What is wrong with me!?

Seriously, I'm heading off to Port Hedland in the middle of summer for 20 days? Cyclones, minimum 40 degree Celsius temperatures? You betcha.

It's all about trying to get some more experience writing, and is part of an ECU initiative (along with some other unis) to get us coiffed urban yuppies out there into the country to see what the real deal with aboriginal health is.

If you're from Australia, you'd know that it's one of our greatest shames that the life expectancy of an aboriginal is less than half of the Caucasian counterpart. So every year a bunch of nursing and journalism students go up there as part of a work experience program where the nursing students help out with the hospital up there and the journalism students write for various rags up there for about 20 days.

While there, the students learn about working with aboriginal communities and get to see first hand the conditions in which they live. It's a fantastic initiative to get the journos of tomorrow to see first hand the most unreported story in our culture. They also figure that one or two journos and nurses are going to 'fall in love with the place' and never want to leave (I don't see myself staying, but anything's possible).

So starting on January 4 I'm heading off for 20 days to do some work experience and avoid sunstroke, I'll try and post from there but I'm not too sure about internet access up there.

Anyhow, the other big journalistic story concerning me is my freelance piece for The West Australian.

About two months back I was contacted by one of the lecturers at ECU, along with four other students (the creme de la creme of the print students...or just the one's the lecturers could remember) about possibly doing some work experience for the health and medicine section of the rag. If my article does end up getting published, it'll be good to put in the portfolio and I get paid a whole $150 for my 900 words (shitty rate, but what the hell do I care?). In fact there's a story in today's edition about the dangers about barbecued meat which I'm pretty sure was done by one of the students selected.

I got a story about mobile phones and how Gen-Y are using them to talk about mental health issues rather than 'traditional' mediums such as face to face communication and such.

Here's the copy I sent off to the West, and the copy which was okayed by the editor I'm working with. Take a look, and maybe see where I went wrong, where I went right and what I need to improve on.

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TEXTUAL HEALING

By James McGrath

The internet and mobile phones have been accused of distracting drivers when they’re in traffic, raising the risk of tumours and being responsible of causing a decline of literacy rates amongst an entire generation, but for once mobile phones have received some praise–for having a positive impact on health.

A study published in the Australian Psychiatry journal in October found that young people are using technologies such as SMS–the messaging tools for mobile phones– and the internet to discuss mental health issues with their peers and trained professionals.

Participants in the study, which looked at mental health literacy rates amongst adolescents in rural areas said they preferred SMS and the internet over traditional avenues for seeking help because they felt safe thanks to the relative anonymity the technology offers users.

Authors of the study, Dr Lydia Scott and Associate Professor Anna Chur-Hansen from the University of Adelaide, said while traditional avenues such as face-to-face and using the telephone were important, SMS is encouraging more teenagers to talk about their problems.

“The importance of people being able to share experiences with peers is well-recognised. However this is possibly even more significant during adolescent years when their self-identity is continuing to evolve and change,” Dr Scott said.

“The teenagers involved in the study felt that contacting a friend by SMS may be easier and less confrontational than approaching them face-to-face.

“This is significant as the decision for a young person to seek help may be delayed due to fears of social stigma, which can delay appropriate treatment and affect long term outcomes.”

Health professionals around the world have latched onto this idea, and have started to offer SMS services for those in need.

In South Africa, an SMS helpline was set up in 2006 by the South African Depression and Anxiety Group, to help depressed teenagers in an effort to curb the high rates of suicide in the country, and they received an overwhelming response from participants praising the service.

In India, an SMS information service was launched last year to combat the rising epidemic of HIV/AIDS in the country, where teenagers could SMS their questions about the disease without the stigma of having their peers knowing that they were asking about it. Within a month the service had received 25 000 texts.

Closer to home, mental health groups beyondblue, Headspace and Reach Out! have all launched SMS information campaigns in the past in an attempt to reach at-risk youth, and regularly use the internet to reach a new audience.

Reach Out! launched an online forum service in 2005, in which people can come and talk to each other and health professionals in a safe and anonymous setting.

Interactive manager Marianne Webb says that by using an online service, Reach Out! have been able to allocate its limited resources more effectively given the low-cost nature of the project while reaching teens in a brand new way.

