Tim Campbell and other members of The Bright Ideas Trust

I started this week with much intrepidation, I have limited knowledge about business, especially Hackney specific business.

My week as business editor for the Hackney Post started well. The business section is only a page long and I had one other person in my team and a good lead story.

I spoke to Tim Campbell of The Apprentice for a feature, as well as a young entrepreneur which his company had helped and his marketing manager. They were all really helpful and gave me some great material for my story.

However, things quickly went downhill. I was left to do the business section on my own after my business reporter was poached by the news section. Then the second story for the page fell through and other ideas were discussed and dismissed.

Then Daniel came to the rescue with another story. But our editor for the week, Beth, wanted Dan’s story for the news pages. We had a discussion about it and the deal was that I could use the story for the business page if I helped out with news.

Then at about 4pm, after talking to one of the tutors, Beth said the story was going to be used on the news pages after all so I had to find another story.

I had heard a report on radio four about workers taking different types of jobs because of the recession and how low paid jobs, which were previously done by foreign workers, were now being taken by British workers. I thought it could easily be given a Hackney focus.

I had a lot of trouble getting the story together, try getting quotes at 5pm as everyone is leaving their office, it is not an easy task.

Thankfully, I managed to pull together the section in time for the deadline but not without my fair share of stress.

Tony Grisoni

Somehow in the slight chaos that was the business section, I managed to do an interview with Tony Grisoni, screen writer of Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. It was interesting to speak to the man behind one of the most rented movies of all time.

This week has been a bit fraught. Tempers became a bit frayed as tiredness kicked in and as the end of the week approached, people started to lose motivation.

Although it all came together in the end, the lesson learnt from this week was to have a plan b and c and so on.

Production is now over and it seems quite sad to no longer be getting stories for the Hackney Post, its back to writing essays instead.

Tim Campbell won The Apprentice in 2005

It’s that time of year again; I am getting swept up in the fever surrounding The Apprentice.

I sat down to watch the new series on Wednesday night and it lived up to expectations. There were already arguments and bitchy comments being thrown around. I am not usually a fan of reality TV but something about the show has me hooked.

So I was rather excited when I got to speak to Tim Campbell- first winner of a place in Sir Alan Sugar’s company- as part of my role as business editor of The Hackney Post this week.

I spoke to him about The Bright Ideas Trust, a company he has set up to help young entrepreneurs. The scheme is working in partnership with Hackney council to encourage business-minded people to start their own companies.

Tim and two of his colleagues assured me that now is a good time to set up a business.

This defies all my instincts about setting up a business during a recession but I could see their point. There are opportunities out there because there are gaps in the market left by businesses closing.

Consumers are wary of spending, before they may have stretched their budgets, but now they are cutting back. New businesses can offer quality services for cheaper prices than their more established rivals. And as Tim said, if they can make it through the recession things will seem a lot easier afterwards.

In other Hackney Post business news, jobseekers are now looking to other, perhaps more unusual fields to find work. The BBC reported last night that McDonalds is opening up new job opportunities for the long-term unemployed.

This trend is being echoed in the borough and it reflects what some people have been saying for a while; that there are jobs out there but people need to expand their searches.

Perhaps this is the difference between those who succeed in business and those who don’t. People with the drive to do well able to see beyond what is in front of them and- to use the cliché – think outside the box. And this is probably what Sir Alan will be looking for from his next apprentice.

Thankfully it was back up and running fairly quickly.

For the rest of the week I have been juggling doing some news stories and getting content online.

On Monday I made my first podcast a run down of the news from last week and a taster of things to come. I got my first taste of editing a podcast which proved to be harder than I thought as I could not get the delete option to work so it went into the capable hands of Shona to complete.

Hackney podcast

Tuesday was news day and I spent the day with my phone stuck to my ear trying desperately to get comments for stories, the efforts finally paid off.

The end of the week has involved putting content online, editing pictures and geo mapping. As well as chasing the rest of the team for content, pictures, locations for geo mapping and checking with tutors for legal problems in stories.

It all got a bit complicated in the end, they say too many cooks spoil the broth and I can vouch for that this week. We had misunderstanding about which folders final copy was kept in and who it had been checked by before it went online.

Unfortunately a couple of stories went up which were legally a bit dodgy. I can take partial responsibility for that but a break down in communication was mostly to blame. Despite the glitches we have managed to produce a good paper and website.

Next week I am business editor, something which I am a bit nervous about as business news is not my strong point. We have some good ideas and hopefully we can turn some of them into good stories.

My role for this week was in the features department so on Thursday last week I rolled up for a features meeting to discuss ideas and start things moving.

At first, things didn’t seem to be getting off the ground, a couple of hour’s research on Friday for one feature and an afternoon walking the streets of Hackney on Monday for another bore no fruit.

On Sunday, I spent the morning doing a walking tour of Shoreditch and Hoxton as part of the East Festival. Fascinating stuff but the video was unusable due to traffic noise and it was not possible to take stills from the footage.

The afternoon was more productive, I went to the Geffrye Museum with Ben to film kids in a craft workshop, watch a play and speak to some people.

Tuesday was the most exciting day this week. I went with Beth to get some footage and interviews from the site of the original Shakespeare theatre in Shoreditch for a feature on Shakespeare in the borough.

I returned to university feeling very excited, I was one of just 50 people who got to see the site before it was closed up and the planning permission is finalised. We took video of archaeologist Heather Knight from the Museum of London and did an on location to camera piece. But technical problems hit and the video could not be downloaded.

Wednesday was a frustrating day. I made about 30 calls to academics- I don’t even want to think about my phone bill- all of whom were out/not answering their phone/ unable to help/ on maternity leave. I also tried desperately to find some photos to replace the lost footage from the previous day.

In the evening Ben and I went to a hidden gem in the backstreets of Dalston in Hackney. Passing Clouds is unlike anywhere I have been before, an eclectic mix of decorations, sari fabric hanging from the walls upstairs, Arabic style writing on the walls downstairs and a collection of dolls and puppets dotted around were just some of the things on display.

I learned to play the African drum with Adesose Wallace. It was like going back to school, as I lost the rhythm he would get progressively frustrated but when we all played in time his face lit up with pride. Hopefully the feature and video will go in next week’s edition.

Thursday was deadline day and as expected, things became a bit manic. Arguments were had about page layout, copy which was cut and pictures were changed. But overall we pulled together and are proud of our efforts.