Today we had our first guest of writers fortnight, Steve Dawson. Initially, I thought it would be him coming in and only telling his life story from when he started reporting sports up until this point, today I learned this isn’t the case. Now I realise that although he did give us a brief backstory on his life, the presentation was mainly based on his tips for us as journalists and what we can use to improve our skills. I am a lot more confident now in asking the right questions as he gave us the top 5 useful tips. His tips mainly focussed on making sure you don’t ask questions that can just be answered with ‘yes’ or ‘no’ and also engaging the interviewee. This session has taught me a lot more about Steve Dawson because even when he was just giving us tips on our journalism, him speaking to us for the period of time gave more of a connection which will make it easier if I write an article about him.

If I was to ask Steve Dawson 5 questions, they would be:

• If you could choose one person to be your partner that you’ve interviewed, who would it be and why?
• What would you have done differently in your career reflecting on it now?
• How does it make you feel when you feel when you interview someone who’s in a bad mood?
• Why don’t you want to pursue a different type of journalism/reporting besides sports?
• Where do you think you would be now if you hadn’t started reporting/commentating news?