Critical Reflection - Year Three Semester One

WINOL has been successful in places this semester, but I don’t think there has been a good level of consistency across any part of the operation.

For most of the semester, news stories were only being put on the website on Wednesdays and no new content was being uploaded at other times in the week, this resulted in the website being stale until Mondays. In some weeks, only a couple of stories were being written until after VTs had been finished. A few weeks before the end of the semester, it was the decided that we would write a skeleton story and then add to it when people have been interviewed and additional information is gathered. For the last few weeks, the only new stories on the website on weekends were sports stories.

Alexa data shows that WINOL’s UK ranking this semester has been quite poor compared to competitors JMU Journalism and Leeds Student. On 4^th November, WINOL’s ranking was 32,503, JMU Journalism’s rank was 4,719 and Leeds Student had a rank of 18,349. On 4^th December, the rankings for those three were as follows, WINOL – 30,063, JMU – 156,743 and Leeds Student – 65,803. The figures from 13^th December show WINOL to still be the best ranking student publication. WINOL’s ranking was just over 40,000 and Leeds Student’s ranking was over 50,000.

WINOL consistently beat the Hampshire Chronicle to remain one of the best ranking news websites in Hampshire. On 4th November, the Hampshire Chronicle’s ranking was 56,493 and a month later, their ranking was 49.025.

I don’t think that a solid target audience for the website was established. We could have either been a local news website or a news site for students, but I don’t think this was determined at the start of the semester. If the audience is the local population, then a lot of promotional work should have been done in order to get circulation figures of the website up as well as viewing figures of news bulletins. If the audience is students, then more should have been done to promote WINOL on the university campus. An advert was put on the campus TV screens but I think that posters would have been a more effective way of getting students to go on the WINOL site.

I got the impression that some reporters saw the website as somewhere to put their text stories and VTs online. I don’t think there were enough sub-editors to be able to cope with the number of text stories being submitted on Wednesdays and as a result, stories were uploaded slowly. The four subs were given a huge amount of work to do every Wednesday and as they were focussing on important production work, stories did not get put online when they should have been. I think that having more sub-editors would have solved this problem as they could have subbed stories when production work was being done.

The quality of the news bulletins was not as high as in previous semesters, but this was because second year students took some time to getting used to producing packages and third years were not contributing to it as regularly as they did in the previous semester. Packages were plagued with technical problems, including poor sound mixing and/or out of focus and unsteady shots. Interviews were not always framed well, but as the second years began to pick up tips and advice from the third years as well as guest editors, their work improved.

To improve the quality of news bulletins and to keep the quality consistent, I think that a fortnightly news editor rota should be used. If and when things go wrong in the first week someone is the news editor, the second week can be used to improve those things. I think that having 5 or 6 really good bulletins would be better than having 10 or 11 average ones.

At the start of the semester I moved into the role of Sports Editor. I achieved a level of syndication that hadn’t previously existed and also introduced regular use of graphics on football highlights packages. This sets a new standard for the next sports team.

Before the semester began, I obtained good contacts at the football clubs we cover, I knew that if I could build good relationships with the clubs, I would have a better chance of syndicating our content to them and target football fans. Having a good level of syndication was one of my main aims for this semester as I knew that it would give the fans a better chance to watch the highlights than if they were only on Youtube. In the first week, I posted the link to the bulletin, which included highlights of their game against Weston Super Mare, on the Basingstoke Town forum and a director at the club asked if they could put it onto their website.

I syndicated content to Basingstoke Town and AFC Totton four weeks in a row from week five to eight, this consisted of three highlights packages and one interview. The content that we produced was well received by the clubs as well as fans. The fans were our main audience so it was great to have them praising our work. It would have been easy for us to produce average quality highlights packages in order to please the fans, but I wanted to give them better quality highlights as I knew that they would appreciate them.

Despite putting effort into syndicating highlights to the home teams, I didn’t syndicate our highlights to away teams enough. The only week that I did syndicate to an away team was the last week of the semester. Biggleswade Town were only too pleased to put highlights of their game against AFC Totton (bulletin/Sportsweek 4/12/13) on their website.

