By Jules Weldrick, Sub-Editor
READING colleague Judith Phillips's recent Blog on her career in journalism got me thinking about how I got started in the industry - 45 years ago!
In the days of the Swinging 60s the concept of school careers advisors was non-existent and with work relatively easy to find I sat down one day thinking about what I might do - two weeks before I left school!
I'd had my name down at Sandhurst (honest!), thinking I might pursue an Army career after two years in the school's cadet force, but a fortnight of square-bashing at an Aldershot Army base soon put paid to that idea!
I did write after a job with BP Oil as a buyer (it sounded good, travelling the world maybe?) but in the meantime a pal of mine at school who was a keen photographer had landed himself a job at the Manchester Guardian (as it was then) as an assistant photographer, and travelling around to different functions and events sounded quite a nice idea.
But with no knowledge of taking pictures I looked to the alternative of becoming a reporter. I sat down again one night and wrote 46 letters (I've always remembered 46 because of my aching fingers!) and sent them off to newspapers around the Manchester area.
Out of the 46 letters sent I got six replies, three saying thanks but no thanks, two putting me "on file" and one offering me a job interview - believe it or not, it was the Daily Express!
However, the job was not as a journalist, but a messenger boy. The job involved doing shift work, but being only 16 I was not allowed to work after 10pm.
In some ways it was an interesting job because no two days were the same. The 8am shift involved a slightly bizarre job involving two of us - one lad had to stand holding the front door open at exactly 10am so the chauffeur-driven managing director could walk straight from his car into the building, while the other lad kept his finger on the lift button so he could walk straight into the elevator up to his office! I hope our current managing director's not getting any ideas here.
One of the better tasks was the late shift when I brewed up for the Express reporters and sub-editors three times a night, charging a penny a time and almost doubling my weekly wage.
The worst job was having to clean out the old glue pots used by the sub-editors (there were no computers to make up pages in those days). After five months I was just about settling in at the Express when out of the blue came a letter from one of the weekly papers who had kept my name on file. It offered me an interview.
The interview went well - they were no doubt impressed by my experience cleaning glue pots - and I nearly fell through the floor when they offered me a job at three times the wage I was on!
My proper career in the newspaper industry started, and with it some interesting times. On my first newspaper I got to see Royalty, interview the Beatles, appeared on Top of the Pops and even managed to miss my own leaving party!
But that's another story...
- Post to:
del.icio.us
Digg
Newsvine
Nowpublic
Reddit
« Previous | Home | Next »