WINOL has been a success overall. The website has greatly improved since the first few weeks and has a professional looking layout, this is mainly due to the change from Joomla to Wordpress. News bulletins have been good in terms of the news agenda each week and the running order for each bulletin. In the first few weeks the order was a lot of packages one after the other, but the editors decided to have a ‘coming up’ piece after a couple of packages to keep viewers watching. Another feature introduced into the bulletins that worked well at keeping viewer’s attention was an OOV belt after a few of the packages.
The production team has been particularly impressive. As I have been operating the studio cameras for the bulletins over the course of this semester and also operated the autocue for the last bulletin, this has meant that I have had an idea of how stressful it can be to work on production. Everyone on the team has done their jobs well and stayed professional throughout each bulletin.
Other parts of WINOL I have been impressed with are sport and features. Football highlights packages have been put together well and sports news stories/features have been interesting. Sportsweek has been slightly disappointing in that it is usually 4 packages played one after the other wiht links in between each one, maybe next semster a Football League Show style programme could replace this format. Features work has got better over the course of the semester, including the two confessional interviews with Hitler’s ex-neighbour and Paul Blackburn and the work done by the fashion magazine team.
The WINOL website’s Alexa rank was 10,424 in the UK on Monday 10th December and was around 35,000 in the UK at the end of September, this is a huge improvement in just 3 months and the work from news, sport and features have made sure our ranking has steadily improved.
Although we identified a competitor for the website in ‘East London Lines’, it is a shame that we didn’t have competition from other student journalists for the news bulletin, but some packages produced were up to local news bulletin standard.
WINOL did 3 big projects this semester, BJTC awards, HPCC debate and American Election special, even though I wasn’t involved in the BJTC awards, I thought the finished VT was great.
I was involved in the WINOL’s coverage of the American election. There was a bit of confusion in terms of the organisation of the coverage at the start of the semester, but we decided to broadcast a 2 hour programme from 9am to 11am (UK time) on Wednesday 7th November to build up to the result of the election. Due to the election results being announced earlier than we expected, scripts had to be re-worked and everyone appearing on screen had to change almost everything they were going to say. That included me as I was the ‘newsroom expert’ as part of this I provided half hourly updates on the information that was coming in. My task was made a lot more difficult because the election was pretty much over. I was quite nervous the first couple of times I was on screen, but it was the first time I had appeared on screen live and I only had cue cards to guide me to what I was going to say. I was praised by Ian Anderson (a previous editor of BBC News at 10) for the work I did as newsroom expert, something I feel proud for. My only criticism of the 2 hour programme would be that it was decided that another journalism student would take my place for my role as newsroom expert, even though I was supposed to be doing the whole 2 hours.
Even though I had no role during the HPCC debate, the whole thing felt like a professionally run event, rather than a student project.
There were a few things that probably could have been done better on WINOL. At the start of the semester I felt there was a lack of leadership from the editors, but I think that someone ‘stamping their authority’ would have been detrimental to the quality of the work done. I also think that they were ‘bedding in’ to their roles, which we all were in the first weeks.
Another criticism I have is that there were a couple of packages that should have been spiked - including mine from 28th November. We had Geoff Hill coming in as a guest editor that week and so that the bulletin was a good as it could have been, my package probably shouldn’t have been in the bulletin.
In terms of the work I did as a news reporter, some of it was good, but there was room for improvement in most of my packages. I think the camerawork in many of my packages was good. A few examples of this come from the Totton car park package I produced on 31st October, both interviews were framed well as I had one councillor in the left third and the other in the right third. Another package where I composed interview shots well was my package from 28th November. One package where I was disappointed with shot composition was my first package from 10th October. One interview was framed well but the camera was on a tilt and the other interview was framed badly and the councillor filled almost all of the shot.