At the start of the semester, I said to the reporters that I wanted at least two cameras used at matches. This was adhered to most weeks, but sometimes people were unable to film, therefore the quality of highlights packages was not as high as when two or three cameras were used.

When football matches are covered in the future, there should be four or five people if possible: three to film the game and one or two people to take photos. These photos can then be used in ‘picture specials’ on the WINOL website.

I tweeted match updates to the @WINOL account when I was able to, but I don’t think that this would be good idea in the future though as football clubs have their own accounts and they are updated quite regularly throughout matches, so fans will go to the club accounts, not the @WINOL one.

As well as syndicating content, I tweeted the link to Sportsweek to the home and away football clubs every week and put it on club forums, but as some fans don’t have Twitter accounts or read the forums, syndicating highlights to the clubs allowed us to gain views from a source that hadn’t previously been explored on WINOL.

I also tweeted the link to various Non-League football Twitter accounts including the accounts of The Non-League Paper and The BBC Non-League Show. I also tweeted the link to the Twitter accounts of sporting organisations when necessary.

The first few football matches were not filmed well. There were shaky shots in places as well as some action difficult to see due to cameras not on a high enough zoom level, but as the semester continued, reporters were filming tighter and the action was followed much better.

Some of the best highlights packages were AFC Totton games. Tate’s Totton vs Arlesey Town packages (bulletin/Sportsweek 30/10/13) and so was Drew’s Totton vs Biggleswade Town packages (bulletin/Sportsweek 4/12/13) were both good. These packages were filmed and scripted well, at some points, voiceovers were too descriptive, but overall, I think that these packages were among the best produced all semester. The Totton vs Biggleswade highlights benefited from use of better graphics.

The coverage of Basingstoke Town that we produced was at first not up to the standard that I wanted. In the first package, the action was a bit difficult to see as the shots were not tight enough and the voiceover was also too descriptive. As the semester progressed, our coverage of Basingstoke got better. One of the best was their match against Dover Athletic (bulletin 6/11/13). An extended version of the package was also produced and I uploaded it onto the WINOLSPORTS Youtube channel as we didn’t have a Sportsweek that week. Basingstoke Town put these highlights on their website. Following the syndication and other promotional work done by myself, the video on the Youtube channel had 300 views by the following Monday morning and currently has over 600 views.

Another good Basingstoke Town highlights package was their game against Hampton and Richmond (bulletin/Sportsweek 20/11/13). Basingstoke Town put it on their website.

The features produced at the start of the semester were not of the same quality that they were at last semester. Some feature packages were poorly filmed, shots were held for too long or for not enough time, with strange zooms and pans. Interviews were sometimes poorly framed.

There were some good feature packages though, including Sam’s American Football feature (bulletin/Sportsweek 30/11/13) and Laura’s Volleyball feature (bulletin/Sportsweek 16/10/13).

Both packages had everything that features of that type should have – lots of action, interviews and a piece to camera. I would have liked to have seen more footage from the GoPro in Sam’s package and close up shots used in both.

At the start of the semester, there were not enough text stories being written. Football match reports were a bit hit and miss in terms of quality and I had to edit them a lot. The quality of reports improved over the course of the semester as reporters began to learn how to expand on the basic structure.

I don’t think reporters showed much initiative when it came to getting stories, not enough phone calls were being made to sports clubs and organisations.

At the start of the semester I phoned and/or emailed the football clubs about filming matches and even though I told the reporters to make the calls themselves, this was not always followed. In fact, I think it only became regular in the last two or three weeks.

I think that the video and written work that I did was good. My only package of the semester was an AFC Totton highlights package and I was happy with almost all aspects of it. I also believe that it was the best highlights package that I have produced on WINOL. I also wrote quite a lot of text stories over the semester, these were mainly short sports news stories, but towards the end of the semester, I wrote a few articles summarising weekend Non-League football in the leagues that we cover. I was pleased with these articles because I included all of the important information and wrote concisely.

 

In some weeks, I chose not to have a Sportsweek because the content was either not good enough or there wasn’t enough of it. I sometimes had to be ruthless in cutting packages, but in doing so, I think that reporters produced better work.

