Why is it that I ever thought I wanted to be that person, chasing around town for stories that in two days, everyone would have already forgotten?
It was a strange feeling to muse over as I instructed my new reporter to go on a door knock for The People. It was an X Factor job – the worst kind.
When you work on a Sunday newspaper, the TV and Showbiz editor find out what’s going to be televised the following night in advance, so you get a sneak preview of who is going to be good, and attract the attention of the viewers.
It’s usually on a Friday afternoon, when you’re exhausted from the non-stop events, idea pitching and copy writing, that you hear the dreaded words from your editor: “ I need you to do some digging.”
Let’s get this clear from the start. I love trying to find things out about people through social networking, door knocking, tracing phone numbers and all the other tools you use as a journalist.
But my god, you’ve got to be hungry for it. Nothing else matters when you work at a place like News of the World – your tiredness, the fact you’ve fallen out with your boyfriend, or the hand ticking slowly around the clock telling you there’s no way you’ll be in time to catch your mates at the pub.
“He’s going to be on the show tomorrow. Tulisa smiles at him. We’re doing a spread.”
Invariably it’s some little twerp from Milton Keynes, banging on about how he fell off his bicycle in Year One and has been a ‘fighter’ ever since (cut to shots of mum and dad, wiping away tears in the wings).
Then, after a tense silence during which Tulisa licks her lips and Kelly raises a quizzical eyebrow, he sings. It’s usually something whiney like ‘Ben’, to showcase his strange, pitch-perfect little voice. Audience is in raptures.
I, meanwhile, am in his nana’s house in Barking, a full 24 hours before any of you guys are even aware of who this person is.
I’ve been told to come away from the house with nothing less than:
A picture of him with the Queen – disco dancing
Text messages from Cheryl Cole, saying she thought he was cute
A tragic revelation, for example, X FACTOR STAR’S CANCER FEARS
But I loved it. I loved it all. I relished being sent out on jobs because it meant you’d been trusted. You could be your own boss too, and as long as your brought home the bacon, it didn’t matter how you went about it, strictly speaking.
So why do I no longer want to do those things? I love teaching promising young trainees how to do it, as I watch them blossom and grow in confidence. But when it comes to me? The girl who was once dubbed ‘the most tenacious terrier in Fleet Street’ has changed.
Ever since Rebekah stood in front of us that fateful day, after a very peculiar week and the most toxic, brewing atmosphere I have ever worked in, it is like a spark within me has fizzled out. Not even fizzled – it didn’t have chance to fizz. It was snuffed out, like a candle.
In one foul swoop, the course of my life changed forever. The utter trauma of having what was at times a very difficult (but always intensely private internally) work place beamed across the world alongside words like ‘criminal investigation’, ‘arrested’ and ‘jailed’ had a huge effect on me.
It’s a cliché, but my dreams were shattered. Expansively. As the number of people being arrested totted up like a bus queue, the fire in belly got cooler and cooler. I was angry. So the sacrifices I’d made – a social life, a job with decent money and any sort of work life balance, on top of the endless psychological torturing I inflicted upon myself that I was never good enough, I couldn’t rest until I had my first splash (a goal I never had the chance to achieve), had not, strictly speaking, been worth while.
Yes, yes, I KNOW I gained invaluable experience, met some wonderful people and had some incredibly exciting times.
But now, the whole world was talking about us. People I knew and liked very much were arrested in dawn swoops.
It was impossible (for me, anyway), to ignore the fury rising against us as a whole paper. As the days went on and I watched, horrified, the shambolic Select Committee and news of more arrests, I noticed my passion for the job shrinking.
Why?
I haven’t done anything wrong. I was a confident, exuberant journalist, full of ideas and ambition, who liked to get the stories the old fashioned way.
Just twelve months earlier, I was grinning from ear to ear after winning the Robert Warren scholarship. A two-year contract at the best paper in the world. “The nearest thing to job security there is these days,” I told my friends, smugly.
