Do it, file it, move on

I must be as naive as Press gazette’s Dominic Ponsford who expressed surprise that journalists sent interview tapes to transcribers before writing them up after Guardian rock critic Alexis Petridis tweeted part of his interview with Take That.

He points to the legal risks of getting something wrong on the basis of a transcriber’s error. But I’m more bothered (as someone who spent his first 18 months in the job filing almost everything from a phone box) by what it does to the intuitive nature of reporting.

And it doesn’t help someone who regularly tells students they should not leave the hearing/scene/doorstep or comfy sofa without knowing exactly what the story is and roughly how they’re going to write it.