung it all in method' made a number of reports tedious and difficult to read.

Despite some well-balanced stories with a good mix of drama and detailed information, there was evidence of reporters failing to visualise what happened and, therefore, producing unclear and confusing accounts.

Some candidates didn't mention the essential devil worship angle, others led with 'vandals hit church' leaving the Satanism until later, and quite a few didn't recognise the significance of the dead chicken and inverted cross. The lack of attention to detail left unexplained why the vicar ever turned up at the church and why the police intervened.

There was the usual failure to check proper name spellings during the interview resulting in mistakes, although the cardinal sin was mis-spelling those actually given to reporters in writing.

Candidates were heavily penalised for reporting the wrong date and mis-spelling names from the reporter's written brief and Oxdown map.

There were several instances of the vicar's surname changing from one name to another and back again in the same report. The Rev Stephens became Stevens, Phillips, Williams and Smith. It is a 'must' that candidates leave enough time at the end of the exam to read through their reports, checking for errors.

It was clear that very few candidates knew the correct style for addressing the vicar. As a rule it is 'The Rev' at first mention followed by 'Mr.' Even allowing for newspaper style differences, many candidates hedged their bets applying several styles in the same story! Some reports referred to 'the reverend was attacked' when they meant 'vicar'. 'Reverend' is a title, and using it otherwise is like saying 'the mister was attacked'.

The vast majority of candidates couldn't spell 'altar'. Dictionaries can be used during the exam, but, one suspects, many relied on computer spell-checks that let them down. Other words that caused problems were worshippers, aisle, pray and Canon.

One marker wrote: "Why say local residents? All residents are local, whether they live in Oxdown, Rio de Janeiro or Kirkintilloch."

Some candidates used 'males and females' when 'men and women' would have been preferable.

Some odd phrasing led to strange imagery such as 'medieval chanting intruders', 'devil-worshipping burglars' and 'saw between seven and eight people'.

Other oddities included:

'Just two weeks ago, Oxdown's Roman Catholic was broken into . '

'He was woken by what sounded like medical plainsong . . .'

'Police sirens were called to the scene . . .' (sexy coppers?)