On Thursday September 6 Norman McFarlane, a journalist at Bolander, came to talk to the Grade 5 students at Reddam House in Somerset West.
“We were privileged to have Mr McFarlane come and talk to us about his newspaper reporting career. I felt nervous when he walked into our classroom, because he seemed very strict and unlikely to take any nonsense.
“Also, my classmates had dared me to call him ma’am and not sir (which I didn’t do!),” said Sevi Barlow.
According to Ruby Potgieter: “He spoke to us about the explosion that took place on Monday September 3, at the Rheinmetall Denel Munition factory in Macassar. We asked Mr McFarlane a bunch of questions.”
“He told us all about the interesting structure and format of good newspaper writing. He also told us thrilling stories about his career.
“He made journalism sound such fun, it inspired some children in our class to become journalists,” said Kayla Joy Nel.
“I learnt that as a reporter you are allowed to share some of your own opinions, but not to influence other people’s opinions,” said Sevi.
“Mr McFarlane also told us about the opinion column he usually writes. Mr McFarlane and I actually have similar opinions. It was really cool to listen to what he thought. Everyone was really involved in his speech,” said Kayla.
Ruby said: “Mr McFarlane is used to speaking in a formal way, and he could be very humorous at times. I found something that you would not expect in a man so prim and proper … an earring in his left ear. How cool!”
“Thank you so much for coming to speak to our class,” said Ruby, Sevi and Kayla in unison.
