Make no bones it's a skeleton crew

By Steve Bax on Oct 23, 08 01:48 PM in In the newsroom

The office seems a quieter place at the moment with so many Herald & News staff members on training courses.

Reporters Emma Heseltine, Adam Courtney and Ed Saunt are revising for their senior exams - which take place in Newcastle on Tuesday, and sub editors Mark Lundrigan and Mort Smith are off today to brush up on media law.

However the business of reporting the news goes on and it means those of us left with have to muddle through.

As I write this we've heard about a fatal incident a Woking Train Station this morning, where a man was hit by the the 0720 service from Poole to London Waterloo. Our Woking Informer reporter Eileen is on the scene making enquiries.

Yesterday Vicki Eltis and I were at the Brooklands FM studio above Cosmic in Station Road, Addlestone, to review the weeks Herald & News papers. Vicki has always wanted to try her hand at broadcasting and was very nervous, but I think the programme went well and afterwards she was elated to have done it.

The latest programme will be online here until October 30th.

Another staple fixure of Wednesdays at this newspaper are our weekly team meetings. Reporters meet the news editor to discuss what's coming up (story-wise) for the week and ways the stories should be covered.

Until May this year I was the news editor for the Chertsey and Walton teams and used to preside over one of these meetings. Now it's done, more efficiently I might add, by Natalie Cambrook, who replaced me as news editor when I shifted sideways to manage the websites.

We've a few big court cases this week: there's Mark Malone, the Walton man accused of fatally stabbing a gay man in the toilets by Walton Bridge (he denies it). And Alan Jermey, partner of 34-year-old Kirsty Wilson, is accused of murdering her at their Woking home. His trial is due to begin on Friday.

Apart from that we're also hoping to chat to a woman from Addlestone who's doing humanitarian work on the Thailand border and an X-Factor producer. There are other irons in the fire but I'm sworn to secrecy, in case I tip off rival papers.

As is sometimes the case a slightly bizarre comment from reporter Mark Goode just sparked an equally bizarre discussion in the newsroom. It started out with a couple of people admitting they gave up being a vegetarian because of the uninspiring food options and finished with a discussion on the sort of disgusting stuff you'd eat if you were starving on a desert island.

It might be all hands to the pump for this skeleton crew but it's nice to know the banter survives. I'm expecting things to be hectic as Tuesday deadlines approach.