My news quest

The course I am currently studying is a based upon a placement with a newspaper, which takes place each Friday.

My placement is with The Sale and Altrincham Messenger, which is my local paper. It is owned by a company called Newsquest, who are in turn owned by American media company Gannett.
The stories I write will form a portfolio, which will then be marked in January.

So far it has been fine, although I have had to re-write my fair share of press releases. Over the past few weeks I have been working on a story about the closure of a charity shop in Sale, which is on the paper’s doorstep. The shop has been there for forty years and raised over a £1 million for charity. Last week I visited it and interviewed volunteers and customers.

Today I wrote the story, pulling together all the quotes and making a couple of more phone calls. There is also a photograph, which was taken outside the shop last week. The story should be in next week’s paper, and will hopefully improve the quality of my portfolio.