HAPPY leap year! Did you enjoy your extra day yesterday? Perhaps you proposed to the man in your life.
I certainly did. I proposed mending the wonky tap in the kitchen and that we tidy the Room Of Doom. Alas, I got a knock-back.
We did, however, celebrate our seventh anniversary. For it was on February 29, 1992, that my betrothed moved through to Dundee, where I was a trainee journalist and he was to return to studying (a more mature student, his classmates affectionately referred to him as Da’).
We didn’t have two bawbees to rub together, but those three years in Dundee were happy times.
I was thinking back to that time last week when I was teaching college students about mobile journalism. The ease with which you can capture news as it happens, generating audio, video and stills using a phone that fits in the palm of your hand, would have been the stuff of fiction back in 1992.
But the concept of mobile journalism did exist back then. It was just a bit different …
Wednesday was “mobile journalism” day for DC Thomson’s Class of ’92. There were eight of us and once a week we’d be packed off in the Sunday Post Travelling Newsdesk, pencils sharpened at the ready, shorthand notebooks poised.
It was cutting-edge stuff. The travelling newsdesk was a bright orange Transit van. It was state-of-the art, kitted out with a kettle, two-bar electric fire and a table and chairs. The idea was that wherever we went, people would pop in for a cup of tea and a chat, eager to furnish us with a bountiful supply of news.
However, this wasn’t quite how the story unfolded.
It was February. It was freezing cold and usually raining. We would be dumped in various wee towns and villages and sent off to gather news. We were “hyperlocal” before it was even thought of. But where were the locals ready to bombard us with hot exclusives? Sadly, Wednesday was also half-day closing. The streets were as empty as our notebooks.
If Wednesday was “mobile journalism” day, Thursday was “ritual humiliation” day, when the big scary boss man would come and tear apart whatever scraps of copy we’d manage to glean. You would hear his brogues getting louder as he stomped towards our perch on top of the Courier Building on Meadowside (legend has it that it used to be the loft for the carrier pigeons which transported the football results – surely just an early version of email?). A thick haze of cigar smoke preceded him as he entered the training room. We were doomed.
In my defence, I did actually manage to get one story into print.
We’d been deposited in a small village near Balmoral Castle. The streets were as bare as usual, so I went for a wander off the main drag. I was stunned to round a corner to find a sweetie factory. It was small and noisy and manned by two brothers whose accent was beyond my grasp. I did, however, manage to make out above the din that they made humbugs that were delivered to the royal household. Well, I think that’s what they said.
I had my scoop and would escape humiliation for one week at least.
The following Sunday, there it was in print: The Secret Of The Queen Mum’s Handbag.
Sweet success indeed.
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