Life at the bottom of the food chain

8:33am Tuesday 10th June 2008

Comments (1)   Have your say »

It's not nice being an amoeba. Unfortunately, in the journalistic food chain, that's just what trainee reporters on local newspapers are.

That fact was drummed into me on Friday when I went to meet Boris Johnson at the Hendon police training college. Also in attendance was a surprisingly scruffy crew from Sky News and a very sharply dressed chap from LBC radio. Maybe they're confused about the different type of media they work in.

I digress. After Boris had presented almost 200 coppers with medals for serving ungrateful Londoners for 22 years, he came out to face our minor media scrum. In scrum terms - excuse the laboured metaphor if you don't know about rugby or are particularly precious with the English language - Sky News was the front row, at the coal face, dominating proceedings; LBC was the flankers, less dominating but in there and ready to pounce on its opportunity; while the Times Series was an inept scrum-half, buzzing around and attempting to get some scraps and, ultimately, being flattened by everyone else.

Sky was first up, getting a sat-down Boris for a lengthy interview. We couldn't hear the questions, which came from someone in a studio through an earpeice, which made it interesting to guess what was asked based on the answer. The disembodied, inaudible voice was apparently asking him about his policing plans and - persistently - about his own drug-taking past. He referred to himself as an "unsuccessful" drug taker after dabbling in something or other before university.

Next up was LBC, who quizzed a standing-up Boris on the on-going investigation into corruption at City Hall and the progress on the routemasters. And then, just as I was about to get my turn, someone came up behind me and motioned for Boris to leave.

Fortunately for me, Boris's kindly press man told him I had been waiting to speak to him and I bought myself 30 seconds.

"Where are you from? Barnet Times? Ok, what do you want me to say? 'Barnet's great' or something like that?"

Yes, say that.

"Barnet's great."

There you have it from the horse's mouth. Barnet is great, says Mayor of London.

Unfortunately for us amoebas, herein lies one of the other great problems of local reporting. While my marginally-more-advanced peers from the national and regional media were able to quiz the Mayor on any number of issues that affect the masses, I really had to tie him into something more local.

After all, this is a paper for the people of Barnet and while they can go to other news services to read or hear Boris talk about corruption, crime, drugs and busses, in the local paper the ideal would be that he says something about their borough.

Personally, I think it's more of a challenge. But then, life as a single-celled organism is always hard.