My internship at Quest Community Newspapers was a two week intensive from 14-28 May, 2018. The nature of the internship was such that I had to go in there with some story ideas so I could hit the ground running, as there was very little time for training once I was there.
I arrived on the Monday, which is at the end of their production cycle (which is weekly), and for the first two days I just read copies papers while also taking notes, to gain an understanding of the house styles. Once the production cycle started again on Wednesday, I was lucky enough to have Quest sports writer Andrew Dawson take me under his wing, and teach me about he finds community sports stories. He also took me out to a media event at the house of Glenn Rushton, the trainer of boxer Jeff Horn, just to see how these style of events work, should I ever be invited to one.
Very quickly I was putting together my own stories, while simultaneously being provided with press releases that had been sent to Quest. As the stories below show, I dealt primarily with sports stories, however I also did a few non-sport community stories that were so short they served as ‘fills’. these fills didn’t have a byline, and aren’t listed here.
In putting the stories together, my work ranged from just calling a number on a press release to get an interview, to finding stories on social media and contacting a media centre to organise a face-to-face interview and photo shoot. The stories listed below are the original copies that I wrote, and not the subbed versions that appear in the papers.
As I have said in my critical reflection, while I did enjoy my time at Quest, and am grateful for the experience and the help I was given, I don’t think working in a large office building for a big news corporation is for me. I hope to use and build on this experience as I move forward with my journalistic career.
Robert Thornton 