I also introduced the regular use of graphics with the score, scorers and goal times, the aim of this was to allow viewers to keep up with the matches, especially if a lot of goals had been scored.

I used a large graphic with the team names and badges at the start of Drew’s AFC Totton vs Biggleswade Town package, this should have been used in all of the highlights packages during the semester, but it is something I can pass onto the next sports team.

I also put a ticker on the same Totton package for Sportsweek. The ticker had the league’s other results from the weekend as well as the league top five and bottom three. I also used some more creative editing in the headlines of the same edition of Sportsweek, which gave the programme something a bit different to what has been used on WINOL Sport before.

The graphics and editing really improved the quality of the programme and made it feel more like a real sports programme.

I also used score graphics on the Sports package for Super WINOL. This was a ‘season so far’ round-up of our football coverage from October to early December. I also included parts of the best features, which helped to break up the piece. I made the edit between each goal much quicker than in the full packages, this made it more interesting to watch for people without a heavy interest in the teams we cover and gave it greater impact for viewers.

Overall, I think that the quality of WINOL has not been consistent but there were occasions when good work was produced. More time needs to be spent on text stories as well as camera skills.

WINOL Sport views

Each week I noted the YouTube view count of Sportsweek as well as separately uploaded packages. I took the view count every Monday morning after the Wednesday that the video had been uploaded.

Week 1

No Sportsweek

 

Week 2

85 views

 

Week 3

93 views

 

Week 4

178 Views

 

Week 5

204 views

Week 6

No Sportsweek

Separate Basingstoke highlights – 300 views

Separate Neil Hards interview – 160 views

Week 7

185 views

Week 8

435 views

Week 9

No Sportsweek

 

Week 10

Sportsweek - 70 views

Separate AFC Totton upload - 100 views

Syndication of WINOL Sport content.

In six out of ten weeks, I syndicated content to football clubs.

 

 

Week 1

 

Highlights of Basingstoke Town vs Weston Super Mare were syndicated to Basingstoke Town. http://www.basingstoketown.net/first-team/video-highlights/match-highlights-btfc-v-weston-super-mare/

 

 

Week 5

 

Highlights of AFC Totton vs Arlesey Town were syndicated to AFC Totton. http://www.afctotton.net/match-highlights-from-winol/

 

 

Week 6

 

Highlights of Basingstoke Town vs Dover Athletic were syndicated to Basingstoke Town. http://www.basingstoketown.net/first-team/video-highlights/dover-highlights/

 

 

Week 7

 

Interview with David Armstrong was syndicated to AFC Totton. http://www.afctotton.net/david-armstrong-interview/

 

 

Week 8

 

Highlights of Basingstoke Town vs Hampton and Richmond were syndicated to Basingstoke Town. http://www.basingstoketown.net/first-team/video-highlights/hampton-richmond-highlights/

 

 

Week 10

 

Highlights of AFC Totton vs Biggleswade Town were syndicated to Biggleswade Town.

 

(Screenshot is of club website, see ‘Latest news and updates’ section).

 

 

WINOL Critical Reflection notes weeks 9 and 10

Week 9

We didn’t have a Sportsweek this week as not enough content was produced, but we had quite a good section in the bulletin. Sam’s interview with Giles White was filmed and edited well, Giles’ voice was a bit quiet and this was due to the gun mic not being close enough to him. Radio mics were not available so we had to use gun mics, they picked up background noise and this negatively impacted on the quality of the package. Laura’s Eastleigh highlights package was not colour balanced properly, but well filmed. The scripting was good.

Week 10

Drew’s Totton highlights package was well filmed, but his voiceover was too descriptive in places. The graphics added to the package made it look a lot better, especially the graphic at the start and the badges in either corner. I added a ticker with scores and the league standings to the package in Sportsweek and this further improved the look of it. I should have used similar graphics in previous highlights packages, but this is something that I can pass on to the new Sports Editor.

