Third day at work - my very first door stop interview

In the morning I just hung around the office coz our supervisor forgot about the interns' existence. So by the time she remembered only two reporters were left for us to follow. I stayed behind and had a pretty leisurely morning, lunch, the mandatory bubble tea and walked around Muji.

After lunch, YouYou & I got assigned to go out. I was assignend to go out with a cameraman to do a doorstop interview at Howard Hotel (just a 5 minute walk away from home in Taipei)
Coz the cameraman's partner reporter is busy covering duties for her upper charge who is on leave, he has been conducting interviews himself for about two months. (Yup I asked, he doesn't get double the pay, looks like manpower is stretched pretty thin)

The task on hand was to ask 金管会主委陈冲 about the share dispute between the two banks 金鼎證 and 開發金. Financial news is already daunting in English, what more with all the unfamiliar jargon in Chinese spoken at high speed. Luckily whatever I needed to ask was basically what the other TV stations' wanted too, so I left the asking to the other experienced journalists.

The journalists and cameramen all formed a line to block 陈冲 from getting past, shoving the mikes in his face. At first his assistant/bodyguards that flanked him all said "no questions, no comments" trying to wave us away. Then the reporters all have to persistently "beg" for just one question. Guess it's a whole routine they have to go through before the newsmaker "relents". Nothing controversial about his answer. Just the politically correct stand that the external party will not interfere with the banks' affairs and will be impartial. If you wanna get a better understanding you can have a look at the article below, in Chinese though:

http://news.chinatimes.com/2007Cti/2007Cti-Rtn/2007Cti-Rtn-Content/0,4526,110103+112009070100957,00.html

Five minutes and the interview was over. Though it'll be another chop chop affair, but it became a stakeout. Coz our competitor station Fei Fan, another financial news station, was staying back. So we couldn't leave in case that get extra comments or scenes. The realities of the cut throat competition in Taiwan's prosperous (0vercrowded) media industry. We waited at the lobby at first, stealing glances at the our competitor to keep tabs on their whereabouts . They walked away quickly and we lost them...

Initially I thought they left coz they went in the direction of the back entrance, but the cameraman said we should go back to the 4th floor just to make sure. Bingo, he was right. There was the cameraman sitting there outside the door. We waited around an hour or so before Fei Fan reporter got the green light to leave. So off we went back to the station. Pretty exciting day...

Meeting Machiko at Shi Lin night market after work.

Tomorrow I'll be heading down to KaoHsiong on the Speed Rail (thanks to Ah Tio for the sponsorship) Lettme do some advertisement for Speed Rail: during this summer break to encourage more Taiwanese to travel across the country they have discounts on tickets and a special buy three get one free deal. Not bad huh...