VIEW FROM THE PRESS BOX (2): EVERTON

Looking towards the Gwladys Street End. Early 1970s architecture does not offer clear lines of vision!
Star rating out of five: 2

SPECTACULAR TALENT

There are always two sides to a story and last night's ceremony at Liverpool Town Hall proved the point. In my home city we've had a gutful of shootings and other malicious crimes. Last night I joined Radio Merseyside's Alan Jackson in hosting the City of Liverpool annual sports awards. The city honours all the young sports contestants who have won national championships or represented their country. Dozens of talented kids were there, from sports as varied as football and tae-kwon-do, cricket and trampolining, wheelchair basketball and wheelchair tennis. The hard work which the youngsters put in on a daily basis is awe-inspiring, personified by Katarina Thompson who has won a breathtaking array of athletics events and tops the UK under-20 rankings in the pentathlon, heptathlon and high jump despite still being in the under-17 age group. Katarina was named the city's Young Sports Personality of the Year and I predict she will become known far outside Liverpool in years to come.
It was also great to see top sports names turning out to support the youngsters - Phil Thompson, Sammy Lee, Derek Mountfield, Beth Tweddle, Mike Watkinson and ex Sports Minister Richard Caborn all helped made it a fabulous evening under the spectacular chandeliers of Liverpool Town Hall.
This blog doesn't make a habit of plugging sponsors, but it is well worth giving Capita a pat on the back for their backing on this occasion. Sponsorship of mega events like the Premier League is attractive because your name is known everywhere, but providing some cash to help an event like last night's is never going to win huge headlines. That's what makes this sponsor's support even more valuable. If we don't invest in our kids, we'll all be the losers.

ROMERO: DEEP, DRIVEN AND VULNERABLE?

Fascinating session today in which the Year 3 broadcast students were shown Rebecca Romero's Inside Sport interview. Before we started I asked them to write on a piece of paper three buzzwords they would immediately associate with Rebecca, and then collected in their papers. We watched the seven-minute interview. When it ended you could have heard a pin drop. Immediate responses included: "It was piece of art." And "It was a metaphor for Rebecca's own way of life."
We discussed the journalism on show. What had we learned that we didn't know before? How did we learn that? We also discussed the ethics of this piece. Was it ethically justified to expose her to such an unusual scenario?
At the end of it I asked the students to write on a piece of paper three buzzwords they would now associate with Rebecca Romero. We compared their new buzzwords with the originals. It was revealing. The originals had been purely factual: icon, winner, medal, Olympics, etc. The new ones were all about emotions and character: focused, ruthless, conflicted, deep, driven, complex. 'Vulnerable' was an interesting one.
In January the Sunday Times ran an article by Paul Kimmage in which Rebecca complained about the BBC programme. So, from the group of 12 students, I asked for a show of hands on the question: did Rebecca come out of this interview well? Verdict: Yes 11 No 1
Something to interest her management team, Octagon, perhaps!

REBECCA ROMERO

There are interviews that are interviews. And there are interviews that are events. Into the latter category comes BBC TV's interview with Olympic cycling gold medalist Rebecca Romero last autumn.
The interview, on Gabby Logan's Inside Sport, was remarkable because there was no interviewer. Instead, Romero was positioned in an empty warehouse and the questions were relayed by an audio link. Instead of looking at a reporter, she was looking at a loudspeaker (and a camera crew, of course).
The result was a strangely powerful piece of television in which the attention of the viewer was focused more sharply than usual on the person being questioned. (The word "interrogated" came to mind for some reason.)
Today I spoke to both the producer of that piece, Mike Jackson, and the reporter whose questions were relayed from another part of the building, Eleanor Oldroyd. I was researching a lecture to be given later this week on unusual ways of conducting a TV interview. Why did they choose this method? Mike told me it was because he wanted to recreate the pressurised, isolated world in which Romero excels in her sporting life. And also because he wanted to probe this unique Olympian's personality by putting questions which might not have been achieveable in the conventional way.
Eleanor confirmed that she would probably not have asked some questions (such as "what do you dislike about yourself?" which elicited an illuminating answer) if she had been face to face.
It was a fascinating interview at the time and the issues surounding it are equally so. Rebecca was apparently quite happy immediately after the interview but later complained in an article in the Sunday Times. And one of the many aspects which continue to intrigue me is the feeling that the cause of pure journalism was somehow assisted by the removal of the interviewer from the room: that the humanity that exists between two people together can mitigate against the exposure of fact, detail and emotion.

TODAY'S TALKING POINT

It isn't always the big exclusives that set people talking. On my mind all day has been a poll in today's Observer of the top football songs, headed by "The Referee's Alphabet" by legendary Merseyside band Half Man Half Biscuit (Tranmere Rovers fans). My vote however would go to "Meat Pie Sausage Roll, Come on Oldham Give Us a Goal" by Grandad Roberts, one of the North West's major contributions to football culture! It was reversioned for an international audience in time for the 1998 World Cup by the simple substitution of "England" for "Oldham." This is the football song as nature intended - eternally optimistic but inevitably doomed (when the song ends they're still waiting for the goal that never seems to arrive).
Inexplicably, it fails to make the Observer's shortlist.
Judge for yourself: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=30_50J94m84

VIEW FROM THE PRESS BOX (1): BOLTON

The walkway linking to the TV gantry is top left with the gantry itself in line of vision beneath the roof. The rectangular shape mid-left is one of the TV monitors which allows journalists to see replays of goals and other key incidents during the game.

Star rating out of five: 5

SPOTTED IN REEBOK PRESS ROOM

UCLan Sports Journalism graduate from 2008 Ross Davies is a sports reporter with the Waltham Forest Guardian. He was reporting the Bolton v West Ham game for the paper.