Talk:Heather Simpson (journalist)

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The article may be improved by following the WikiProject Biography 11 easy steps to producing at least a B article. -- Edofedinburgh 02:57, 21 March 2007 (UTC)

From interview from 2002 which could help improve this page: http://web.archive.org/web/20030308235553/http://scotlandtoday.scottishtv.co.uk/team/heather_mcginty.shtml Bulletin and lunchtime presenter Heather McGinty wants to be cheeky to Sean Connery, and ask the nationalist actor why he doesn't live in Scotland.

But although she hasn't yet interviewed Sir Sean, her job with Scotland Today has brought her into contact with some exotic characters...

She says: "After suffering from arachnophobia for years I went on a desensitisation course at Glasgow Zoo and took the camera along. Although the piece was about 4 minutes long, it actually took over an hour and a half....and finished with me holding Rosie the tarantula."

Heather particularly enjoys working on human interest stories.

"I love getting people to talk to me about their lives and telling me about themselves," she says. "A couple of years ago I worked on a piece for World Aids Day and went to the hospice in Edinburgh where the patients talked openly about AIDS and HIV and how they coped.

"Not only did it give me an insight, but some viewers called to say how much the report had interested them and made them think."

The other two stories which particularly stand out for Heather were covering the news conference after the death of Donald Dewar, and reading the morning bulletins on the day after the first Scottish Parliament elections.

She says: "Results were still coming in through the course of the morning. It was a remarkable day to work as the Scottish Parliament was formed before our very eyes."

Heather studied English at university before joining voluntary organisation CSV Media, which makes community programming, from where she managed to get some work experience on Scottish Television's Wheel Nuts.

"I guess this whetted my appetite and as soon as it finished I wrote to the Head of News unashamedly begging for a job," she says.

"When I started at Scottish I was in the Forward Planning section where you work on stories that are coming up, arranging interviews and sorting out the daily news schedules. From this I moved onto news assisting, which is really the best grounding you can get in the newsroom. This is when you start working on shifts and have a lot more to do with actually writing up reports, perhaps for the next day's bulletins.

"I first started presenting by doing the early shift, which is really the best way to start as you're presenting at least five bulletins a morning, so that's 25 a week. By the end of the first month you've lost most of your nerves. I did this for nine months before presenting on the other shifts.

But as much as she loves her job, in her spare time Heather does her best to get away from broadcasting.

"As my husband also works in television we like to go to the cinema and eat out rather than watch and talk about television all the time!"

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Substituted at 17:29, 29 April 2016 (UTC)