A Day in the Office

One of the lessons I’ve learned over the years from covering different beats and industries is never to write as a feature what you cannot do in news. This means that I’m always reluctant to take on writing anything over 1,300 words on a subject that I haven’t spent at least a couple of months and five-to-ten news stories on.

This means that much of my work has been centred around writing on the UK’s financial services sector, and in there mostly around pensions and insurance. All this stems from the beginning of my career when I was hired by Incisive Media in September 2007 and placed on its editorial graduate scheme as part of Cover magazine. After being made redundant just under two years later, I then reported for FT Adviser, doing shifts on its newdesk. It was that two-and-a-bit years in London that has laid much of the foundation for what has come afterwards.

It was that two-and-a-bit years in London that has laid much of the foundation for what has come afterwards.

Between then and now, I’ve bounced between areas, often reporting for two or three days at a time from conventions and trade shows or months-long stints working for trade magazines. There's also been all-too-brief, intermittent flashes in the mainstream, writing for USA Today, The New York Post, and The Washington Times. I always tell people that the most-interesting day on the job was covering the Luka Magnotta story on the day he was caught in Berlin (if you are unaware what Magnotta did, you should check out the Netflix show Don't F**k with Cats).

Despite the fact that I’ve been staff over the last three-to-four years in tech companies Retresco and Staramba, or as assigning editor with Associated Reporters Abroad, I’ve still written regularly for European Pensions and Pensions Age.

While it has been nice to have a skillset that I can take with me to different employers and to have the flexibility to be present for my children when young, I cannot help but wonder what my career would be like if I had been able to stay within one niche industry. Would I have risen higher and become editor of my own title? Would I have moved fully from trade to mainstream? Would I still be in the industry? Would I be in London, or New York, or Tokyo?

That said, this post is about two stories I wrote five-and-a-half years ago for pv magazine. And it's about how I work on stories on newsdesk days, and why I enjoy doing it so much.

In 2014, pv magazine was a Berlin-based trade title for the solar panel industry, for which I wrote fairly regularly for about eighteen months. I covered general news at first (from which these stories are from), before being given a specific beat to cover.

"Never write as a feature what you cannot do in news."

These two articles posted here date from when Russian forces, under the direction of Vladimir Putin, annexed Crimea in the eastern part of Ukraine. When this happened, I spoke to my editor at the time about what this meant for Ukrainian solar. He said that most of the companies in this space in the country were based in Crimea.

I immediately started looking for solar employees in the region. One thing I swiftly began to notice, on the social media sites, was that many had posted recently that they were looking for new jobs outside of Ukraine. I managed to find a handful that would talk, although they asked for anonymity. Through them, I found out that there were immediate, drastic moves to deal with the rates being paid by central government for generated electricity fed into the system

My story, written later that day, is here: https://www.pv-magazine.com/2014/04/02/ukraine-turmoil-leaves-outlook-cloudy_100014717/

I stayed on top of the story for the next few days. I already had a number of sources within Ukraine that had seen the first story and knew I was on the level when it came to source protection. They also knew that I considered the nutgraf to be more important than a sensational headline. It was through these sources that I found out that Activ Solar, one of the large industry players, were pulling out of the area quickly. This was news that had not yet been reported.

So later that day, this story: https://www.pv-magazine.com/2014/04/04/crisis-in-ukraine-threatens-domestic-pv-industry_100014746/

Needless to say, Activ Solar were not happy we were reporting any of this, and I am still waiting for their responses to questions I sent them. At pv magazine, we were the first in 2014 to have decent coverage of the knock-on effects of Russia’s actions in that area, and I was proud of the stories that I worked on.

I still am.

I’ve not done much news since. There was a stint at Associated Reporters Abroad, but then my second baby was coming and Papa was offered a full-time staff position within a tech company. When I have written since then, most of my work has been in producing features. That’s not been a conscious choice, nor has there been a plan to move away from real-time, heartpounding, adrenaline-drenched reporting. It’s just that the work that has come my way has called for other things.

But I do miss reporting news. And I miss being a reporter. It’s a great job, despite all the bitching and complaining that we do about it. Truthfully, if anyone asks, there is nothing I’d rather do, although I’ve had to move away from it at times in order to put food on the table. As someone more versed in this industry once said, it’s let being part of the Catholic church in that no matter what you say, you can never really leave.