Josie finds time to rattle off a front page story

Telegraph trainee Josie Ensor finished our course on Thursday and spent the weekend packing and travelling to start her regional placement in Cardiff today. But that didn't stop her getting a byline on a front page story in today's Telegraph. Josie had a contact with the family and graciously said she had a couple of good trainers along the way - but news instinct, determination and hard work are qualities that can't be taught. Very impressive.

Always look on the bright side of the newsroom

Since August I have been with trainees from the Daily Mail and The Daily Telegraph in Howden and London. They were all hand-picked from journalism colleges and their talent is beyond doubt. We have certainly seen some stars of the not-too-distant future. But, as a couple of guests confirmed, journalism is as much about attitude as it is about skill. Be there early, be willing to go the extra yard, have an appetite for taking on projects and take the brickbats and the long hours on the chin. As Quentin Letts told the trainees, whatever you do, don't cry. When Mail news-editor Ben Taylor was asked what he wanted from them, he told them to smile. He enjoyed his job and didn't want to be surrounded by miserable people, he explained. And Sunday Mirror editor Tina Weaver, passing briefly through Howden, told them it "was all about relationships." Be nice to people, both your colleagues and those you deal with professionally, she said. Good advice. We have all worked with newsroom curmudgeons, determined to inflict their misery on all around them. That doesn't mean there shouldn't be conflict, disagreements, passionate arguments - all of these are the lifeblood of newspapers - but however tough it gets we shouldn't roll up every day looking as if we have lost a shilling and found a sixpence. So, even if the system doesn't work, you haven't had a pay rise in three years, half of your colleagues have been made redundant and you have a pile of Press Releases to plough through, be nice to others. Mind you, such advice clearly passed Nick Robinson by yesterday.  

Farewell to 'young lions' of the Daily Telegraph

A post course drink with the Telegraph trainees: From my left - Donna, trainer Mike Watson, Raf, Sarah with the Champagne, Matthew and Emily. Josie escaped early. 

How daunting is this? As a trainee journalist, you have three days to come up with three ideas for new Daily Telegraph sections, write them, design the publications, the websites and the apps, make them profitable, deliver a marketing strategy and present it all in the boardroom to the paper's senior executives. That's what the Telegraph's trainees did this week as a culmination of their seven-week course with Press Association Training.  And what a professional job they did too. Donna Bowater, Josie Ensor, Emily Gosden, Matthew Holehouse, Sarah Rainey and Raf Sanchez are now off to PA and regional papers in Liverpool, Cardiff and Glasgow to get down to their day jobs as reporters. Next year, their training complete, they will be back at the Telegraph. Before they left they had one more daunting task - the final newsquiz. Well done to Matthew Holehouse for an impressive weekly total of 17 points. Sarah Rainey was the star, though, winning the champagne for consistently brilliant results over the seven weeks and finishing with 98 points, 14 ahead of Matthew in second place. Good luck to them all. See how you do. Seventeen out of 23 to beat.

Newsquiz October 22

1. What is the name of the charity offering £200 to drug addicts if they have a vasectomy?

2. Chilean President Sebastian Pinera gave David Cameron a piece of rock and in return Cameron gave the president 33 bottles of Real Ale and a book. What was the title of the book?

3. What is the real name of the stately home where Downton Abbey is filmed?

4. Which airport was blockaded as part of the ongoing French protests?

5. Britain currently has two operational aircraft carriers. One is Ark Royal, name the other.

6. Name the two aircraft carriers that will be built to replace them (one point for each).

7. Which RAF base is to close after the Government cancelled orders for the new Nimrod aircraft?

8. Which British wildlife animal is back from the brink of extinction with its numbers increasing tenfold in 30 years. For a bonus point name the only English county where this creature has not returned.

9. What discovery has spurred Japan's foreign ministry to order a round of belt-tightening? 

10. The TV licence has been frozen for 6 years, how much does it cost?

11. To which hospital was Margaret Thatcher admitted?

12. The pension age for men and women is to go up to 66. In which year will the changes take effect?

13. The outgoing director general of the CBI, Richard Lambert, described the Government's cuts as painful but essential. Before joining the CBI which newspaper did Lambert edit?

14. The TUC was less than enthusiastic about the Government's cuts ... who is the TUC General Secretary?

15. Julian Assange, the founder of Wikileaks, has been denied a residence permit by which country?

16. What has been credited with helping poetry make a comeback in schools?

17. A product favoured by country folk is in short supply following a lorry hijack on the M62. What is it?

18. Why did seven secret servicemen burst into Nigella Lawson's kitchen?

19. Why were A-Team characters BA Baracus, the Face and Murdock in the news?

20. Who won best newcomer in the Mobo awards? And, for a bonus, what does Mobo stand for?

Answers

Young journalists DO read the papers after all

Good scores from The Daily Telegraph trainees in the newsquiz this week. Either the questions are getting easier or, despite Roy Greenslade's claims to the contrary, journalism trainees really are reading the papers. They certainly do on our courses. Well done to Emily Gosden for her 15.5 out of 21. Nobody got less than 12 ... which is a big step forward. 

Meanwhile Daily Mail newsquiz champions Fiona Roberts and Jennie Agg, who are off on their subbing placements to Carlisle and Stoke this weekend, sent me this photograph of them enjoying their prize. See how you do in this week's test. Anything less than 12 out of 21 and Mr Greenslade and I will be less than impressed.

