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November 29, 2007
Russian invasion
I spent most of yesterday interviewing would be journalists for a place on our training scheme which starts with them spending 16 weeks in Newcastle.
It's always highly competitive for places on the training scheme and yesterday was no exception as the nervous candidates were put through their paces with a series of tests and then the daunting interview with myself and our editorial trainer Phyllis Hughes.
One thing that did come to light was ta general lack of knowledge from the candidates when it came to the current affairs questions.
And while I don't expect everyone to have a great knowledge of sport - and it's really not that important for a news reporter - I was a bit alarmed to see that one person thought that Russia were the last winners of the FA Cup!
The fact they beat England to a place in the Euro 2008 finals is bad enough but winning the FA Cup is quite simply unbelievable.
I have just opened up the latest sales figures and it looks like the pre-Christmas fall off we usually see has already started - just what you don't want to see when you have a management meeting later in the day with the MD.
Obviously I can use the fact that already people are too busy preparing for Christmas to buy a local newspaper - although I am not sure he will totally buy that at the moment.
Anyway, before having to face up to an afternoon in the management meeting I am off to our Bucks office in the delightful village of Chalfont St Peter for a meeting this morning.
Posted by aseal at November 29, 2007 7:43 AM
Comments...
Adrian - I devised a simple general knowledge test for all my new editorial staff, and like you I was amazed by the lack of what I consider to be basic general knowledge. I had 27 questions in my test on various subjects and the top score was 21 with an average of only 11 correct answers. And this was multiple choice too with two clearly wrong and stupid answers from the four possible selections. It makes you wonder ...
Comment posted by: Andrew at November 30, 2007 12:26 AM