1. Budget night. Seriously guys, it’s like Christmas.
2. Finding a spelling error ten seconds before filing a story.
3. Free food.
4. People who forget to say “off the record”.
5. When a contact answers their phone at 7.14 in the morning.
6. Writing alternative versions
of a story before an event happens so that
you publish the piece straight away, no matter the outcome.
7. When the wrong alternative story gets published by mistake (‘Mitt Romney Wins Election!’).
8. Interviewing Clive Palmer. Or Bob Katter. Or other journalists (pretty much anyone who is crazy).
9. Twitter.
10. Latika Bourke.
11. Trying to out-tweet Latika Bourke.
12. When PR people stuff up.
13. Massaging the source (verbally, guys, don’t be rude).
14. People who don’t say “um” or “ah” a lot.
15. People who can use possessive apostrophes correctly.
16. Not using semi-colons.
17. Breaking news, breaking stories, breaking open a can of beer …
18. Being serious.
19. Using expletives as commonly as punctuation.
20. Making lists. (See what I did there?)
Broede Carmody
