Monday, 3 October 2011

Headlining Fleet Street: Time, gentlemen.

Well, after last week's confession that I was getting bored by it all, and having worked a week more, I came to a decision. There will be no more posts in this series, no more Headlining Fleet Street. I packed it all in. I feel a little bit like a quitter to have done that, but there you are- it wasn't worth my unpaid, desperately-in-need-of-earnings time.

Sometimes, you rush into things without asking anything about them and then wonder why it's all a bit naff. I was so happy to be offered anything that I did exactly this. I was misled. And have since started and failed to continue in a position that was unrelated to anything.

Led to believe I'd be helping write and edit their daily business newswire, in reality I was an unpaid glorified record-keeper updating a back catalogue of company profiles. Those of banks. Internationally, to the point where I was wading through annual reports awash with percentages and figures and German, or Spanish, or Portuguese. Indecipherable was the watchword. I felt a bit like I was trying to read the Matrix and figure out what was going on, and then when I realised what the numbers meant I had to find a dozen fresh ways to say "banks are buggered".

It's a damn bloody shame. I wanted to be part of something related to what I want to go into, in the broad area of online news, writing for websites, learning about new things. Instead I went to Fleet Street and became an unpaid bank researcher. So there we have it.

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