Sobby

My claims to fame…

I haven’t written a blog in about a week as I found myself a bit starved for ideas. Here in a computer lab, while I wait for one my classes to start I decided to turn to google for some inspiration. This then prompted me to google my own name to see what results regarding my work it would generate. As a student, I’m a total slacker - I’ve never been one of those journalism students that pushed my work to get published so my exposure is very limited. Plus, I took a whole year off with one semester to go so any momentum I had as an aspiring journo has almost disappeared entirely. So when I came across these two following articles, it made me recall a time when I thought I really could pull it off.

The first is an article I wrote for UTS’ News Day, “Governor says Triguboff kidding over developing parks”. I was made to cover the launch of Parks Week at The Royal Botanic Gardens at Sydney’s Circular Quay. I was completely uninspired by the prospect but chasing the story was filled with so much excitement it nearly gave me a heart attack. I was late, running around Circular Quay like a lunatic, and when I got there I couldn’t find… I didn’t even know who or what I was looking for! I finally saw this small group walking around and I approached a woman to ask if the group had something to do with Parks Week. The woman was the Governor of NSW, Professor Marie Bashir. Apparently she is a big deal and I was utterly clueless as to who she was. She turned out to be one of the sweetest people I’ve ever met in my life, even offering me some afternoon tea. I somehow produced a story from the experience.

The second article, “What A Firthy Good Idea”, can be found here on page 12 in an archived version of UTS’ VERTIGO magazine. (This is a PDF file, please don’t hurt me). I was actually really proud of this one - I somehow got to interview one of the founders of The Chasers War on Everything, Charles Firth, hot on the heels of a great Hillary Clinton gag and a book release. My tutor, Sue Joseph, recommended I get it published and I attempted to do this only to discover that VERTIGO published it without my permission!!! And they didn’t even edit it properly. I had trouble convincing others to publish an non-exclusive story so I just gave up.

I hope I can soon top these minor highlights.