The daughter of a journalist, this was pretty much what I’d wanted my whole life.
It didn’t matter when people called you scum on the doorstep. “I’m from the News of the World,” you’d insist, knowing that this held major clout. At the very least, people were intrigued. Yes, that’s right. The paper that broke so many world exclusives, sold millions of copies and prided itself on agenda setting stories. Now are you going to let me in?
There was a sort of arrogant pride I felt working there. I must be alright at what I do – because otherwise they wouldn’t have hired me.
There were days when I felt I couldn’t do it. It was tough. Competing against everyone constantly is against my nature – bit of a problem at a paper like that, described as a ‘competitive yet collaborative’ environment.
Yes, I wanted to be the best. But I also wanted to be content and happy, and if I’m honest, a lot of the time I was knotted up in nerves, running on empty and chasing a dream that soon became labelled as dirty.
It was confusing. For months I’d told myself on the rough days: Get a grip. You’re a trainee. This is supposed to be hard.
But it’ll all be worth it one day.
This phrase hung in my mind all the time. It didn’t matter if I lost a front page because I didn’t manage to sneak into Cheryl Cole’s birthday party. It didn’t matter that I hadn’t quite established myself yet, and was firmly at the bottom of the food chain.
As long as I kept trying, and learning, one day I would have my front page, exclusives coming out of my ears and a contact book to make Piers Morgan weep.
Fast forward a year: OH NO YOU WON’T!
When Rebekah (whose hair, on another note, is simply massive. She’s like a ginger Diana Ross. These are the trivial things you find yourself noticing when you’re being hit by the news that a 168-year-old institution is being closed) closed the paper, I realised that I felt horribly cheated.
Some journalists have something to prove. There’s got to be something deep down that makes you mad enough to sit outside Gary Barlow’s house in the rain, crouch in bins while following people and stay up all night, so exhausted after writing 2,000 words, you grab power naps in your car on your lunch break.
I certainly had something to prove. My dad was on the Daily Express by the time he was 20 (it was good back then), and journalism was a deep bond we shared.
If I was on a doorknock, I’d call him for advice while sitting in the car outside. How should I approach this? What’s the best way to get this woman to talk?
Every Sunday, we’d go through the paper. He would always say my piece was the best – totally biased, but it made me glow with pride. I was following my dad’s legacy and working on the stories that everyone was talking about.
When it closed, this was gone. I didn’t want to talk about it any more. I think I’ve been on one doorknock since. Quite simply, I feel like I can’t do it any more. And I have no idea why.
Talking to ex colleagues has been interesting. One said she felt like a ‘massive twat’ – and I agreed. It’s totally illogical, as no-one is accusing me of hacking phones or doing anything criminal.
But it was my home, my family for 10 months. So it was inevitable that as a trainee on the paper, the fact that we became the world’s most wanted left me feeling like a vulnerable kid who’s the victim of a nasty divorce.
I want to know where my passion has gone. It’s not totally dead – I’m now running the press agency where I used to work, and hiring my own team. Nothing gives me more satisfaction than seeing young reporters sell a story on my instruction, grow in confidence and improve in their writing.
But the desire to prove I’m the best, get more contacts and knock on people’s doors has vanished.
It’s a strange feeling, one I never expected. I was totally ‘mad fer it’ when I started, and would have jumped in the fire if there was a scoop to be found.
But the scale of the revelations, and the fact that the story rumbled on all summer, more layers emerging every day, infected me with a sense of shame and sadness. This wasn’t what I signed up for.
I suppose I was chasing a golden age that I’d heard my dad talking about. But suddenly, all that remained of my dreams were a stack of unused business cards and some yellowing cuttings.
Slowly, I’m picking up the pieces and creating new dreams – ones where I’m a successful manager/editor, and I share with my new staff the invaluable lessons I learnt there.
But my old dreams? I left them under my desk, before marching outside wearing a dreadful T-shirt to cover my comfort eating paunch and facing the world’s press.
RIP @scoop20
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