“The advantages of reaching at-risk young people online are that you are engaging young people in an environment where they have a sense of control, they feel comfortable and are able to remain anonymous” she said.

“Young people are often worried about their parents or friends finding out, especially if they are considering going to a school counsellor or live in a small rural community.

“Knowing where and how to access to help is another reason that the internet and services such as the Reach Out! forum is the first step young people take in getting professional help”

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*Please note this is not the version which will appear in The West Australian and should be considered such*

What is wrong with lying?: part deux

Well, I've submitted my review to the team at the Escapist for them to go through it with a fine tooth-comb, and hopefully my weaknesses in the genre will become evident.

That's right, as a writer about to go into the workforce I'm looking for the most criticism I can get, the harsher the better. Only through thorough examination (internal or external) can you ever get better as a writer, so it's something that all training journos should be looking to do.

The better writer's the better, as they'll see problems with your writing that others will simply ignore.

Anyhow, here's the copy I sent them after a few alterations. Here's a fun game, try to guess where I changed it and why I did it!

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Football Manager 2009

Another year, another itineration of the Football Manager series and another ulcer for my trouble. You see, Football Manager is one of those games which not only requires an intellectual investment on the part of the player but also requires an emotional one. Not bad stuff for a glorified spreadsheet.

It creates that ‘just one more turn’ factor well as you’ll often find yourself trying to finalise a transfer fee for that gun striker at 2AM with bleary eyes. So Football Manager 2009 has had a successful formula to work off, and by all rights should be able to just update the stats each year and sell to their niche market, but instead the team at Sega decided to muddy the waters a bit. Whether this be a bold choice or a stupid design decision depends on your understanding of the phrase ‘if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it’.

The things that don’t change in this year’s effort are the things that attract players to the series. Football Manager veterans know what I’m talking about when I say those little circles representing the players on your team become much more than graphical representations of number-crunching; they become your team. You’ll howl every time they concede, and crack open a bottle of bubbly every time they score an injury-time winner.

It’s risky business trying to muck with a formula like that, so why in Maradonna would you do it? The team at Sega decided it was time to mess with the formula in an effort to take the immersion level up to 11.

The big thing they did in this version is introduce a whole new graphical element to the experience; a 3D engine. Now that may not seem to be a big deal, but when your experience of a game series is entirely informed by a 2D interface, adding a new dimension is like…adding a new dimension to the experience. So does it work or is it just a pretty diversion?

Well, I’ve got good news and bad news for you all. The good news is that the engine while nowhere near FIFA eye-melting levels does a solid job of representing the game we love. The movement of the players is just what you’d expect from watching a game of football, and the players move in a realistic way. That may not seem like much, but it’s really well done and is for the most part a welcome addition to the core match day experience.

Now for the bad news.

It seems that Sega really wants this new 3D match engine to succeed, so much so that the revised 2D screens look like the dog’s breakfast. Just a few short years ago the 2D match engine looked clean and was the basis for the game’s popularity, but now its circles have seen better days and are in dire need of a good anti-aliasing. Theoretically you can still choose to play with a 2D match engine, but what’s the point when the 3D version looks halfway decent and the 2D engine makes you eyes bleed? It’s like saying goodbye to a part of my gaming heritage, it’s just sad is all. If that wasn’t bad enough, the graphical needs of the 3D match engine may just push this title out of the ‘runs on the smell of an oily processor’ category.

In previous versions of the Football Manager series, the graphical requirements of running the game was pretty much the ability to render Skifree. With Football Manager 09 though you’ll need to be packing a Radeon 9800 at a minimum which may not seem like you’ll be breaking the bank for a new graphics card, but this game is supposed to be a glorified spreadsheet after all.

But despite the downside to introducing a new match engine, Football Manager 09 doesn’t throw the baby out with the bathwater and remains the authoritative football management sim on the market.

The introduction of a couple of nice touches help smooth out the criticisms. The addition of a press conference that you as manager can attend is a great way to involve you in the game world. Given the whole selling point of the series is “You can be the manager!”, it’s a surprise this option wasn’t included in previous versions of the game.

The press conferences are structured well, and if handled correctly can give your team a morale boost and put the fear of God into your opposition. Responses to questions are limited however, so you can’t exactly go on a Jose Mourinho-esque rant in the middle of a journalist’s question, but it’s still an addition that adds to the core appeal of the game.

