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My name's Keri Welham, and I'm a journalist.
At the Dominion Post I cover a variety of topics from exposés on dirty diesel through to
quite a bit of work on suicide and depression.
News is something that's new, something you didn't already know.
There has to be a certain sort of relevance and significance.
Too often people cry wolf and say, you know, 'we're having a cake stall on Saturday and
we thought the Dominion Post might want to cover it'.
Well you're dreaming.
If you tell people who are not in your organisation, like friends of yours, or someone you meet
at the supermarket, if there's something happening and it's interesting enough that people who
are not in your organisation go 'wow, that's interesting',
then that's the sort of thing that you could try.
We should never, ever get a press release that's longer than one page.
If you take it down to one page you might have quotes from one or two people.
We quite often do get press releases that you can tell have been written by committee,
and everybody's wanted their little five cents' worth.
When you think about the volume of press releases that come into a newsroom every day –
literally hundreds – you need to make sure that yours is to the point.
If something is happening for your organisation today, then you should have called yesterday.
At the very latest, called this morning.
If something has already happened, I don't even know if you should bother.
Newspapers are concerned with the future – what is going to happen.
We quite often get this, I guess, from smaller organisations where they will say
'we had our annual general meeting last week and Buck Shelford turned up',
'did you get any photos?', and they'll be like 'oh yeah, we got some,
but, you know, they're not very good';
'when was it?', 'oh, Tuesday a week and a half ago'. It's not news.
A really good time to call at the Dominion Post is about nine o'clock.
The worst time to call would be around about one o'clock –
that is a really bad time to call because the news desk is trying furiously to get their list ready
so that they can deliver a full picture to the editors.
And ringing after that, with a story that isn't absolutely groundbreaking and earth-shattering
is a waste of time, because the paper has kind of been laid out.
A human element is probably the most basic thing that you will find
in a story that stops you in your tracks.
It is the one thing which is going to make that story fly.
We quite often get people coming to us saying 'I work for an organisation that works with
people who live in community housing; it's a really cool concept because we get them jobs,
and someone goes and stays with them each night, but they get to live independently',
and you think 'wow, that's a really great story'.
'So when can I go to one of the houses?', and they go 'oh, no, no, no, we thought you'd
want to interview our Chief Executive'. You know, that's just not a story; we want to
get as close to the action as possible, because that's what connects with readers.
It's really important that your spokesperson is sort of appropriately media-trained,
so that they can think on their feet and answer some really basic questions.
One of the things that's really key is to know what your position is, you know,
to know what you think about certain things so that you don't have a reporter saying to you
'oh the new stats have come out, and it looks like suicides have gone up,
what do you think that could be attributable to?', and you say
'oh look, I'm going to have to get back to you'.
Especially with the internet now, we just have rolling constant deadlines.
If I were doing a story I would have maybe six different people that I would call, and
if one of them doesn't answer their phone or doesn't get back to me,
it doesn't ruin my story, they just don't make the cut.
I was reading a story the other day about this US politician, and he'd made a career
out of putting out press releases on Sundays.
It can be really hard to fill Monday's paper. If you're wanting to be smart about it, and
your organisation and the person that you've got to be the human face of your story is
willing to work on the Sunday, then Monday's paper's always the easiest one to get into,
and Saturday's would be the hardest.
If your organisation runs a ribbon day, or a balloon day, or a daffodil day, those things
are going to make really good photos, and just make sure you've got heaps of them on
hand when the photographer comes round. So if it's a balloon day – not one balloon.
You need to think in photos; you need to ensure that the people that you are putting forward
are happy to be photographed, and that they would make a good photograph –
that they are sort of happy, easy-going people.
If you have got someone who's quite outgoing, who has quite a bit of personality that will
come through in a photo, then that's fantastic.
If you're from an organisation and we've come to you and said 'do you know someone that
we could use as a subject for this story', quite often then when we turn up to do the
interview we will find that the organisation is there as well.
One thing that can cause real problems is then if that organisation takes what they
feel is almost a role of guardianship over that person, so the reporter may ask a question
like 'how do I spell your last name?' and this person will leap in and say 'no, no,
no, no; no last names'. It kills any sort of rapport that the reporter is trying to
build with that person; it also steals from that person a little bit of their dignity
and their ability to negotiate on their own behalf.
What happens quite often in those situations is that the reporter
won't be there for very long, because they're wondering how much really sort of heartfelt human content
they're going to get out of them.
One of the things that mental health doesn't need is any more ambiguity.
People who are working in the mental health field can do themselves a real favour
by really spelling out what the ins and outs of this condition are.
You are really helping the reporter to ensure that their work is informative and educational
for the general population, so that people who are reading it are actually learning something.
What has kept me in it is the variety; it's very interesting,
and you learn about people's lives and the way that people live their lives.
And I guess being given license to ask questions, because we're very polite, I guess,
in New Zealand, we don't ask too many questions,
but when you're a journalist you can, and I quite like that.