My experiences as a reporter

Hi! I am Abhinaya Mohan. I study in class 12, at P.S.Senior Secondary School. I attended the “Young Journalist Program” conducted by “Mylapore Times” from July 2006 to November 2006. Even while we were being trained in various aspects of journalism, we contributed small reports and stories which were used in the newspaper. I stayed on and continued writing and reporting for “Mylapore Times” after the program ended and am still doing so as of today. I would like to share some of my experiences, problems that I faced , mistakes I made and hope that those who read this will benefit from it.

In one of our first classes, Mr.Vincent D’Souza asked us to make a ‘profile’ of our neighbourhood ,(ie) map the location of important landmarks, prominent shops, etc. This activity helped us know our neighbourhood better and we got a lot of ideas, subjects that we could do stories on. Vincent Sir would always say that to become a good journalist, one should have good listening skills, should be able to pick up leads from one story and should be able to put it down aptly in words.

Another practice that we benefited from was reading out small reports from newspapers at the beginning of every session. We would discuss the report, analyze its positives and negatives and even suggest alternative or corrective methods of how the article could have been better written. This practice helped us develop our own, unique style of writing reports.

To understand how a newspaper works, we were taught (in detail) how the editorial, the designers, the reporters, photographers, function. One entire session was dedicated towards understanding how ‘News Agencies’ worked and what their role in a daily newspaper is. Planning, focusing, interviewing, were other aspects that were discussed. We were regularly given assignments to work on and were expected to file atleast three reports a week.

Now that I’ve given you a basic idea of what we learnt on the program, I’d like to highlight some difficulties that I initially faced while doing reports.

One problem that I faced was that most people were very hesitant or apprehensive to speak to me when I introduced myself as a reporter. Many people are misinformed that the press has a tendency to blow up thing and make it look out of proportion. To overcome this problem, I learnt to gauge a person and talk to him/her in such a way that he/she was at ease and I got the information that I needed from him. This come with experience, as one meets different people on every assignment.

Another aspect that a reporter should emphasize on when making an appointment is the time factor. Remind the person about the appointment once, twice because a lot of time could get wasted if either of you is unclear about the time and the place of the meeting.

Yet another mistake I made was not introducing myself properly while approaching a person for an interview. It is insufficient if you just start off with “Good morning, I am from “Mylapore Times”……” One must always remember that the opposite party may not know that a newspaper of the same name even exists. So, one must always give some background about the newspaper before explaining the purpose of the visit or phone-call.

One final point that I want to highlight is that before you send a report to the editor, or to the newspaper, check whether the phone numbers and addresses are right. If you miss out one digit in a phone number, it could cause a lot of trouble and would result in bad criticism both for the newspaper and for the reporter. So, always check your reports twice, before filing them.

Generally, going on a ‘beat’ regularly, helps me come up with new ideas to do reports on. Other than this, it is useful to have contacts among friends and neighbours who could alert you if they notice anything unusual or new. A good reporter should also follow up on stories that he/she has previously done, as new developments might have taken place.

Managing school and journalism is not difficult- you may have to compromise on maybe an hour of your time in the evenings; but that can always be compensated by studying for an hour in the morning. One must thus, be able to balance both without compromising on the quality of either.

Besides honing my reporting skills, the journalism program also helped me improve my communication and writing skills. One also meets a lot of different people all of whom can’t be dealt with in the same way.

Thus, every assignment that you do teaches something new and it is through this experience that one gets better and better in this field.