Bath Chronicle - The Last Day.

The last day of my placement, I went to take photographs of the interior of the Victoria Art Gallery, the Bath Abbey and the Roman Baths and Assembly Rooms. It was a great opportunity as I was able to take photos inside these places where photography was usually prohibited (Victoria Art Gallery) and get free, personal tours (Roman Baths). I spent the last day of my placement being shown the security guards’ favourite photo spots in the Roman Baths, and was shown many unusual places to take stunning photos of the baths that were only known by the guards.

Unfortunately, when they imported the photos onto the system, they must have deleted them off my camera so I can't show examples of the photos, but they were very happy with them and decided to use some in the next week's paper.

I then went in to give in the photos and officially finished my work placement! When I left, I gave them my contact information and they said that they would let me know if there is any freelance work that comes up in the future.

Summary:

Stage 1: Record

As can be seen from each of these blog posts, I experienced working as a photojournalist in a professional working environment for a publication that circulates to over 100,000 readers. I spent time in both the news desk department, researching, interviewing and writing articles, and the photography department, being sent out on assignment to get photographs. I observed the process of publishing a weekly city newspaper, from the first allocations of news stories to reporters to the final editing and the layout of the paper. I also observed how both reporters and photographer work professionally in this environment, learning much from the process.

Stage 2: Influencing Factors

The main factors I could see influencing me were in the areas of my style of writing and photography. I grew up in Jerusalem, Israel, where earth-shaking events would be happening every day that would make headlines around the world; this, in fact, is what made me want to do photojournalism. I also tend to gravitate towards reading world events and current affairs publications such as TIME magazine or NewsWeek. Both of these factors I think have influenced my style of writing, which I found was very different to the style of a local city newspaper such as the Bath Chronicle. This took time to readjust to fit their style of relating to their readers.

Stage 3: Reflect

I thoroughly enjoyed the whole of the placement and felt that it achieved its aims. In the Education (Work Experience) Act of 1973, the aims of work experience were outlined as fitting into ten different categories. One of these categories was titled ‘Sampling’, and defined the aim of it as being “To enable students to test their vocational preference before committing themselves to it” (Watts et al, 1989, cited in Wellington, 1992).

This work experience gave me that opportunity, enabling me to see which areas of photojournalism I would like to pursue as a career. It also gave me the chance to experience working in other areas that I found not as enjoyable, such as adapting to a much more 'small-town' style than what I was used to. I also found that writing stories about topics such as mouse racing and abandoned rabbits, the kind of pieces that make up much of a local newspaper, is not the area of journalism that I would like to pursue a career in.

Having experienced working for a local paper, I think now that I would ideally like to work for a publication that focuses more on world issues and events. I know that in order to do so, though, I would need to work my way up through local and national publications and am glad I had the opportunity to prepare myself for it through this work experience.

In hindsight, I can see now that I should have prepared much more for the placement by reading the Bath Chronicle regularly, to get used to the style of writing and to the style of the photographs they used. As I found that my style in both these areas is completely different to the style they use, it took time to adjust to their style and the brand identity of the newspaper which I could have saved by preparing for the placement beforehand.

Stage 4: Learn

Another category in The Education (Work Experience) Act, called ‘Preparatory’, defines its aim as being “to help students to acquire skills and knowledge related to a particular occupational area, which they will be able to apply if they wish to enter employment in that area” (Watts et al, 1989, cited in Wellington, 1992).

This has definitely been the case in my work experience, as although much of what I was doing was not what I would like to be doing ideally in the future, the experience taught me new skills and challenged me in many ways. It also stretched my abilities, giving me the skills needed to work in this area if required to do so in the future.

I learned the requirements and the expectations of working as a photojournalist in a professional office environment like the Bath Chronicle. I also learned that the most important thing in this industry is to meet the needs and fit the brand identity of the publication. I picked up many tips along the way for both writing articles and taking photos for a newspaper that I'm sure I will be able to apply to any job I have in photojournalism in the future.

I also learned through this that I need to improve my personal quality of learning to prepare beforehand. Instead of leaving it until I was actually on the placement to do more in-depth researching and more than just cursory reading of the paper, I should have intentionally prepared and gotten myself accustomed to the style and brand identity of the paper. I also learned that in order to get a staff job as a journalist on a news publication, it is essential to complete a journalism course after my degree and I will be looking more into this in the future.

Overall, I thoroughly enjoyed having my work experience at the Bath Chronicle. I learned many skills that I know I will use in the future and experienced what it would be like to work in a professional environment. I feel that it achieved its aims of preparing me for working in that occupation and gave me a taste of what it would be like to work as a professional photojournalist. I learned from this experience what Newton (2009) describes:

"Photojournalists distinguish their images from others in part by intention: the purpose of making and distributing the images is to show the truth, to the extent any human can discern and communicate, of stories significant to people's lives."



References:

Newton, Julianne H. (2009) 'PHOTOJOURNALISM', Journalism Practice, 3:2, 233 – 243

Wellington, Jerry (1992) 'Varying perspectives on work experience: 'there's nowt so queer as folk'',
Journal of Vocational Education & Training, 44: 2, 153 — 182