Reflective Blog Two

When it came to my second interview I thought really hard about how to link it to my first story (about the nurses conditions in Australia at the moment). I initially wanted to get someone from Fair Work Australia but seemed to be going around in circles in terms of getting someone who was actually willing to be interviewed by a student. I have a feeling perhaps they couldn't talk about it. I'm not really sure.

So I decided to move on from that idea. The due date for the assignment was getting closer and I didn't really want to be doing everything last minute and not feeling like I did as well as I could have because I was rushed. So as I was sitting in the school library pretending to study when I started to think about my cousin who came from the Philippines and just started working as a nurse in Australia. I thought to myself, 'why are so many people coming to Australia to do nursing here when, based off all the nurses I know, it seemed to be an overworked and under appreciated work force here.' So I contacted a family friend of mine who is a pharmacist at the Canberra Hospital and she found a couple of overseas nurses to be interviewed that said yes initially but in the end declined to be interviewed.

I think one of the issues of why they didn't want to talk to me is because they did have to go back back to their home overseas and didn't really want to stir anything up. I completely understand if this were the case and I certainly didn't want to cause any problems with them or their careers back home.

I eventually found RN nurse Rosemary Aniversario who immigrated from the Philippines and interviewed her. She was really lovely and had a easy go personality which made it easy to interview and took away any nerves I initially had. She even laughed it off when I, of course, had technical difficulties where the microphone didn't seem to work (only to find out later that I hadn't turned it on! How embarrassing!).

I definitely made an effort to really listen to what she was saying and to ask follow up questions and got some really good answers. But I didn't quite use her to her full potential as a source. She had also worked in Saudi Arabia and looking back I wished I had asked her about her experience there and what it was like compared to Australia.

She did shrink away from the microphone a bit while I was interviewing her, so I tried to back off a bit and chat and giggle with her to make her feel a bit more comfortable. This did help a bit and she said a lot less 'ums and uhs' as the interview progressed and she gained more confidence.

I feel like I have improved a lot since my first interview, definitely in terms of interviewing itself. I gained a lot more confidence in asking follow up questions but I definitely think I can improve on what follow up questions I can ask and perhaps thinking outside the box when it comes to my questions. I enjoyed myself a lot when it came to this interview and the editing. It definitely made me feel like a real journalist.

Reflective Practice Blog: Literature Review

Reflective practice in journalism is a tool in which a student or journalist thinks about how they can improve or change it a news story. It is not a widely used tool, but is very useful in training, learning and improving journalistic practices as it helps develop critical thinking skills.

Many believe that reflective practice for journalists is a great tool for learning and improving journalistic techniques. Gary M. Stiler and Thomas Philleo believe that online blogging in a reflective manner is an effective tool for increasing student enthusiasm towards journalism writing (Stiler, G et al., 2003).

Reflective practice forces the writer to analyse and make judgments on what has happened, which in turn is good for critical thinking (Spyridou, P. et al. 2008). It is also a good way to evaluate previous knowledge and apply it to the real world in real situations (Spyridou, P. et al. 2008).

Reflective practice is also a good way for journalists to stop and think. Then gather their thoughts and ideas and apply it to their situation (Pearson, M. 2000).

In a study conducted by Mark Pearson (2000, p. 8) in which he helped to prepare and train Samoan journalists to cover a future important court case, he and the journalists he had worked with went back and reflected on previous stories they had written. In doing this they discovered how they could have improved and a few new stronger ways to write the story. They also discovered mistakes within the news articles and discussed how they could have fixed the mistakes. This not only incorporated self reflection but also verbal reflection with a mentor.

It is important that journalists have the ability to reflect on what what they know about media law when it comes to writing in law based situations. This is essentially a way to detect and prevent problems with the article they are writing and should a problem occur they can discover ways of fixing it (Pearson, M. 2000).

Although reflective journalism can be an extremely handy tool, it is not always practical when it comes to the work force. Journalists are generally always in the restraints of making deadlines which means they do not always have time to take time time out and reflect on what they have done (Pearson, M. 2000).

Professional journalists were not the only ones which believed that a reflective process is time consuming, students that were involved in the study with Chike Anyaegbunam (2003, p. 5) believed that while it was a usual tool in learning, it was too time consuming to be applied practically in real life.

While reflective practice in journalism is an extremely handy tool to use both in training and the work force with its problem prevention and improvement in future news situations, it is not always a practical tool to use when in the constrictions of fast advancing news deadlines as it is a time consuming tool to use. Perhaps journalists and their editors should make the time to use this tool for stronger impacting stories.

References

Stiler, GM & Philleo, T 2003, 'Blogging and Blogspots: An Alternative Format for Encouraging Reflective Practice among Preservice Teachers', Education, vol. 123, pp. 1-3.

Anyaegbunam, C 2003, 'Students as citizens: Experiential approaches to reflective thinking on community journalism', Journalism & Mass Communication Educator, vol. 58, pp. 1-7.

Pearson, M 2000, 'Reflective practice in action: preparing Samoan journalists to cover court cases', Humanities & Social Science papers, pp. 1-9.

Spyridou, PL & Veglis, A 2007, 'The contribution of online news consumption to critical-reflective journalism professionals: Likelihood patterns among Greek journalism students', Journalism, vol. 9, pp. 52-75.

Assignment One: Reflective Practice Post

My first interview was a great experience. I was lucky to have a talent that was extremely understanding of this being my first time. We talked a bit before the interview and reached a place where we were both comfortable. After I interviewed the talent, I was happy as I had obtained some good, real answers. That is until I looked down at my recorder and discovered it wasn't recording. I figured out that I actually had to press the recording button twice for it to record anything. Luckily my talent was understanding and we did the interview again. While her answers were still really good, I don't think it would have been as real as the first time, as she knew the questions already and had some sort of rehearsal before hand.

As I was editing and listening back to the interview, I found that I focused too much on the questions I was asking, rather than the answers. I think I could have asked a few follow up questions that would have produced some really good answers. Next time I will definitely listen to the talent and what they are saying.

Another improvement would be to do more broadening research. While I did some research on the Victorian strikes that just recently happened and a little bit of research on their pay, I think if I had done some extensive research on conditions and what nurses were expected to do in their jobs, I would have been able to ask questions that produced some more impacting answers.

When it came to editing all the footage together, it was a nightmare. From the moment I started using Audacity things started to go wrong. As soon as I opened it, it was slow and I was having a bit of difficulty opening some files. When I was finally able to open what I needed I started editing my footage. When I had edited quite a bit of it all, audacity decided to freeze up. Initially I wasn't worried because I have had a lot of experience with loosing hours worth of work and because of this I constantly saved my work. Little did I know that saving my files would make no difference. Audacity decided that it didn't want to open my files anymore and that they didn't exist. Now, I'm not slamming audacity, I think it's a great tool, it does the job and best of all, it's free. I've had no problems with it at school. I could have just received a bad copy or maybe it just isn't very compatible with Macintosh computers. In the end, to save myself any more annoyances, I used final cut pro and had no problems.

Another challenge I had when editing was trying to fit it all into three minutes. I couldn't include a lot of the questions I would have liked to but at the same time, I think that what I did include was essential for the final edit.

In the end, while I did run into some problems, I learned a lot for next time. The whole experience has been great and has given me a better understanding for next time.