James Cameron got me into journalism

James Cameron got me into journalism. Not the filmmaker, but the famed foreign correspondent

As a rather naive 19-year old - without any 'A' levels or a degree - I spent months trying to get a job as an apprenticed journalist back in the 1960s.

All I had to show prospective employers as a portfolio was a bunch of poorly written articles and poems published in a school magazine.

I had yearned to be a journalist after watching the legendary editor Arthur Christiansen cast in the role of editor in the film ‘The Day the Earth Caught Fire’. That love was rekindled in Fleet Street, London, EC4 a year later when the smell of ink and newsprint and the sound of the first editions of the national newspapers thundering off the presses was a big wow factor. Journalism looked glamorous, fun and exciting and ever so slightly dangerous.

But my enthusiasm turned to despair after writing to 30+ local papers trying to get on their NCTJ apprenticeship programmes.

I then in a fit of madness wrote to James Cameron, the famed foreign correspondent, who had just published his autobiography “Point of Departure” which was an enthralling read – especially the bit about being bombed by the USA air force while reporting from Hanoi during the Vietnam War. ?I was stunned to get a postcard back from him which had the following: “Never give up. rgds, James Cameron.” ?

I finally gave up on local papers – the traditional route of getting into journalism – and travelled to London from my home town of Reading knocking on the doors of newspaper and magazine publishers.

After several fruitless day trips to London I dropped in on a magazine publishers called Link House in Croydon, Surrey.

In was lunchtime and the receptionist asked a guy to come over and talk to me. His name was Anthony (Tony) Bradford, editor, Caravan. Despite the fact I hardly knew what “who, why, what, where, when and how” had to do writing news stories he offered me a job on the spot. Unfortunately, Tony died a few years ago and I regret never having had the courage to ask him why an earth he offered a youngish boy with an absence of writing talent a job.

So I joined Link House Publications in 1967 and its weird mix of caravan, camping, car, hi-fi and psychology magazines as a trainee journalist and never looked back.

At the turn of the decade - from the 1960s to the 1970s ?- I was sent on an National Council For The Training of Journalists (NCTJ) course at the London College of Printing in Back Hill, London EC1. I got to set type by hand and learn about leads and em quads and that there should never be a widow or orphan on a line ending a paragraph. I also helped make-up dummy pages of a the left wing British daily newspaper ‘The Morning Star’ – our tutor was a communist.

We even had guest talks from the late great Harold Evans of ‘The Sunday Times’ and James Cameron of the left leaning but now defunct ‘Morning Herald’ who brought in a bottle of whisky and a pack of 20 cigs. The pack of fags was left crushed in an overflowing ashtray and the bottle was half empty by the time he finished his talk. But by God he could tell a story and write so sublimely!

The London College of Printing in Back Hill, London EC1 pummelled into me how to craft a story and to ask awkward questions – useful skills I still retain after 50 years as a public relations practitioner.

Yes, I’m sorry, but I became a turncoat or as my journalist friends used to say – I went to the ‘dark side’ or ‘other side of the fence’.

I’m going to be using those hard-learnt skills shortly as the voluntary editor of a governors’ newsletter that will serve over 200,000 people of Airedale NHS Foundation Trust that covers 700 square miles of the Yorkshire Dales, north Bradford and Guiseley in West Yorkshire, and Colne and Pendle in East Lancashire.?