Journalism Matters: A day-in-the-life of a Yorkshire Post journalist

Yorkshire Post

The Yorkshire Post's Sophie Mei Lan shares her daily journey and why she got into journalism for the Journalism Matters campaign.

Transcript

00:00Hi, I'm Sophie Mayline-Maylin. I'm a journalist at the Yorkshire Post. I'm just sitting down now to do my piece to cameras and

00:07also my news headlines, which I do every morning from home.

00:13I work as journalist here in Wakefield, but I'm based all over Yorkshire, do stories all over.

00:20I'm lucky enough to be able to do a lot of online content, so I do a lot of videos,

00:24audio, we're doing a Mrs. Yorkshire podcast. We've got loads of different things, and that's what I love about stories now, is

00:32multi-platform journalism, is you can tell stories in the most powerful way using graphics, images, whatever, and it's so simple.

00:39So my setup currently is just a light here.

00:42I've got some road mics and a tripod to do my news headlines and a bit of editing.

00:49I started out in journalism 15, 20 years ago.

00:53Started a blog and that went viral when I started reporting on issues in my local area, but also national stories and

01:00international investigations.

01:03I then managed to win an award where I kind of pitched myself and I managed to

01:09network and get myself experience at Channel 4 News and ITV News.

01:14There I then pitched more stories and documentary ideas, and then the rest of history, I've always been grafting,

01:22always been working hard, and now I love my job at Yorkshire Post because I get the freedom to go out and about in

01:28Yorkshire today. I'm asking people about trending news of this day,

01:32different stories that are going on, and I get to meet so many weird and wonderful people.

01:37But most of all, being out and about means I actually get

01:41stories from the people themselves.

01:45I really love the variety too because I can one day be doing something on crime or even in the morning be doing a

01:52story about crime and then it can be on traffic,

01:54then it can be on something really trivial or a TV drama or something Yorkshire related to welly wanging.

02:02Literally, my day can be so varied. Nobody would really believe what I get up to just in one day.

02:08And then there are the nice little perks because I'm off to review a sandwich shop now that's gone viral.

02:15I'm now back home after the review to face my biggest challenge of the day,

02:20sorting out five kids as well as editing some video content for online.

02:26And then later when the kids are asleep, I shall get writing some stories for tomorrow to get started early.

02:34Journalism is absolutely vital because we're giving a voice to communities who would otherwise be unheard.

02:39We're holding people in power to account

02:43and we're also questioning the world rather than just spouting off about stuff and

02:49assuming what we see is fact. We're actually investigating

02:53situations and showing what the truth is. But that's why it's so amazing now with the industry because there's so many more

03:00people from diverse backgrounds like myself, not at all from a typical background when it comes to journalism.

03:06I used to tip most of the diversity boxes.

03:10But that's what's so important about journalism is

03:13representing the public and

03:16actually being there for the public to campaign, to entertain, to keep the world going and

03:23to be as fair and equitable as possible.

03:27Journalism is so, so

03:30important and that's something that drives me every single day is that if I hadn't spoken to somebody,

03:36their story may have not been told.

03:39I'm honoured to have had the opportunity to work on loads of stories from the awful riots that took place

03:46locally over the summer months,

03:49to reporting about the tragic incident where a boy got stabbed outside the school gates. I really do

03:56love getting to the heart of communities and

03:59talking about the issues that matter to them.

04:02And then I also love the fun stuff and showing the weird and wonderful of

04:08Yorkshire.

04:11Journalism matters.

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