first person


StartingOut


Joe Lo took the intiative to look outside his specialist reporter role to broaden his expertise


I


n my first week studying journalism at Kingston University, we were dispatched from the


classroom with a simple instruction – go out into Kingston and come back in a few hours with a story. No internet, no Tweetdeck, no PR contacts – just look around and talk to people. At first, the challenge was daunting – I’m just not going to see something newsworthy on a Tuesday morning in Kingston, I thought – but every single group came back with something that could make at least a nib in a local paper. From then on, I’ve been hooked on news. On work placements, my best


experiences were being sent out on my own to report – chatting to homeless people and volunteers at a soup kitchen, interviewing Evan Davis about diversity at the BBC and reporting from a public inquiry into an attempt to turn a Hackney pub into flats. That pub, the Chesham Arms, has since reopened and the campaigners sent me a nice tweet saying that I’d played a part in the victory by covering the issue. There were also bizarre experiences – taking my first spelling test since primary school to be accepted to do work experience at the Hertfordshire Mercury, writing online reviews for slot machine games I hadn’t even played for gambling media group Players Publishing, working with a north London local paper series that no longer had an office but met every week in a greasy spoon opposite where their office used to be, and asking elderly ladies in Ware what they


18 | theJournalist


thought of their Hertfordshire town being announced as “porn capital of the UK” (they claimed it wasn’t them who were watching it). After graduating, I got my first paid


work – three weeks at the sadly now defunct London 24, covering the gap between one of my classmates who had left and her replacement. Then, through a lecturer’s recommendation, I was offered an interview and then a full-time job at a small magazine that covers the container port and shipping industries. Everything I knew about that


industry at the time came from watching series two of The Wire, which is actually an accurate portrayal of dockers’ unions’ struggle against automation. In two years there, though, l learned about the industry, won an award shaped like a seahorse for “best new maritime journalist” and was able to travel the world for trade shows and press trips. While I enjoyed that job, I hadn’t gone into journalism hoping to be a container shipping reporter, which worried me until I realised that there was nothing to stop me writing about other issues for other publications. I’d just have to do it in my spare time. It also occurred to me that I live in London, which is one of the most newsworthy cities in the world. As a politics nerd, I focused on keeping track of which world leaders were speaking in London, reasoning that if some Aussie politician turns up here then the Australian papers would rather pay me to report than send their own reporter halfway around the world.


The first foreign leader I saw coming


There was nothing to stop me writing about other issues for other publications. I’d just have to do it in my spare time


“ ”


was the Latvian foreign minister, so I went to hear him speak and reported on it for the Baltic Times. Next up was the president of Kiribati, a chain of small Pacific Islands. Despite my doubts (“nobody’s heard of Kiribati – who’s going to care what their president has to say?”) I went along. Afterwards, I pitched three angles to seven publications in three countries with no success. Just before giving up, I decided to pitch to the Guardian’s development professionals network, as the president had said that climate funds were failing small nations like his. They were interested and I started emailing every small island nation I could find to get their take. Tonga, the Comoros and Grenada told me they agreed with Kiribati and the article was published – my proud first in a publication my parents have heard of. Now I’ve got a new job – one year researching the political influence of the weapons business for the Campaign Against Arms Trade. The subject is fascinating and scandalous and I’m enjoying uncovering scandals that end up in the press, even if the stories don’t have my byline. Although this is research and not journalism, I’m still a journalist and will be so for life, even if journalism isn’t what I’m doing between 9 and 5. As the industry changes, I suspect that, for better or (more likely) worse, journalism will be a job on the side for an increasing number of us.


@joeloyo


Page 1  |  Page 2  |  Page 3  |  Page 4  |  Page 5  |  Page 6  |  Page 7  |  Page 8  |  Page 9  |  Page 10  |  Page 11  |  Page 12  |  Page 13  |  Page 14  |  Page 15  |  Page 16  |  Page 17  |  Page 18  |  Page 19  |  Page 20  |  Page 21  |  Page 22  |  Page 23  |  Page 24  |  Page 25  |  Page 26  |  Page 27  |  Page 28