I was incredibly lucky to be given a week of remote work experience with The Herald. Ability Today and the Academy for Disabled Journalists passed my CV and portfolio to Toby Granville, Editorial Development Director at Newsquest Media Group soon after, I had a meeting with Catherine Salmond, Editor The Herald.
During my meeting with Mrs Salmond we mainly discussed several possible ideas for stories which I could write while doing my work experience. We discussed a piece about the history of Rockstar North and a piece about my experience as a partially sighted gamer, in addition to several other ideas.
I had the opportunity to work remotely due to being partially sighted. During my first day I was invited to attend the daily meetings and meet the team. During one of these meetings I found out that another journalist at The Herald was working on an article about homelessness in Scotland. After discovering this I then sent my recent article about the same subject to Gregor Kyle (another editor at The Herald) in order to help the other journalist as my article included various statistics which I believed could be of some help. Mr Kyle seemed impressed with my work and advised me to expand on my previous article.
During my work on my article about gaming, I learned to write in the 1st person, which in turn has helped me write this piece. Before working for The Herald, I strictly believed that journalists should never write about themselves as I believed and still believe that journalists should be as objective as possible.
I was also asked by Mr Kyle to contribute a piece about my college and university experiences for a series about Scottish education.
I sent these articles as well as several more pieces to Mrs Salmond and Mr Kyle. However, as far as I am aware, none of the articles mentioned have been published as of the time of writing of this piece (which is why I have delayed writing this article). Despite having nothing published by The Herald yet, I am confident that one or more of these articles will be published as they are all features and therefore, it is not urgent to publish them. I have been incredibly lucky to write for and learn from several editors at The Herald. In addition, I spoke with David Ward who taught me about different aspects of the production of
a newspaper. During that meeting, Mr Ward offered to send my CV and portfolio to editors of local and regional newspapers near me so that I might have the chance to undergo additional work experience.
Finally, I would like to thank everyone at Ability Today, the ADJ and The Herald for giving me such an amazing opportunity and allowing me to learn and improve my skills.
By Connor Law, ADJ CFJ Student