Neither my piece on the Samoan earthquakes (filed with only minor changes), nor my one on breastfeeding stats (totally rewritten by health correspondent) made it to the paper. They didn't even make it to the website. What a big fat waste of time. Frankly, it's inefficient. We should get the Office of Budget Responsibility onto it.
Over the last few days I've been relegated to sourcing pictures from Google Image. I'm trying hard not to think that this is direct a result of my total failure to get my last few pieces into print. But it might be.
The Times publishes Eureka! - a science magazine - on the last Thursday of every month. This month is the one year anniversary of Eureka!, and to celebrate they are releasing an iPad app on sports science. I think this also has a lot to do with the Times charging for access to on-line content. If they're going to charge, they'd better provide something good.
My job has been to find images to accompany the text pieces that will go in the app. For some reason they all have to be 'small' - as in microscopic, molecular, or just a good close-up. I'm not sure what this has to do with sports science at all, but that's what I was asked to do. I also have to provide 20-30 words on each image providing "an explanation, not just a description, of what we're seeing".
I have spent about 10 hours over the last two days doing this. Searching Google Image, choosing pics, copy and pasting them into a word doc, writing 20-30 words. For a while I was quietly amused that this is the sort of thing I would normally get someone else to do. But what would happen if the Sun found out that I was being paid a significant salary from public money for this? What about all my education and skills? Don't anyone make the "all that education and no real-life skills" comment - I already know I'm doing this because I have nothing much else to offer.
You will understand that there are no images to accompany this post.
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