Rookie Reporter Boot Camp
For the past week BtN's new Rookie Reporter Maya has been preparing to hit the trail. But first she stopped into the ABC to get some advice on what it takes to be a great political reporter. Take a look.
LEIGH SALES: Hope you can join me for 730, right after the news. Now, who is Maya? Can you come over here please? Ive got something I want to tell you. Come in, closer. Dont be scared of me. Listen, you are our new rookie reporter! Congratulations!
MAYA, ROOKIE REPORT: Thank you!
LEIGH SALES: Happy to accept the job?
MAYA, ROOKIE REPORTER: Yeah, I dont even know what to say now.
LEIGH SALES: You dont have to say anything. Im going to see you next week. Youre going to have boot camp. Youre going to learn everything you want to do. How to grill politicians and how to make stories. Yeah, it will be really good. Well congratulations, welcome to the team
MAYA, ROOKIE REPORT: When I found out I was going to be BTN's reporter for the election I just couldn't believe it.
I applied for the job because my English teacher told me that was a great opportunity and I agreed because you got to interview politicians, reporters and get behind the scenes of BTN which I've been watching for years.
Being an election reporter involves a lot of different skills. You have to be able to talk to politicians, ask the hard questions, hunt down stories, work out what the biggest news of the day is and be across every issue so you know exactly what you're talking about.
MAYA, ROOKIE REPORTER: But I don't know how to do any of those things!
So to find out how it's done, I went to get tips from some people with heaps of experience. This is Leigh Sales. Nearly every day she interviews major politicians live and is known for always asking them the tough questions.
LEIGH SALES: I am asking you a question about what do you think, what do you think, what do you think, what do you think has happened that you have lost that ginormous chunk of approval.
She told me that it's really important to keep your own opinions out of the story because you need to let the audience make up their own mind on the issues.
LEIGH SALES: So for example, you might be interviewing someone who you share their opinion on something so then you have to put yourself in the shoes of someone who doesn't hold that opinion so that you can pick apart their argument.
MAYA, ROOKIE REPORTER: Doing research before interviews is super important too. You have to have the right facts in your head otherwise you won't have the right questions to ask. That's something I learnt from Emma Alberici.
EMMA ALBERICI: I'll talk to lots of people, if it's a politician I'll speak to people he works with, and then also we have an awesome library here news library that can do very quick searchers of articles where the issue has been talked about.
Meanwhile Jeremy Fernandez works on live TV so he has to be really good at thinking on his feet.
JEREMY FERNANDEZ: Live news is one of the scariest and most fun things to do because things are happening now and to be honest, a lot of the time even we don't know what's going on, we can't really confirm. One of the things we do is to try to bring people the most up to date information of course behind the scenes we're trying to verify what's going on and we just tell people this is what we know, this is what we don't know and this is what we're trying to find out.
MAYA, ROOKIE REPORTER: After speaking to these people I'm feeling pretty confident about being a political reporter. Over the next few weeks I'll be out hunting down politicians and trying to ask them a lot questions that you've sent me. My aim is to find out how their plans will affect the kids of Australia. Wish me luck!
- Emma Davis | Reporter
- Send Maya some questions for her to ask politicians: BTN Survey | special
- Do you have a Rookie Report to send in?: Rookie Reporter Training | website
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