Working for a tabloid – Part 1

1. September, 2010 Routes into journalism

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Working for a tabloid – Part 1

In Flat Earth News Nick Davies describes how too much pressure is put on reporters at newspapers and news agencies to produce as many stories in as little time as possible, which thwarts the reporting of the truth. In the book Davies chronicles the week of a young graduate reporter working at a regional tabloid. In their week of work the reporter has written on average 10 stories a day, has spoken to 26 people, 4 of which he has spoken to face-to-face and has spent only 3 out of 45.5 hours out of the office.

Though I have been working at a tabloid, my experience at The People suggests otherwise. I was given a whole working day to work on two stories, one of which was an investigation.

Within five minutes of entering the office, I had introduced myself to the News team and I had already been assigned my first project – haggling down the prices of package holidays from popular holiday companies. This was a straightforward idea following on from the announcement from travel firm TUI Travel that it had thousands of unsold package holidays for this summer.

The article required a few phone calls and a few quick investigations for background information through Google. Within 4 hours I had phoned and tried to haggle down the prices from 8 package holiday companies, scanned the internet for any similar stories (there weren’t any!), researched TUI Travel, contacted consumer groups and written up an almost entirely original story.

See the article here.

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Joseph Stashko

Correct me if I'm wrong, but is the people a Sunday newspaper? That in itself would suggest more time given to individual stories. Would be good to see a comparison between like for like though, I.e 2 tabloid dailies.

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Wannabe Hacks is a living, breathing journalism resource. All our content is produced by aspiring journalists. Our aim is to offer an insight into the different routes into journalism, provide in-depth commentary about the big issues and stimulate discussion around what matters to you.

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Working for a tabloid – Part 1

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