Jonny McCambridge: Lessons in my trade from the flipping, flapping swan

It may reasonably be assumed that after this amount of time I know what I am doing, and I usually like to indulge myself that this is the case.

Occasionally I may receive a request from a younger colleague or student to share some of my experience, to pass on the fruits of my hard-learnt (ahem) wisdom.

A question often asked is – what makes a good journalist? Some may think the most important element is good written, presentation or communication skills. Others may point to having the personality to nurture a wide range of contacts, or to be fearless and tenacious in seeking out the truth when our society is so much dominated by spin and obfuscation.

There is merit in all of these arguments. But the answer I generally give to this question is different. The most valued asset, I state, is something much more difficult to define; it is instinct.

Perhaps a useful way of describing it may the ‘nose for a good story’. Two separate journalists may witness exactly the same event but come out of it with very different impressions of what is important. One may think that nothing of consequence has occurred while the other is able to see the ‘line’ – the angle of the story which means that it can be presented as having the most impact on the widest number of people. I am not sure if this is something which can be taught.

When I make this point I usually add that stories are everywhere, and if you are able to spot them they can be plucked as easily as apples from a tree. While we are conditioned to look in the same places for copy – political institutions, the courts, police notes – the truth is that like the air we breathe, stories are everywhere.

I am coming to the end of another day. As ever when working at home it has been a challenge to balance responsibilities. I have been stationed at my kitchen table while trying to ensure my son does some school work. My concentration has often been disturbed by the buzz of chainsaws from the team of working men cutting the trees in my back yard.

Despite it all I am confident that I have done a good job. Before I turn off the computer I go through the pages of tomorrow’s newspaper. There is a good range of stories. I feel as content as I can that we have not missed anything.

Then I go to the corner shop to buy some food for dinner. I am lost in my own thoughts when I am stopped on the pavement by one of my neighbours. I’m about to greet her but she gets in first.

‘Did you see the swan?’ she begins.

It’s an unusual opening gambit and I respond with a puzzled frown.

‘You can’t have missed it,’ she goes on. ‘It was such a commotion.’

Again, I am perplexed so she continues.

‘A poor swan got lost, it must have come from the lake looking for food and somehow ended up in our street. In all my years living here I’ve never seen such a thing. How did you not see it? It came right into your back yard, the guys cutting your trees were feeding it there. I think just about everyone in the cul-de-sac was out taking photographs of the poor thing.’

‘Oh,’ I respond.

The neighbour fishes a phone from her pocket. The light is fading and I’m standing well back because of social distancing. But she holds the screen out in front of her and there it is, sure enough, a video of a swan flapping about on the stones at the gate of my back yard. A small crowd has gathered to watch. I can just about make out the outline of the rear of my house and my kitchen window where, presumably at the moment the video was taken, I was working.

‘That would have been a good story for the paper,’ she continues.

‘Yes. Yes it would.’

My neighbour bids me farewell and I walk on a bit further. I reach my front garden when the man who lives across the road shouts out to me. I wander in his direction.

‘Here, what about that swan? Flapping about all over the place. We had to phone the USPCA and the police because we thought the poor thing might have hurt itself.’

‘Aye,’ I respond. ‘I’ve just been hearing about it being round the back of my house near the trees.’

‘Yes, but then it came down the front. It parked itself in your front garden and started pecking at what’s left of that snowman you built last week.’

I glance at the remnants of the snowman. Then the man pulls his phone out and holds it up.

And there is a photograph of the swan, wings outstretched, on the lawn of my front garden.

‘That would have been a good story for the paper,’ he says.

‘Yes, yes it would.’

I go into my house. After I unpack the shopping I check my phone and there is a message from a friend, one who lives in a different part of the country.

‘Hey, did you see that story about the swan in your street?’ it reads.

My first inclination is to type ‘I’m sick of hearing about that flipping swan’.

But I stop and think.

Instead I type ‘How on earth do you know about that?’

‘It’s all over social media, it’s quite the drama.’

He sends me a link.

It is a social media post from the PSNI detailing the operation where they sent officers to rescue the injured swan, just yards from my front door.

After being treated by a vet, the swan was released again at the lake. The post has been liked and shared hundreds of times.

I get another message from my friend.

‘That would have been a good story for the paper.’

‘Yes,’ I reply testily. ‘Yes it would.’

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