Although most of my filming was to a good standard, one exception being my package from 24th October. For other packages, I sometimes didn’t get enough shots. A prime example of this was the package I produced on 14th November, it was only 52 seconds in length when it probably should have been 1 minute 10 seconds or even 1 minute 20 seconds, this was due to me not getting enough shots in Southampton. I only filmed the cutaway of Councillor Smith typing from one height and angle as well as not filming enough cutaways around the city. I probably should have interviewed the councillors in different places than I did as the lighting wasn’t great. One thing I was disappointed about that week was that I had agreed with the news editor to do an in- studio discussion about the story, but whilst I was coming back to the newsroom, I was told that the discussion was cancelled and I would have to produce a VT.
Another thing I did well whilst on WINOL was getting balance in my packages, this is especially important as a political reporter. One package where opposing views were most present was from the Totton car park package, one councillor had the view that charging people to park in the car park was justified and the other disagreed with his viewpoint. I made sure I picked the best quotes from each interview to show this.
One VT where I had balance but only had one interview was from 17th October. The balance came from a statement sent to me by the leader of Southampton City Council. I think that if I had got another interview, my package would have got into the bulletin. My final news package for WINOL probably had too much Tory bias, but my second interview had to be done quickly as the councillor was in a rush.
In the first few weeks of WINOL, I had couple of technical problems. The biggest of which was from my package from 24th October, this issue was the main cause for the package not getting into the bulletin. The camera I was using shows whatever you are shooting in the entire screen if you set it to 4:3 view, which made me think that the shot would be OK for TV. The camera should have been in 16:9 view as this is the aspect ratio that was chosen to be used in the bulletin in the second week onwards. Apart from that, I got two interviews that gave the story balance and got some relevant shots.
Probably the worst day I had on WINOL was 21st November. I had planned to up to London to cover the student protests and to send back footage to be used in the bulletin. Once we had filmed everything we had to film, we set about importing, editing and uploading the footage. Importing and editing was easy as we knew what we had filmed was good and what we wanted to upload to Youtube. We were unable to upload the footage that we wanted to upload as the internet connection at the station wasn’t good.
We made a few mistakes that led to us being unable to send back any footage. We should have got at least 10 seconds of footage to the newsroom, but we weren’t told to get back that amount of footage by anyone in charge and I felt that were encouraged to send back as much as possible. We probably should have recorded my PTC at Embankment, not Westminister as this would have saved us at least half an hour, which would have been precious time for editing and uploading some footage. The final mistake we made was that we didn’t do a proper test of the time it would take for us to upload videos to Youtube on a slow internet connection, but we wouldn’t have been able to fully replicate the connection speed we had at Waterloo station. I learned from criticisms we were given and if I get the opportunity to an OB again, I will know what to do if I can’t upload the amount of footage I want.
The final week with a proper bulletin didn’t take its usual course for me. First off, I filmed the Winchester City football match on Saturday 1st December for a fellow student as he was unable to do it.
I had planned a news story for the bulletin, but on the Monday morning it became clear that due to not being able to get interviews, I probably couldn’t have done the package. I wasn’t left without anything to do in this week as the sport editor decided that I would be making two packages of the match I had filmed - a ‘fat minute’ for the news bulletin and an extended highlights package for the Sportsweek programme. A couple of things I learned about making football highlights packages just from this week was to watch the ‘raw footage’ before editing and to write down the clip numbers when a goal is scored or an incident occurs. I also learned a few things after talking to Angus Scott. I think my voiceover on the package was good as I didn’t describe the action or talk over the footage too much. I also made sure I put into practice the advice other sports reporters had been given in previous weeks by Angus Scott.
My performance as a news reporter could have been better and I was disappointed at how inconsistent I was in terms of the packages I made e.g my first package was good for a first effort but I was unable to keep the momentum from that going into the next package. Although I did have two good weeks in a row when I produced the Totton car park package on 31st October and then featured on our coverage of the American Election special on 7th November. My one week as a sports reporter went well, the footage was edited well, my voiceover was good and I got the package in on time.
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