PRESS ASSOCIATION DIARIES V: Work Placement

Imagine us as foetuses incubated in the most intense and secure Press Association womb; warm, comfortable, our development near complete, our respective umbilical cords now well intwined.

Still with me?

Well mumma Roberta has cut the cords and shipped her baby journos out into the working world.

The first week of placement is almost up and it's been strange coping without my PA people. Being back at ELLE with six weeks of 24-7 journalism training under my belt has felt pretty good 

but going it alone has reminded me of the big bad world that awaits us in just a few weeks. 

If Roberta will remember her Summer 2014 flock for one thing it'll be how well we all got on. Although none of us have taken our "special friendships" to the next level (thank God) and we've pretty much rejected all of Tom's invitations to the pub, it's been nice* to be amongst friends. 

*Minus the "Lad Chart", curated by our "Lad Editor" (Aka another man without a purpose) 

It's made this process a whole lot easier, even if it might have slowed down our productivity. Luckily, life at ELLE hasn't been too lonely as I had a few allies already and hot-desking* means a fresh batch of desk buddies everyday.

*Hot-desking also means feeling homeless at work. Make of it what you will - it's modern!

A week away from PA has given me the time and space to revaluate a lot of things. I really value the work that we've produced collaboratively, particularly Industries 2 Invest In (our app). I can see why there is such an emphasis on being "team-players".

No man is an island and no magazine was produced by one (wo)man.

But I am island-ing it for these two weeks and there's still the obituary to write (not mine - maybe mine) and the review and it's bank holiday weekend and that means Notting Hill Carnival. 

Being out in the real world is bittersweet.

  This can be read as a) Roberta engulfing us once again or b) Us meeting our fateful end.

PRESS ASSOCIATION DIARIES II: PA aka the Photobooth Association

I'm back for my second post and this week we discovered photobooth – SORRY

Nicholas (in green) was particularly happy, Kaltrina and Sam less so.

Feeling left out, I decided to start documenting writing news pieces (see below) and short snappy news has been proving more difficult than any of us anticipated. Those snippets of news you might read half of in the Metro on your way to work are hard to write people (if you want to write them well and Roberta's your editor) 

I find myself sprouting Roberta's journo gospel even when I don't want to hear it. "But how the hell are we moving the story forward guys?" It's starting to feel like we're stuck on a loop and some news just won't "move forward".

That being said today I had my first news story accepted (with minor amendments needed obvs) but still 50 odd words of progress and I didn't even make it to a third attempt. This feels like a milestone but it's becoming apparent that it'll mean nothing in the very near future. 

Talking of the future this week we met chief chimpanzee Darshan Sanghrajka who according to his twitter bio is a "stand up, economist, creative, marketing strategist, social impact person" and sexist (just kidding Darshan - wow women aren't funny). He was great and taught us all about Search Engine Optimisation or SEO as we now call it. Thanks to him we're all pretty fluent in social media. For some of us (Olivia) SEO stands more for Stalking Energy Optimisation and for others (Sam) meeting Darshan meant losing their twitter virginity. Sam's yet to tweet but I heard he's totes getting Instagram ####

Anyway back to the Photobooth Association...

I finally plucked up the courage to ask to borrow Olivia's glasses. As a blind person without glasses this is pretty big.  

Then this guy started paining the computer room door... 

And the fumes got pretty intense.... 

And I started to feel pretty intense. 

He did't seem to care that I had "serious" Photobooth work to do.

I got a little desperate....

Then we become pals! #fumes #friends