Professional Interview:

'How are you a journalist? You exploit every source you've got.'

Jim White has spent the last decade as a feature writer and sport columnist for The Daily Telegraph.

With a career that spans over almost thirty years, Jim was one of the founding members of The Independent back in the 1980s, and spent his year prior to The Daily Telegraph writing for The Guardian.  Alongside his career as a writer, Jim regularly contributes to BBC Radio 4 and Five Live, 'Radio is a different discipline its less formal and less collaborative.'

Jim’s journalism career began at university, writing for the university paper which opened the doors to his first job at a magazine, started by a friend of his. 'I got into journalism through the exercise of good fortune, I was extremely lucky.' Unfortunately, that magazine folded and Jim was made redundant. The journey which lead him to his current role at The Daily Telegraph was well earned; after his time at university and first magazine job, Jim spent time at a local newspaper group until he became a freelance journalist. 'I went freelance and I started doing shifts on fleet street papers, so diary shifts, news shifts that kind of thing. And then, again [I was] very, very lucky. The guy who had been my first editor rang me up and said some friends of his were starting a newspaper and did I want to apply for a job - that was the independent. So I went to the independent when it started, and worked my way up there. I was there for ten years and then I went to the guardian, I was there for seven years and then I came to the telegraph ten years ago.'

As a reporter, Jim enjoys the flexibility of not having to stick to a routine. With points throughout the week where column deadlines need to be met, the only real structure in his week come in the form of a scheduled football match or sporting event. 'Principally you get up in the morning and write something, you find something out and write about it.'

Writing articles and a sports column for a national newspaper comes with a huge pressure to satisfy readers and create a discussion amongst them, Jim does by giving his audience what they want to read about. 'Football is the biggest [sport] by far, I'm a general sport reporter but the football dominates everything. You get little windows, so the Olympics was great cause it was a football free zone and you wrote about other things and in the build up to it you were writing about swimmers, riders, cyclists, but most of the time its football because that’s what people want to read about.'

He believes that working for The Daily Telegraph allows him to be involved in what he believes is the imperative concept of journalism – sharing. 'Journalism gives you platform for dissemination of information and opinion. So being a national newspaper journalist is having a hugely listened to platform for you opinion. It’s a great vehicle.' He also believes that it is vital to be able to deliver on all platforms to get the job and be successful in journalism. 'The idea that you're just a print journalist is absurd!! Print is dying. You've got to know your way around you've got to produce what's required. I don’t think it’s possible that you can’t not exist online now.' Jim continued to discuss the importance of social media for online journalism whether you’re a national or local journalist – ‘Most people now would get to a newspaper website via recommendation whether it be from Facebook or from Twitter. Someone sending 'check this out' or 'this is a very good piece' and them clicking on it, that's how people get to newspaper websites. They don't go to the newspaper website and look at it first. They get to stories that way. You've got embrace that or nobody is going to read what you write.’

His career has developed alongside technology and was able to identify the dramatic changes in journalism and the way the industry has adapted to them. Although there were computers and electronic equipment available, Jim recalls spending his time at The Times working on hand typewriters 'You did everything in triplicate and you put your copy in a little steel tea box in the middle of the table, and whenever they felt like it some printer, bejewelled youth, would  come around grab it.' It’s not only journalistic tools which have changed and developed working practice has too to fit the demand of the advancements in technology, working practice has had to meet this demand also. 'The first time I covered Wimbledon was about 18 years ago, and at Wimbledon they have this wonderful bar for the press, beautiful, exclusively for the press and it overlooks some outside courts. It’s a great place to go, and when I first went that bar was full of journalists drinking, Sunday journalists who during the week are there  getting atmosphere, getting contacts but only have write one piece a week.' Jim continues say, 'If you go to Wimbledon now no one is in that bar. You just haven’t got the opportunity to go to a bar because at the moment Andy Murray wins a match you have to file a report for the website. In the old days you had hours before you had to file anything because it was only going to go in the next paper.' ‘Plus there’s a proliferation of other media, you've got radio people wanting comments, there's TV people wanting comments; you're all feeding off of each other.

In keeping with the demand of online journalism, Jim has written and been the face of various 'gonzo' style video clips on The Telegraph website, which focus on putting himself at the centre of the piece. A recent example saw Jim practising on the ten meter board with Olympic Diver, Tom Daley.

When asked if he enjoyed this this type of journalism, he said 'I quite like not being in the piece. Being an observer not at the centre of it. That's not necessarily my way I prefer watching, as a fly on the wall. One of the good things about being journalist is that you just have a notebook and nobody notices. Their behaviour doesn't change as a result. Sure, if you speak to them they're gonna’ put on an act. But with a camera it slightly, subtly creates an artificial situation where people act a bit.'

Throughout his career, Jim has had the opportunity to interview many high profile people and greatly admired sports personalities, but when asked about his favourite interview, he referred to a feature he had written for Q magazine many years ago. 'I was sent to Los Angeles, to Hollywood to interview David Lee Roth, who was the lead singer of heavy metal band Van Halen. I had no interest in him and no interest in heavy metal at all. But I spent three days with him and found them the most interesting, fascinating, amazing - it was three days of pure pleasure, and a lot of background for a 2000 word piece. But it was great, he was hilarious!'

Despite the dramatic changes in the media over the last 25 years, Jim would still encourage anyone with a passion for journalism to pursue it, even in the competitive climate of today. ‘If you have a passion for an area then that will come through in your journalism and there’s journalism for everything.’ Even though getting a job in journalism is difficult, Jim highlights that ‘The process of getting a job in journalism entails all the skills you need to do the job. If you can get the job, you can do the job fine.'

Written by Kirsty Warwick-McDonagh