We were unable to film the replay of Basingstoke Town’s game against Havant and Waterlooville, but we included footage of the first game as an OOV and graphics to show the score of the replay as well as the draw for the next round of the competition. I think that I made the best of the situation. Laura’s handball piece was quite good, a few shaky shots here and there, but overall a good feature package. At the start it was fast paced and a lot was happening, but as the package went on, the exciting shots seemed to run out. The voiceover was good and she did well to explain the sport.

Syndicated highlights to Biggleswade Town. (Screenshot is of club website, see ‘Latest news and updates’ section).

 

 

 

WINOL Critical Reflection notes weeks 7 and 8

Week 7

Football highlights good in places. Both Laura’s and Tate’s voicing in good, but scripting needs work – too descriptive. David Armstrong interview was good and probably got us quite a few views from the Southampton forum. Breakdancing piece was OK, it was not as good as feature pieces we have had before, but it was nice to have something other than football and interviews in SW.

Syndicated David Armstrong interview to AFC Totton. http://www.afctotton.net/david-armstrong-interview/

 

Week 8

Drew’s Basingstoke package was really good, his scripting has improved as well as his voice. Laura’s piece turned out good after a lot of deliberation over certain aspects of it on the Wednesday, but despite Sportsweek going online a bit later than I had originally planned, the work we did on Laura’s VT was worth it in the end.

Syndicated highlights to Basingstoke Town. http://www.basingstoketown.net/first-team/video-highlights/hampton-richmond-highlights/

WINOL critical reflection notes weeks 1-6

Week 1

This was my first week as Sports Editor and I used it as time to get reporters up to speed with certain things e.g. the production processes of WINOL Sport.

We didn’t produce a Sportsweek programme because we only had one VT, a Basingstoke Town highlights package. For a first go I think Laura did quite well. The action wasn’t particularly easy to see as the camera wasn’t zoomed in much, but this is something that will improve over the semester.

We only had one camera at the match and this meant we didn’t have different angles to cut to for replays, but this will not happen again and having two or more cameras at football matches will become standard.

Syndicated highlights to Basingstoke Town. http://www.basingstoketown.net/first-team/video-highlights/match-highlights-btfc-v-weston-super-mare/

Week 2

An improvement on the previous week, but I wasn’t overly pleased with how things turned out. I wanted more written stories on the website and told reporters to give me a written story if they do not have a VT.

Week 3

Sportsweek went out late as a package was not finished until 7pm, I told reporters that giving me a VT until that late simply isn’t acceptable. Views not very good.

Week 4

Things started to pick up in this week and although Sportsweek was quite light in terms of content and views weren’t very good, I felt that the reporters had got up to speed as the quality of packages had improved. See blog for feedback.

 

Week 5

The best week of Sport so far. Sportsweek originally had 5 packages in it and most of them were up to the quality I am looking for. On the next Monday, Chris advised me to cut the Winchester City package from Sportsweek and re upload it. On reflection I probably shouldn’t have included the package in Sportsweek in the first place, but at the time I wanted it in because the match had been played on the Tuesday night, therefore our most recent content. By cutting the Winchester package I raised the quality of that week’s SW because a poor VT had been cut out.

Syndicated highlights to AFC Totton. http://www.afctotton.net/match-highlights-from-winol/

Week 6

This week we didn’t have a Sportsweek because we only had three packages and one was not up to the quality that I am looking for. The other two were really good and still deserved to go online, so I uploaded them to our Youtube channel.

Syndicated highlights of Basingstoke Town. http://www.basingstoketown.net/first-team/video-highlights/dover-highlights/

WINOL Sport week 5

I am really pleased with Sport this week, but something happened that must NEVER happen again and that put a dampener on what was a good week for us.

Tate - Your filming was great, which made the whole piece a lot more interesting to watch. Your voicing was good and although your script was too descriptive in places, it is easy to learn how to write better scripts. Despite him saying a few good things, the interview with Steve Riley was a bit too long. I know you had problems cutting though, when people don't give outs it can be a problem.

You were fully deserving of Chris Coneybeer's praise.


Charlie - For a first go at producing a football highlights package you did pretty well. Despite being unable to get onto the roof, you did well to film the game at pitch level and on Saturday you will be able to improve your filming if you have to film at pitch level.