1. Just before she died Claire Rayner said: "Tell David Cameron that if he ...... .. my beloved NHS I'll come back and bloody haunt him." What are the two missing words?

2. Who changed their new logo back to its original one after only one week due to negative reaction on the internet?

3.  Howard Jacobson won this year's Booker prize ... what was the title of his book?

4.  Which Euro 2012 football game was abandoned after fans disrupted the game?

5.  Name the first miner rescued in Chile.

6.  And name the last.

7. The camp where relatives and friends waited for the miners was called Camp Esperanza. What does Esperanza mean?

8. Who was the first celebrity to be kicked off the current series of Strictly Come Dancing?

9. Lloyds Bank is to lose a further 4,500 jobs as part of its restructuring programme. This brings the total jobs lost to 22,000 since its merger with which other bank?

10. The inquest into the victims of the 7/7 London bombings is being held at which court?

11. Apart from the bombers, how many people were killed in the bombings?

12. Who is Max Brick's partner and why were they in the news (need both to get one point)?

13. Who is the shadow health secretary?

14. Aid worker Linda Norgrove was working for which US based agency when she was killed?

15. Before the intervention of a Texas court, Liverpool FC looked like it was about to be sold to the owners of Boston Red Sox, NESV. What does NESV stand for?

16. Who is the editor of the Sunday Mirror?

17. What was the name of the website that Robert Tyler was ordered to hand over this week?

18. Who is the author of the report Securing a Sustainable Future for Higher Education. For a bonus point which company did he resign from as chief executive in 2008 having started as an apprentice there 42 years earlier?

19. What does Quango stand for?

20. How old was Harry Webb on Friday October 14?

Answers

Mail subs off to the regions

On their way: trainee subs Ben Winstanley, Jennie Agg, Anna Croall

 (back row) Dawn Wheatley, Fiona Roberts and Alex Richman (front). Picture by Andy Drinkwater 

We said goodbye to the six trainee subs from the Daily Mail today. After four weeks' training in Howden and three days in London, they now head off for placements at the Press Association, The Evening Standard, The Irish News, Stoke Sentinel, Hull Daily Mail and News and Star in Carlisle. All being well, they will end up on the Mail subs desk next year. It has been an enjoyable few weeks. The trainees, all very talented, have been learning the craft of sub-editing to national newspaper standard. Pronouns, apostrophes, stylebooks, structure, accuracy, intros, captions, tight-editing, news values, headlines, layout, picture manipulation and cropping, graphics, InDesign, Photoshop and much more have been on the agenda. It is the eighth consecutive year that the Mail has recruited and trained its own subs in this way. The Sun has also run similar courses. It clearly works. So while the rest of the industry is jettisoning sub-editors in the name of economy and efficiency, the daily papers that sell the most continue to invest in them. Coincidence? I don't think so.

The picture we have all been waiting for ...

... the first man freed from the mine underneath the Atacama Desert. And if there was ever an excuse for wiping out your whole front page, this was it. The dilemma for the picture editor though was not the size ... but the crop. Do you focus in on the hug, leave in the crowd or even the capsule? Do you go horizontal or vertical? In the end, just use it big. I would usually advocate the tight crop but in this picture the setting is pretty compelling and the capsule really needs to be in. But there are other contenders for the cover too - particularly the defiant stance of the oldest miner 63-year-old Mario Heredia whose wife had asked him to retire just days before he was trapped. Santiago's Las Ultimas Noticias used it really well. Nice headline too - certainly better than Free at last. 

I want to be a travel writer ....

How many times have you heard that from people who want to slip into the backdoor and become great writers?  Many thanks to David Kernek for drawing my attention to this very helpful video. I now know how to answer them. 

Headlines lost on the young at heart

This headline from the Sun about the X-Factor - Lloyd, Cole and the Commotion - gave me a chuckle. But it did strike me that anyone under 35, the people the coverage is mainly aimed at, just wouldn't get it. I was with the Daily Mail trainee subs this week - and it certainly drew blank looks all round. Lloyd Cole and the Commotion (a 1980s pop band) weren't even a household name in their brief heyday. Lawrence Donegan, the band's bass player, had a similar experience with his Guardian colleagues - who had no idea what the headline meant - and clearly weren't aware that they were working alongside a famous musical icon. Lawrence, who also played bass in the Bluebells (you must remember Young at Heart), switched careers from pop star to journalist, starting with a brief spell at The Northern Echo during my tenure. Writing headlines that can be understood by all readers is something we deal with on our subbing courses ... and I have plenty of examples that are just too cryptic. Remember the Clitheroe Kid? Probably not. He certainly wasn't famous enough for many people to get the pun in this Mirror headline from 2007. At least it still makes sense, even if you don't get the reference to the radio show from more than 40 years ago. But I have trainees who are regularly baffled by old song titles, Cockney rhyming slang and archaic phrases. The headline below from the Sun, quite brilliant though it is, wasn't understood by any of the paper's last intake of 20-somethings. "But our parents didn't do nursery rhymes with us," they said. Good point.  

Footnote: Lawrence Donegan is the Guardian's golf correspondent and has written four books including an enjoyable insight into Irish newspapers, No News at Throat Lake. It's not strictly a novel but I have added it to our ever-growing list of books based on newspapers anyway. Laugh out loud stuff.