The project has been enjoyable, tormenting, fun and horrible all at the same time. But I feel that I have learnt a lot about journalism, my role as a journalist and even things about myself. I think that it has really taught me some lessons for my future career and for the jobs that I will be applying for.

As I hunt for a box folder that can fit 4 sub-folders, a CD and a critical evaluation inside, I bid you adieu. I won’t post on here again until I get the results for this module, which I will reveal in case anybody has been following this blog.

I have ideas for a couple of features and am working on them. One is on drink-driving but I am just trying to pinpoint the angle to go for, as I only have an interview with a convicted drink-driver who has changed his ways. It would be preferable to have an angle from a victims point of view but beggars cannot be choosers.

So I will be back at court today, hopefully finding something feature-worthy. At the moment though, it is very hit and miss because I am being choosy over the stories I report. This is because I am looking for something to turn into a feature in every case and, if I cannot find anything, I tend to move on. Hopefully today will be the day that I finally secure something really really strong.

If its going to happen, it has to happen soon

I have identified the stories that I have not written up yet as last Fridays and that my reporters notebook is at my girlfriends house. Which is not particularly helpful. So I have not been able to do those. As for the feature-style articles – I just havn’t had time.

What I did have time for though is applying for a job. The position is for a staff writer for a poker magazine. Poker is a hobby of mine so it would be a job that I would be interested in and one that I feel I could be quite good at but we shall have to wait and see. I’m not expecting anything to really come from it.

• Photocopying all of my shorthand work and presenting it in a folder, as well as working out which units I have no proof of completion
• Writing up logbooks for the seven stories which do not have them
• Writing up a few stories from last week that I am yet to do
• Tidying up the research folder and including more bits and bobs
• Write up a couple of the older, more popular stories in a feature-style with background research

Hopefully after today it will look a lot more organised and be presented better, not to say that it is not already. If I can do this then I can get back to court tomorow and start picking up more stories, before my meeting with Hilary Perkins, from Channel 4 news.

However, the next step is to start branching out and turning some court reports into feature-style articles. This will require more interviews with victims and thier families and researching background information into the issues. While I will clearly still attend court to access the raw materials for the stories, I will be trying much harder to gain interviews and the like.

I did attempt to interview the family of a victim of manslaughter on Friday but the offer was declined. The family were waiting inside the court as a queue of photographers and video cameras awaited them outside, so I approached them and asked if they would be interested. They said that they did not wish to speak to the press, which was why they were waiting inside. I think that when you begin doing these kind of things, it is difficult to know what to say and how to approach the subject but I think that with more experience, I will become better at it and have more success.

I got back into the swing of things last week though and went to court on Wednesday, Thursday and Friday. Wednesday was particularly interesting and annoying at the same time because I spent the afternoon in court picking up a couple of sentences only to find a team of cameramen and photographers waiting outside for a case of which I was blissfully unaware. I played the part of an inquisitive passer-by and engaged in conversation with a photographer, asking who they were waiting for. It turned out that the trial of three men arrested in connection with the death of 16-year-old Shane Owoo, who drowned after a row about a biycycle.

I hot-footed it back into court, to the confusion of the security guards who I had just said goodbye to, and arrived just as it was finishing. However, I spoke to another journalist who told me that they had all changed their pleas to guilty and that they would be sentenced on April 25. I then followed them outside where the family of Shane Owoo declined to be interviewed and a police sergeant was interviewed. I scribbled down his responses and got a couple of quotes. This was not really a story worthy of selling, due to the large amount of media coverage that it attracted anyway, but was a good experience for me personally because, even though I missed the case, I was still able to get a story after I researched the background to the case.

Thursday was a largely dull day, but Friday was another interesting one. As soon as I arrived I knew that there was something going on in court 10 because a) it had come for sentencing from Nottingham and b) the public gallery was completely filled with journalists. This proved problematic for me because I was unable to gain access to the courtroom and instead concentrated my efforts on the other sentences that day. However, I took the names of those involved in court 10′s sentencing and asked my girlfriend to do a little bit of background research for me, so that if I could find out the result then I could still write up a story. This is similar practice to what might happen in a professional environment, to catch up with a story that may have slipped under the radar. I was able to find out the sentences, from the court office and, thus, was able to write up a story.

It was, in truth, a quite productive week and not only because I found a shop which sells baguettes for 50p. (It’s close to Tesco Direct if anyone fancies a cheap lunch) I will be back in court on Wednesday and I’m going to cane it throughout the month of April.

During our meeting yesterday, she suggested that now was the time to step up and start interviewing witnesses, victims and families. I don’t particularly mind doing this, although potentially not the nicest job it’s not something that I worry about too much, but it’s just extra hassle and work. Already I get back from court exhausted and fed up, just wanting to spend my evening chilling out. I feel like it is just extra work. Doing three days a week (most weeks) surely means that I am already doing more work than most of the other students (I would imagine) but I guess I’m just complaining. I am the one who wants to get the best mark available so I guess I should just shut up and get on with it.

 As I am sure you can tell, I didn’t plan this post before I wrote it…Still all’s well that ends well.

 Meanwhile the answer to the original question is No. Although I do believe that I should have Friday off. Surely court won’t be open on Good Friday?

Nothing much happened last Friday at court. I spent the day there but there were not many good sentences although I got two stories. I saw Ross McCarthy there and had another chat and he confirmed that last week was a really slow week at court, so at least I didn’t miss too much. I just hope that applies to this week as well and I havn’t missed the story of the century or anything!

So today I have just been catching up a little with the project. As I didn’t go to shorthand on Tuesday, felt too rough to get out of bed, I need to catch up a little with that and I need to catch up with reading the Birmingham Mail to find possible leads for court stories. So far today, I have just been writing logbooks as this is an area that I have overlooked. I have done about half the logbooks today though so its not too bad. I’ll catch up.

In lighter and completely unrelated news, I’m in brighter spirits at the moment because I have finally finished my methodology (suprisingly the production project isn’t the only thing that I am doing.) That is good news indeed because I have been stressing like noones business about that for a while now. Also, Reading have won their last two games and look like they might actually have a hope of staying up. So its not too bad.

I really hope there is something good tomorow to make me feel better. No Internet or TV at home (Tapi didn’t pay the Virgin bill) means I’ll have to spend the evening doing work of some sort. Or Champ Manager…that sounds good!

• Short reports on the content analysis, detailing what it all means. This includes four graphs, all representing differing aspects of the Birmingham Mail’s court reporting over a three week period.
• A section on the state of court reporting, using quotes from the three interviews that I have completed, to paint a picture of the genre.
• A short section detailing who covers the cases at Birmingham Crown Court.
• A short report on my shorthand work so far.
• A brief look at the role of the freelance journalist.
• Looked at the last two weeks of the Birmingham Mail for potential leads that I can cover at court.

I hope to add an interview with a freelance journalist to improve the freelancing section and talk to somebody from Birmingham Crown Court about their relationship with the press.

A problem that I found at court was that I did not know what most of the cases were about and which ones to cover. Hopefully, by taking notes from the Birmingham Mail, I can record criminals as they are arrested and wait for them to come to court. This is what professional court reporters working for organisations do as the system is in place at the newspaper and is something that I overlooked when conducting research. Although reading the newspaper does not offer much in the way of leads, it could prove important for noticing and recognising names at court.

As for the networking part of the title, I met a young reporter from BBC West Midlands on Friday. She was also reporting the riot case, but had to leave early and missed the sentencing. She originally thought that I was from Press Association, but when I told her I was a student she was much more open with me, even lending me her notes on the case. This was particularly useful as it gave me some background detail and saved some time with the reporting.