The addition of real-time feedback from your assistant coach is a great inclusion as well, and really helps you out in diagnosing where your team may be going wrong or which threats you need to neutralise. For example, if the opposition starts pushing players forward and their defensive line is pushing up too, your assistant manager will tell you about it so you can switch your tactics to sitting deep and counter-attacking to exploit the space behind the defence. It’s an addition that will have you thinking like a real manager, and this is what the series and game is all about.

It’s called Football Manager, and this game lets you be exactly that as you ride the highs of championships, the nerve-wracking lows of a relegation scrap and feel the pride of finding a gem of a player in the youth ranks and nurturing him to superstardom. The stats you love are there, the gameplay which entrances you is there and despite Sega almost dropping the ball with the match engine, Football Manager 09 remains the benchmark by which all other football management sims are measured.

Recommendation: Buy it if you’re a football nut or want a new sim to play with, otherwise it’s probably not for you.

What is wrong with lying?

Okay, so I lied. This post won't be about an article for The West and my sojourn to Port Hedland, shoot me. Instead I thought you (the google bots that crawl this page) would get a kick out of following a piece of writing from the moment of conception to the publishing stage.

Okay, so here's the premise. After writing journalism for yonks (I believe that's the technical term for it anyhow) my other styles of writing have been suffering and in particular, my review skills. You see, I used to be able to write a mean review, so I've found my skills to be slipping lately, so I thought what better way to get back into the swing of things than trying to get a review published?

My target, the guest review spot on The Escapist. I chose it because they're known for great quality writing and submitting to them would put my writing through some pretty stringent standards.

So I've submitted a couple of reviews so far, and the feedback (excellent feedback from Susan Arendt by the by) I've gotten back is basically 'You're a good writer, but this is a bit self-indulgent', which is fair, but they asked for a 'unique voice' in all guest submissions, and how you're supposed to add voice without becoming self-indulgent is proving to be a tightrope.

So, I went back to the drawing board and came up with a review of Football Manager 2009. I'm aware there's an inherent danger in pitching a 'soccer' game to an American publisher but I'm willing to take that shot.

Hopefully, my draft is less self-indulgent than my previous efforts and I've learned from my mistakes because that is a crucial part of any job, let alone journalism where anybody and everybody can write but few can do it well.

Anyhow here's the draft, and I'll let you all know about what sort of feedback I get from Arendt when I pitch it after the holidays.

====================================================================

Football Manager 2009

James McGrath

Another year, another itineration of the Football (the type in which the ‘foot’ part is emphasised) Manager series and another ulcer for my trouble. You see, Football Manager is one of those games which not only requires an intellectual investment on the part of the player but also requires an emotional one. Not bad stuff for a game which has been dubbed a glorified spreadsheet.

It creates that ‘just one more turn’ factor well as you’ll often find yourself trying to finalise a transfer fee for that gun striker at 2AM with bleary eyes. So Football Manager 2009 has had a successful formula to work off, and by all rights should be able to just update the stats each year and sell to their niche market, but instead the team at Sega decided on a not so quiet revolution. Whether this be a bold choice or a stupid design decision depends on your understanding of the phrase ‘if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it’.

Those of you who have played any of the Football Manager games know what I’m talking about when I say those little circles representing the players on your team become much more than graphical representations of number-crunching; they become your team. You’ll howl every time they concede, and crack open a bottle of bubbly every time they score an injury-time winner. So why in Maradonna would you muck with a formula like that? It’s evident the team at Sega decided it was time to muck with the formula in an effort to take the immersion level created by those stats and screens up to 11.

The big thing they did in this version is introduce a whole new graphical element to the experience; a 3D engine. Now that may not seem to be a big deal, but when your experience of a game is entirely informed by a 2D interface, adding a new dimension is like…adding a new dimension to the experience. The question is, does it work or is it just a pretty diversion?

Well, I’ve got good news and bad news for you all. The good news is that the engine while nowhere near FIFA eye-melting levels does a solid job of representing the game we love. The movement of the players is just what you’d expect from watching a game of football, and the players move in a realistic way. That may not seem like much, but it’s really well done and is a welcome addition to the core match day experience.

Now for the bad news.