Your voiceover was a bit descriptive in places, but it is easy to learn how to not do that.

The massive problem with the VT that went on the original version of Sportsweek was that you had got some of Sholing's goalscorers wrong. This can't happen because if a VT is factually wrong, it is nonsense. Fortunately I noticed the problem and you were able to change your voiceover on Thursday and I could re upload it with the new VT,  but that must never happen again.


Sam - I thought that your piece was really good. The PTC at the start was like something from a real sports programme. My only gripe with that part of the VT was the pan across the signs on Wembley, when I first watched, it looked OK, but after seeing it a few more times, I think you should have cut from a still shot of the 49ers sign to the Jaguars sign.

The filming of the Uni training session was good as there was a lot going on. There was not enough variety of shots though, it would have been nice to see some close up shots.

The interview with the captain was shot well, but you had a building in the background, which is a no-no. I suppose it would have been difficult to have much else in the background because of where the training sessions take place. You could have made him stand facing towards the building, but the light may have been an issue if you had done that.

Your voiceover was entertaining and the shots of you taking part were good, it was a shame that you only had one clip of GoPro footage as having more of it would have really improved the quality of the VT.


Laura - You did well to make a not so interesting story into a VT that I wanted to watch. The opening shot was nice and you left just enough time between the start of the piece and your voiceover.

The shots of the cyclists were nice but the same as Sam's VT, there were no close up shots. The interviews were generally well shot, but the second interview looked a little odd as the woman was holding a gun mic. Even though she was short, you could have got tighter into her face and left less headroom. All you had to do was put the tripod down a bit and re frame until it looked right. Remember that you are in control of an interview, so take as much time as you want to make sure they are framed well.


Drew - Your bulletin package was a good sports news piece and the addition of you taking part in the sport for the SW package lifted it. I thought that you scripted that section well, it made it interesting to watch. The piece could have been improved if you had put on a radio mic and been filmed talking about how hard the sport is whilst you were actually playing. Doing that would have made the piece flow a lot better and instantly engaged someone watching. More close up shot needed!



Notes to all

To make your football highlights scripts less descriptive, watch the BBC's Football League Show. Even if you don't want to watch the football, listen to how the reporters voice the packages. They use quite a few facts about the teams and the players. Viewers can see what is happening e.g. if Newport County player Chris Zebroski hits the post, you can see that happening, so the reporter won't say that the player hit the post, but will say something like 'it was the third time that Zebroski has hit the woodwork in as many games'. This makes the VT more interesting and is especially important at the level of football we cover, the quality of play isn't usually very good so an interesting voiceover is needed in order to spice up the VT.

You MUST fact check every VT and text story you give to me. I shouldn't have to pull you up on wrong information because you should do it right the first time. E.g. if you are producing a football highlights package and you are unsure of which player has scored then feel free to ask me and I can help you identify the player and/or look at a match report and/or call the club to get a list of scorers. Double check and even triple check your facts to make sure you are correct.


There was some great work this week, please keep it up and remember you can always do better.

If there is anything you need me to go through, please ask.

WINOL Sport week 4

Laura - I thought your highlights package was probably the best that we've had this semester. Your filming was pretty good, but you didn't zoom in close enough to the action and as a result the action was a little hard to see in some clips, but the footage from the second camera gave the viewer another perspective and allows you to see the action better. Your voiceover was too descriptive but you mixed the natural sound well with your voiceover. This meant that we could still hear the NATSOT but not so much that your voice was drowned out.


Tate - Overall I thought it was a good piece and with a bit of cleaning up it would have been a really good item as the quotes Ben Strevens gave you were good. Your piece to camera worked at the start as it is a feature interview, not a serious news piece. You sounded tinny and I don't know why that has happened. Did you try to turn down background noise on FCP? You also repeated what I had said in the link as soon as the package started.

Your choice of cutaways was good and considering we only had one game to work with, you did well to show Strevens in all the clips. I thought you could have used some pictures of him as cutaways. You would have been able to get a couple of images cleared for use somehow. You could have contacted some of his former clubs as I am sure they would have had something for you to use e.g when he mentioned Brentford and Crawley it would have been nice to have pictures of him playing for Brentford and Crawley.


