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Behind the scenes: An internship at Sky News (part two)

In February this year would-be journalist Alan McGuinness [left] won the first annual journalism scholarship launched by Sky News in memory of presenter Bob Friend.

Sky will pay the 19-year-old's first year fees as he embarks on the next stage of a journalism course at the University of Kent's Centre of Journalism.

To kickstart his training, he spent the last four weeks working as part of the Sky News team in their multimedia studios pictured below.

You can read the first part of his work experience diary at this link. In part two McGuinness describes his first experience of running a liveblog and moves to Five News:


July 24
This week I've been at Five News, which is produced by Sky News and based in the same building.

The difference in terms of what makes up a Five News bulletin compared to a Sky News bulletin is stark: there is hardly any international news and the stories are much lighter and fun. Despite these differences I've had a great time working there and got heavily involved.

On Monday I did two interviews which were used in the 5pm bulletin. The first was with Rich Cline, a film critic, on the news that Harry Potter is set to overtake James Bond as the highest grossing film franchise of all time.

The second interview was with Leigh Purves, a showbiz journalist. This was for a piece on David Beckham and the travails he has experienced since his return to LA Galaxy from AC Milan.

For the rest of the week I've been office bound - one of my colleagues remarked how quiet it was - but I still managed to set up plenty of interviews, move stories along, help the planning desk out with research and pitch ideas.

I also spent some time in the gallery watching the 5pm show and shadowed Simon Vigar as he put together a package on some very generous children.

One story I worked on this week was about lottery winners who have not necessarily experienced happiness as a result of their windfall.

I read up on some cases and managed to track a number of them down. One of them was Mark Gardiner, who won £11 million in 1995 and was happy to be interviewed for the piece. He is being interviewed on Monday and it should air sometime in the near future.

On Monday it will be three years until the 2012 Olympics starts. To mark that date I arranged an interview with Rachel Christie, niece of Linford, who has just won Miss England and is aiming to compete in the games, to talk about how she is preparing for them. That's on Monday and fingers crossed it will air in that day's show.

August 1
Well, that's it: my four weeks at Sky News are over. It seemed to go much too quickly but I had a wonderful time and it was a great experience. I'm certain it will stand me in good stead for the future.

My last week was spent with the Sky News website, and after I managed to get my head around the content management system, it proved to be a particularly fruitful week - I managed to get two bylines on the site.

The first came from an idea that popped into my head when I read about civil servants and politicians being advised on how to use Twitter: if Gordon Brown was on Twitter, what would he tweet? So I pitched the idea to my editor and was told to come up with some funny material. I went away and racked my brains and came up with a few mock tweets and to my delight they ran with it and it was put up on the website.

My other byline was a story on a survey from the travel firm ABTA which found that more than half of Britons prefer to send and receive postcards, despite the abundance of new communications technologies. I spoke to Brian Lund, a postcard collector and the editor of Picture Postcard Monthly magazine, who also very kindly sent me some funny, saucy and historical postcards for a picture gallery to accompany the article.

In addition I had three other pieces published: the first was regarding David Beckham's latest run in with a fan in LA; the second concerned Thomas Cook offering German tourists the chance to book their sunbeds early. The third was a story on the advice from Breastfeeding Network charity that women should continue breastfeeding their children if they have swine flu.

My last day emphasised just how exciting and unpredictable being a journalist is. The day started like any other, I was set to work on a few stories when I got called downstairs.

I had just seen the sad news that Sir Bobby Robson had died aged 76. My editor Jon asked me what my footballing knowledge was like. "Pretty good," I replied. And with that I was set to work moderating and updating the Sky News CoveritLive blog on Robson's death.

I didn't have previous experience with using the software and was to an extent thrown in at the deep end, but I enjoyed getting to grips with it and being involved in a big piece of news, which was evident from the amount of comments that were sent in.

While updating the liveblog I also wrote an article bringing together a collection of the tributes to Robson from the likes of Alan Shearer, Tony Blair and Jose Mourinho.

And with that it was time to leave. I will certainly miss Sky, but it had to come to an end some time. One thing I certainly won't miss is the 6am starts.

What did I learn
I've built on the skills I developed in my first year at university, such as writing for different mediums. The first year was a foundation and these past four weeks have built upon it.

It's one thing producing content at university (where I'd have much more time), but it's completely different in a live environment, where you don't know what's going to happen, so it was great to get the experience of doing that.

My last day is a good example. When the news of Sir Bobby Robson's death broke I was put on the website's CoveritLive blog covering it. I had to get to grips with the software pretty quickly and it was on the homepage of the website. I had no idea I'd be doing that when I woke up.

The challenges
Getting my head around how certain pieces of software worked, such as iNews and CoveritLive and also the content management system for the Sky News website, was certainly challenging. Another test was having a steady stream of good ideas to formulate and pitch.

I enjoyed just getting stuck in and doing things. Everyone on my placement was friendly, willing to offer help and advice and give me things to do. Throughout the placement I set up interviews, pitched ideas, wrote articles and NIBs, shadowed reporters and watched how they produce what goes to air. No two days were ever the same. Just working in a real, live news environment has been fun and it was great to get a taste of it.

I now have an increased determination to succeed as a journalist. I enjoyed the placement immensely, being around real journalists in a live environment was fantastic. I knew I wanted to be a journalist before, but now having experienced being at an organisation like Sky News I have no doubt whatsoever that it is what I want to do.

Tags (click tag to find related articles; click icon for feed):
sky news | training | work experience | alan mcguinness | bob friend |

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