It seems that Sega really wants this new 3D match engine to succeed, so much so that the revised 2D screens look like the dog’s breakfast. Just a few short years ago the 2D match engine looked clean and was the basis for the game’s popularity, but now its circles have seen better days and are in dire need of a good anti-aliasing. Theoretically you can still choose to play with a 2D match engine, but what’s the point when the 3D version looks halfway decent and the 2D engine makes you eyes bleed? It’s like saying goodbye to a part of my gaming heritage, it’s just sad is all. If that wasn’t bad enough, the graphical needs of the 3D match engine may just push this title out of the ‘runs on the smell of an oily processor’ category.

In previous versions of the Football Manager series, the graphical requirements of running the game was the ability to render Skifree. Okay, so that may be a slight exaggeration but it really didn’t need much at all, with Football Manager 09 though you’ll need to be packing a Radeon 9800 at a minimum. That may not seem like you’ll be breaking the bank for a new graphics card, but this game is supposed to be a glorified spreadsheet.

But despite the downside to introducing a new match engine, Football Manager 09 doesn’t throw the baby out with the bathwater and remains the authoritative football management sim on the market.

The introduction of a couple of nice touches help smooth out the criticisms. The addition of a press conference that you as manager can attend is a great way to involve you in the game world. Given the whole selling point of the series is “You can be the manager!”, it’s a surprise this option wasn’t included in previous versions of the game.

The press conferences are structured well, and if handled correctly can give your team a morale boost and put the fear of God into your opposition. Responses to questions are limited however, so you can’t exactly go on a Jose Mourinho-esque rant in the middle of a journalist’s question, but it’s still an addition that adds to the core appeal of the game.

It’s called Football Manager, and this game lets you be exactly that as you ride the highs of championships, the nerve-wracking lows of a relegation scrap and feel the pride of finding a gem of a player in the youth ranks and nurturing him to superstardom. The stats you love are there, the gameplay which entrances you is there and despite Sega almost dropping the ball with the match engine, Football Manager 09 remains the benchmark by which all other football management sims are measured.

What is wrong with doing work experience at Christmas time?

There's not actually that much to do. The news has slowed to a trickle and you don't have time to do any sort of meaningful work because everybody's going on holidays soon.

I recently undertook a work placement at Aspermont, the company responsible for a multitude of trade publications including Mining Monthly and Biotechnology News. My role while I was there was to turn around press releases and turn them into something somewhat readable. Basically, I was a shitkicker who didn't have that much to do, yet it still remained an invaluable learning experience (plus I got a few bylines which is always good).

It helped me to see where my weaknesses lie in terms of writing and which areas are my strengths. I'll start with the minuses as these are weaknesses that all up and coming journos can learn from.

In a nutshell, I was lazy with my writing. Because I was basically turning around press releases within 20 minutes or so I didn't put enough effort into checking and re-checking my work, and consequently I made a few tiny mistakes with my punctuation surrounding quotes (another of my weaknesses).

I also on the odd-occasion decided to demote people in various positions in stories I was writing. For example, one day I decided that some guy wasn't deserving of a CEO status, so I decided to demote him to a COO. That's the kind of shite that will get angry phone calls. Luckily I only did that once, and it wasn't a systemic thing.

One piece of advice that Nick Evans (Biotech editor) offered me at the end of my experience is that at this junior level, it always pays to spend an extra ten minutes with your copy unless the editor is yelling at you to finish up. Getting out copy quick is good, getting it out quick and with the odd-mistake will just make you look lazy.

Other (understandable) mistakes I made came from just not knowing the territory. For example, I don't know the people at the companies I was writing about, I didn't know if a company's capital raising was a roaring success or not and I didn't know why one company's better than another one.

One hilarious mistake I made was assuming that an oil reserve being "capped and suspended as a site for further development" was a bad thing. Turns out that the sentence didn't mean the company was giving up on the reserve, but just capping it and coming back to it later. I also made the hilarious mistake of describing a company's falling stock price as part of a horror year for the company (It's the middle of a financial crisis! Everybody's stock has gone down you idiot James!).

I also made the mistake of not being punchy enough with my first pars and slipping into passive and throwing a little too much colour into my stories.

