Interview with a senior journalist

An interview with Adrian Drummond, Deputy Sports Editor at The Times

How did your career in Journalism originally come about?

I started in journalism in 1980 after applying and being accepted onto the trainee programme at The News centre Portsmouth where I worked as a trainee for two years. Whilst working as a trainee reporter at The News I also enrolled on a 3 month course at Highbury College which focused on the practical skills I would need as a journalist e.g shorthand and media law. I only did a 3 month course as I was on a graduate trainee programme. I had been to university and was the only trainee there that had to been to university as in those days a lot of people got into the industry after doing a course similar to the block release course I had done at Highbury. After two years or so working as a trainee reporter I took a proficiency test which was administered by the NCTJ and once you had passed this you were considered ready to become a senior journalist and you would get a pay rise and then you could really start your career. The proficiency test itself was a series of practical tests one of them being that you had to be able to write a 100 words a minute in shorthand. As a trainee reporter though you are still given a lot of responsibility and I did still find myself covering some interesting stories.

So do you think shorthand is still an essential tool for a Journalist?

Well, yes I do because firstly technology can fail so I think it’s always helpful to have your shorthand notes as security but also I find that when you are taking notes in shorthand you are paying more attention to the answers of the people you are speaking to. It’s a good skill to develop because once you do manage to get a grasp of it and start increasing your hand speed, even If you find you don’t use it very often it’s the sort of skill like riding a bike that you never really forget. A lot of the younger journalists I work with don’t have shorthand and much prefer to use a Dictaphone etc so really it is down to personal preference but it is a something that most employers will be looking for when recruiting graduates. In a practical sense though I have always found it easier to flick back through my shorthand notes rather than having to keep fast forward or rewinding through an interview that’s been recorded on a Dictaphone to find good quotes.

What would you say the significant differences are for someone trying to make it as a reporter today compared to when you were younger?

I would say that first and foremost there isn’t as much opportunity nowadays as when I was younger for paid work. There has been a proliferation of websites and journalism activity online but a lot of that isn’t generating any income. A newspaper I worked for used to sell a 100,000 copies a night and had 7 editions, nowadays that paper sells less than 30,000 copies and only releases one issue. The paper used to have a much larger workforce but now probably has a quarter of what it used to and this is the case for a lot of companies so there isn’t as many opportunities. There is an awful lot of citizen journalism going on and it is relatively easily to get your output on to the web but that doesn’t mean that anybody is reading it or that its really fulfilling a useful function. So I’d say the biggest pitfalls for someone trying to get there foot in the door nowadays is that people aren’t really given the opportunity to learn their trade, like I did, in a controlled environment a lot of people have to resort to the online free for all to get their work out there.  

What would you say are essential traits to have in order to become a successful journalist?

I would say there are a lot of things that are essential and they’re not always the things that people would think of straight away. A lot of parents have spoken to me in the past about their kids who want to be Journalists and how good they are at English, and whilst they might be very good at English that’s only a fraction of the skills required to be successful in this industry. Much more important is that the person is an outgoing character that has people as that will enable people to get the stories in the first place after building up a good rapport with those you want to interview and then any prowess in English will help them develop from there. The English side of things in my opinion isn’t necessarily as important as being able to think on your feet and react to what is happening in front of you. A lot of the time whilst interviewing you might find something very interesting out and decide that the new information you have received will make for a better story so you have to adapt quickly to this. Not everybody has the ability to operate in these circumstances and it doesn’t really matter if you are fantastic at English if you don’t have the self-confidence or the ability to do so then you will struggle.

So you’ve had a few years in the industry now, what does your current role entail?

At the moment I am currently employed as the Deputy Sports editor at The Times so my job involves editing the Sport in the absence of the Sports Editor and helping to organise the content of the sport on a daily basis. I speak to the writers every day in order to discuss what stories they have and how they want to go about writing it and I advise them and together we put together the best story we can. There is a lot of emphasis put on the pictures so I help select the best ones that I feel are lively and interesting enough for publishing. At the other end of production I also have to make sure that the headlines and captions for the pictures are up to standard and that they are clear in telling the story, so there’s quite a lot of revision in my job, looking at peoples work and making sure that it’s good enough to go out. I also have to be involved in conferences with the editor and other members of senior staff which set the agenda for the day’s paper.

Where do you see Journalism heading in ten or so years’ time?

I think there will be fewer newspapers, I think that that form of news is in rapid potentially turmoil decline. People consume there news today using various other devices and platforms so therefor in say 10 years’ time I don’t think many national newspapers will be selling their product in print form in great numbers.  With the impact technology has on society I can see them moving online and to whatever new devices are engineered in the future, I think this will be the main way people consume their news. That is one of the problems with the industry today and I don’t believe that the content online is being translated as well as it would in print form as articles online tend to be compact and bitesize which suits the audience of today. Articles like the thousand word columns don’t really seem to work very well with these new devices which I think is a problem for society as we need that breadth of opinion rather than just seeing the news displayed in its simplest form.