My journey through Graphic - Edmund Smith-Asante writes (Part 6)

My journey through Graphic - Edmund Smith-Asante writes - Part 1

My journey through Graphic - Edmund Smith-Asante writes  (Part 5) 

Despite that, I am glad I did my part as a journalist and reporter on WASH (water, sanitation and hygiene). 

After all, the duty of the journalist is to educate, entertain and inform the public.

Strong hands

I remember my first month at post was very active, with the news desk ensuring that I was up and running almost all the time.  

Sometimes I would receive a call from the desk early in the morning, before I set off from home, telling me that my assignment had been changed.

The excuse would always be that “we need strong hands for this assignment” and I would always wonder what that statement meant, as I viewed all journalists in the newsroom as reporters who should be able to cover any kind of assignment, especially if they had been employed by Graphic.

That sudden change in assignment always bothered me, because one of the cardinal things a reporter needs to do before covering any beat, as we learnt in journalism class, was to read copiously on and make inquiries about the subject matter of the assignment he or she was about to cover, in order to be able to do a good job.

The last-minute changes, therefore, prevented me from understanding the assignment and I many a time had to delve into my little wealth of experience to overcome those hiccups.

Unfortunately, even though I complained to my bosses about the trend, it never stopped.

So, although I was a specialist in environmental reporting (with a bias in mining, biodiversity, climate change, energy and WASH writing), as well as entertainment reporting, I became a generalist.

First month

In my first month, I had 15 of my stories, which spanned health, politics, environment and the coverage of workshops and sittings of the Judgment Debt Commission, published in the Daily Graphic.

During that month, I had to learn the ropes in the newsroom quickly, such as using an identification and password I had been given by the IT department to log into the system on the PC being used to place my stories.

I had to ensure that I gave the stories slug names that could be easily used by the proofreading department and the news desk, as well as any editor who would work on my story to access them.

Fortunately, Naa Lamiley was on hand to guide me and in no time I became a pro.

It was after passing that stage that the key question I was asked during my interview came into play. Although I recognised most of the editors in the newsroom then, as I had met them at several programmes when I was editor too, some decided to show me their krache powers (the power they had).

I didn’t know which numbers they were though.

Many a time, I just smiled and always did their bidding, which was doing the booking of a story; sometimes one that I had written, at the proofreading department.

Other times, it would be to clarify a sentence or two in my story, or because I had strayed from the house style of the newspaper, which I was trying hard to follow.

The way my name will be called out across the newsroom sometimes… eh!

Anyway, who was I? Just a reporter who had brought himself. But in all that, I was well prepped up and I had decided not to be offended so the work would go on seamlessly – I was just there to work.

Month two

The heat increased the next month, October, and I ended up having 19 stories published and hitting the prime pages — front, spread and back — on a number of occasions.

My first banner headline, published on October 9, was a story about Organised Labour headlined “Reduce Utility tariffs: Organised Labour gives PURC, govt ultimatum”, which was written after covering a press conference on the upward adjustment of utility tariffs, for which workers were not happy. 

I was also able to publish two elaborate feature articles – the first on October 21, on handwashing, to commemorate Global Handwashing Day, which is marked on October 15 each year, titled “Beware! You may be eating more than food”.

It was meant to drive home the importance of washing the hands thoroughly with soap under running water before eating, other than what we had learnt while growing up, which was just washing the hands with water before eating and rather washing with soap after meals.

My 17th story for the month was the second feature article titled “Wee-smoking gangs besiege schools”, which spelt out the danger about 2,000 pupils and students were exposed to because their classroom blocks had been turned into dens for smoking narcotics when classes were not in session.

• Continue reading My journey through Graphic - Edmund Smith Asante writes (Part 7)