Last week I headed back to Bristol to spend a week working for Bristol 24/7, a monthly magazine and online Newspaper offering news, comment and features on the city of Bristol. I really enjoyed my time working there and became a better journalist for the experience. I reported on a variety of stories during the week which took me all over the city. On my way back from one story I got a message from Jess, the editor. It contained a press release about an opening of a new development in Bristol’s City Centre. The development was Bristol’s first buy to rent scheme in the area and was set to revolutionise the renting market in Bristol. Jess told me to head straight there.

I turned up on the site, showed my press pass to security and was ushered upstairs to a huge open plan room. I felt slightly underdressed as the room was filled men in their sharpest suits. I had only had 20 minutes to read the press release and hadn’t been given too much information about the event and the development itself. Everyone seemed to be mingling and I didn’t really know what to do myself. I was stood in a room full of hugely successful people and I felt quite intimidated. I tried to compose myself ready to go over and gather some details about the development. Before I made my move I was spotted. Four people swarmed towards me with their hands out.

I assumed they had found out that I was press. They came over and introduced themselves as Directors at Cubex, the developers of the site. As a student journalist it can often be frustrating when you’re trying to speak to people for a story and you don’t get a response. For our Newsweeks I experienced a lot of this; people not taking me seriously or not speaking to us because we were only students. It’s incredibly frustrating. So it was refreshing that through my position at an established news outlet, I had people coming over to speak to me. Enthusiastically wanting to help me with my articles. I’d attended networking events before but not as a member of the press. I was being treated like a king, being offered food and drinks. I even got my own private tour of the site.

It dawned on me that I was being schmoosed. These guys were businessmen, they were selling me their product and I was just buying it. So far the only notes I had made were about how great the development was. I was writing an advertisement for the company and not an interesting news story.  I needed to dig deeper, I needed to take control of the situation and start asking some more uncomfortable questions.

Throughout the day I had been told that this development would provide “affordable housing” for the people of Bristol. I needed to find out what this meant. I pushed for answers, I needed to find out exactly how much this was going to cost. I suddenly felt like a Journalist, unfortunately this meant a lot of people avoiding my questions. I felt like I was interviewing politicians. The friendliness of earlier had gone and people were suddenly too busy to speak to me.

I realised we had only been invited there as a promotional plug. I cut my losses and took what I had back to the office. Before I wrote it up I spoke to Jess and told her about the event. She agreed that we didn’t want to just write an advertising story for the company and decided not to write it up.

Although I didn’t get a story out of it, the networking event was a great learning experience about the challenges of being a journalist. It was the first time where I have needed to be more aggressive with my questioning to get to the root of a story.