October 24, 2007

Beware being friends with a journalist

Being friends with a journalist means you are always at risk of being roped into a story they are working on. For a story I did on middle income earners last year, I interviewed my pals Chris, Gus and Deb - the story led to Chris being 'spotted' to present a TV show earlier this year. My stories have also starred my brother in law Martin (liver transplant recipient), my mother and aunt (who let me fry in a swimming pool when I was younger in a story about sunburn), my nana (a story about trains). I got Susie Poole a gig writing about her favourite year, introduced Natalie and Monique to our features section who have since had things published, and many craft pals have starred in the paper too, including Martha who made the front page skybox with a pair of her screen-printed undies.

But the piece de resistance comes tomorrow. Hapless, affable, lovable Neil is doing Movember this year, and did it last year to raise money for prostate cancer research, awareness and support. He has to grow a moustache over the month of November to raise the cash. A great cause and quite a sacrfice for his poor girlfriend Becc. So what have we done to celebrate his good efforts? Drawn a Senor Biggles moustache on him today on page three for thousands upon thousands of people to see, and tomorrow he gets much much worse treatment... stay tuned.

5 comments:

Tane said...

Given how small New Zealand is, I wonder how many people haven't been roped into a story by a journalist friend.

- both roper and ropee

kimberlee said...

ha!

hey I bet my father in law was part of the transplant your brother in law received. He runs the transplant department in NZ and does many of the surgeries himself. dr stephen munn... ring any bells?

small world:)
_kimberlee

Special K said...

he sure does - I interviewed him extensively - he did Martin's operation! Six degrees, huh?

AMCSviatko said...

Without being a journalist I managed to:

* Get my Grandmother in the Post when she came second behind Maurice Shadbolt in the BNZ Writers Awards

* Get a picture I took of Ruapehu exploding on the front page for the first edition

* Have a picture of my nose with a (fake) nose ring in the paper

* Tell the world how I didn't want to have kids by trying to link the fact that kids and mortgages are both 25 year commitments "but you can't drop a house in its head"

* DIscover more about a family feud than I knew was possible to know without asking...

AMCSviatko said...

Oh - almost forgot - Page 3 of the Rotorua newspaper compalining about lack of parking for motorcycles...