Most of these mistakes though were made on the first day, and I straightened up and flew right after that. In fact the people at the company were impressed by my ability to adapt and change my style at the behest of their advice, and other than the small mistakes I made they said I was one of the better work experience kids they have had.

They said my copy was clean (relatively), tight and that it seemed I knew how to throw a verb or two around, you know, bend an ear with a turn of phrase.

My writing has been described as an 'easy' style, which is one of my greatest strengths. It means that writing seems to come naturally to me, rather than being a forced style, and this is down to a couple of key points.

First, I was diagnosed as borderline autistic when I was a child. I wasn't, they didn't know what the hell was wrong with me, but I did take longer to actually speak with any coherence than other people. In fact, I didn't start to speak properly and with any sort of confidence until I was about eight, so I found that writing things down helped my communicate without the stigma of actually having to speak (probably why I suck at broadcast).

Secondly, I'm online a lot. I chat online a lot but not once do I abbreviate or engage in 'text speak'. I write fully formed sentences which when it comes to doing so for the purposes of a piece of journalism, writing properly come naturally because it's the only style of writing I know.

So if you're an aspiring journo and you need better written English skills, it would probably be a good idea to write properly in all facets of your communicative life so that it comes easily when you start to write professionally.

Anyhow, I hope you were able to gleam something from that hotch-potch of ideas I just threw at you, and it will help you identify your weaknesses and strengths as a writer so that more people go out there into the workforce at ease with the tool of their trade.

Next time on the Jaded Prime, details of a freelance article written for The West and Jimmy's sojourn to Port Hedland next year.

What is wrong with my memory?

Well, it seems with all the hustle and bustle of completing my degree my memory of this blog has faded like my favourite pair of jeans. So, I'm sorry (to the one or two google bots who actually read this thing) I've been so lax in my writing but I've had other things on my mind.

Well, I've graduated for one thing. I managed to grab an above-distinction average for the third year, a period in which I actually chose journalism as a career choice and started to take it seriously.

I've also been fired for no particular reason, although if you were ask my employer if she fired me she'll say that she just couldn't hold a spot on the roster for me anymore or one of those weasel excuses.

If you put the pieces together though, I was fired to cut costs. I was one of the oldest employees there, so I had a higher paycheck than everybody else. It's the middle of a financial crisis and her husband works at an insurance firm while they try to pay off their mortgage.

You don't have to be a genius to put those things together to paint a bleak picture about the balance of power shifting in the wake of climbing unemployment.

A bleak picture has also been painted for the environment this week too, with the Rudd government releasing the 'white' paper, which may as well have been made out of baby seals as far as environmentalists were concerned.

The paper outline an emissions target for 2020, and for a Prime Minister whose campaign ran on green promises, the outcomes were most disappointing indeed.

It turns out all that modeling done by the CSIRO and scientists around the globe was absolute bubkis, and we need not adhere to any sort of target which will stretch us in any way. Instead of the minimum 20 per cent reduction in greenhouse gases most people have called for the Rudd government outlined a minimum five per cent cut, to rise to 15 per cent if other countries follow suit at Copenhagen.

To the cries of angry environmentalists and an almost speechless Bob Brown, they spruiked their plan as "striking the right balance" between economic concerns and environmental ones. I do concede that the economic downturn would create some pressure to scale down ambitions, but nobody expected this.

Of course business groups cried poor and said the plan would be a burden on business, despite the money promised to polluting industry to offset any losses from the emissions trading scheme, and the government has come out and applied some creative mathematics to make everything seem alright.

The government said that a five per cent target would equate to a 34 per cent per capita reduction and a 15 per cent target would equate to a 41 per cent reduction. True, our low capita base lends itself to the argument the we should do less because we don't pollute that much.

The thing is though, and this is very important; you're only taking five per cent of the pollution out of the air.

It doesn't matter about what we do on a per capita basis, it only matters about what we do in a gross tonnage reduction sense. We could do a 50 per cent reduction per capita and the Great Barrier Reef would still be at risk of dying, what matters is the raw amount you take out of the air.

Of course, this sits pretty with the popularist leanings of the Rudd government, that its trying to rationalise a failing as a win for the Australian people. He's trying to reassure us that we're doing our bit for the environment when his government does effectively nothing, just so he can throw around the sexy figures of a 41 per cent reduction per capita.

It's a shame the environment doesn't care about figures.