Just a quick note to all the reporters out there who are busting a gut to get information about the Christchurch quake out to the public – and particularly those in the city itself.
You are doing an amazing job – I can’t even begin to imagine what you guys are going through right now.
Before I turned to the dark side and became a communications advisor I was a journalist for a daily newspaper, and it was the ambulance chasing that I struggled with the most. Jumping into a car and heading towards the sirens, not knowing what I was going to find.
I was really lucky. Nothing even remotely close to what is going on in Christchurch happened on my watch. The hardest interview I ever had to do was speaking to the mother of an 18 year old boy who died in a fire as a result of a very sad accident. She was incredibly strong and just wanted to talk about her wonderful son – and in the end she was the one offering me a drink! At one point in the interview she made a very poignant comment and, almost without conscious thought, the first thing that popped into my head was “that’s my intro.” I felt revolting, like a vulture. After I left her house I pulled the car over, had a cry, then went back to the newsroom and wrote up the story – and that was only one death.
After the paper was published, the boy’s family called and thanked me for getting his story across and some of his school friends came into the office to buy extra copies of the paper. Those people will never know how much I needed that thank you.
So here’s my thank you. I have been glued to the internet/newspaper/television hungrily searching for information and trying to make sense of what is happening to my home town. Many of you will have friends, family and colleagues affected by this tragedy. You will be physically and emotionally exhausted, but you will keep going because that is what you need to do.
The fact the Press got an issue out after what happened to their building is nothing short of amazing.
There are so many people out there so desperate for information and you are doing an incredible job.
PS – You have probably already read this story, but if not, please do. It is written by Vicki Anderson from the Press who was in the building when the quake struck and it is the most beautifully written piece I have read on the quake so far: The day the earth roared