FRANK Gilfeather is a freelance sports writer and broadcaster. And a media trainer too.
He submitted this on Wednesday, July 17.
What exactly is it that you do?
I am one of the growing band of freelance journalists flooding the market these days, although I set out on my own almost 24 years ago when I left my job as sports correspondent of Grampian Television before it morphed into STV North.
While I write a weekly current affairs column for the Aberdeen Evening Express, my other jobs include writing on football for The Herald, the Sunday Herald, The Times, the Sunday Mail and a plethora of other newspapers.
I also write the occasional news feature for The Scottish Sun and the Scottish Daily Mail and I broadcast weekly for Sky on their Gillette Soccer Saturday programme.
I also carry out media training as a sub-contractor and participate in regular emergency response exercises for the North Sea oil and gas industry through a specialist company which retains me.
What did your working day today or yesterday comprise?
Ah, the summer months; they are very much my downtime and, as I write this, I am into my final week of a two-month stay in Singapore where I have children and three wonderfully-tiring grandsons.
I’ve been writing my Evening Express column from Singapore and did some other business, including signing up as the Scotland football correspondent for a major UK sports website.
I have also been negotiating with the Southeast Asia bosses of a global organisation to write and produce a coffee-table book on an iconic brand within their stable and hope the talks will be completed before I return to Scotland on July 24.
Sorry, not yet able to reveal names…
How different or similar is your average working day to when you started?
I’m not sure I’d take to starting out as a trainee news reporter today. Working on The Press and Journal and then the Evening Express on news was exciting and fun, 40 and more years ago. At Grampian TV, too, it was enjoyable and, when the big stories broke – Piper Alpha and many others, not to say following the great Aberdeen team that won the European Cup-Winners’ Cup – it was thrilling.
Those were fairer days, too, when employers recognised house agreements and stood by them and journalists actually met people face-to-face in their quest to unearth stories. From what I gather, newsrooms are pretty-much like battery-hen operations. Reporters from my generation would find it outrageous to have to return from an assignment, write with perhaps another version for the paper’s website, all after you’ve tweeted the guts of the story before you’ve even left the job.
How do you see your job evolving?
I have managed to keep ‘the plates spinning’, through versatility. My many years as a broadcaster with Grampian TV, Radio Clyde, Sky and, for four years, until 2010, Northsound Radio as a Sunday morning phone-in host, has afforded me the opportunity of enjoying variety in my job.
Add to that the writing of two books – Confessions of a Highland Hero and Ross County: From Highland League to Hampden (both published by Birlinn) – and I guess you can say I’m a lucky man in terms of the spread of work I do. Taking on new jobs will see my job evolve, despite being at the mercy of my paymasters.
What gives you the most job satisfaction?
Many things; writing a decent 1,000-word commentary or feature, delivering a good broadcast and being stopped in the street by readers of my Evening Express column and offered congratulations on some of my thinking or taken to task over an opinion I’ve stated. I’ve been writing the column for 12 years.