Charlie - Your Dodgeball package was pretty good but it still had a few problems. The main one was that the interview wasn't framed correctly. Angus went through this with you and you know for next time to leave the camera recording with the interviewee looking at where you will be standing when you are asking the questions, this means that you can adjust the shot before you begin the interview. If you want me to go through this with you, please say.

The next problem with the package was that you assumed prior knowledge of Dodgeball. How quick does winning a game in 16.5 seconds compare to the speed of how quickly Dodgeball games are usually finished in? The viewer needs to know.

The footage of Dodgeball was pretty good and had 'people doing things', which is something we want to see. Once again, your voice was too quiet and I know you talk quietly but make your voiceover a bit more expressive. It is a sports feature, so be enthusiastic!


If any of you want me to talk to you about what I have said, please ask.

WINOL Sport week 3

It was a much better week for sport than last week, however there are a few issues I want to point out.

Tate - It was your first package for WINOL and it showed in some places, but saying that, no one's first package is going to be particularly good, it's just how things work.

I think that your filming of the game was OK, but you didn't zoom in enough to the action so some of the action was difficult to see. You should find a level of zoom that allows the viewer to see the action but doesn't mean that you lose the ball when filming.

The main thing wrong with the package was how late it was completed, if your bulletin VT is late then it puts pressure on the production team, but the Production Editor Nicole was fine with the bulletin sport package being in the gallery at 2.30, I believe this was the case because it was your first package, so this is something that can't happen again. Your bulletin VT being done early means you can concentrate on finishing the Sportsweek version.

Due to not completing your Sportsweek version of the highlights until after 7pm, Sportsweek went online very late. Next time you edit a football highlights package, pick out all of the usable chances
 and then copy the clips onto a new project for the bulletin. Cut out all the clips you don't want on the this package and then get it finished before the end of Tuesday. This means you have enough time to finish editing the Sportsweek version. Anything you want me to go through about this please ask.


The voiceover was OK, but it was difficult to hear on the bulletin package as the NATSOT as too loud. You turned it down on the Sportsweek version and you were easier to hear. The scripting of the voiceover could have been better but only in a couple of clips I noticed things you could change, sadly because of how the action had been filmed, you were unable to have long clips, therefore less time to talk over the footage.


Laura - I think your package was really good. It had all the elements needed in a VT of that type - a good news peg, exposition with GVs, a interview, good PTC and you taking part in the sport. Your GVs were OK but I think some close up shots should have been used.



Lewis - A definite improvement on last week and I thought the way the VT went from a feature on the football team went to WINOL Woodwork worked pretty well. I had to edit the package down quite a lot as the WW part was too long, I also added music to it as the footage on its own sounded a bit strange.

The interview was framed well, but the picture quality wasn't great and as a result it reduced the overall quality of the piece. It was unfortunate as the vice captain said some interesting things.


Charlie - Your feature on the girls Dodgeball team sounded pretty good, you had a news peg in the form of the team winning a bronze medal at a recent competition and had organised an interview with the captain of the team. It didn't work out in the end as the footage was all was too dark, especially the interview. I decided to not use the package in the end, but if there is any news from any of the Dodgeball teams, please suggest an idea for a VT to me, as it would be good to have something about Dodgeball in the bulletin or on Sportsweek this semester.


Drew - I think your footage of the Eastleigh game was pretty good, a bit shaky in places but we were able to use all of what you filmed of the goals.


You presented the bulletin sport and Sportsweek really well, a little more expression in your face would have been nice, but for a first time I thought it was pretty good.


This week coming up is very important for us as Angus Scott is coming in. The football highlights package for the bulletin should be done by Tuesday and then you should have the extended version finished by midday on Wednesday as putting this together shouldn't be too difficult as you should have a lot of the extra footage picked out already.

WINOL Sport week 2

Overall I thought that this week’s Sportsweek was pretty average, however some aspects of it were quite good.

 

Drew – I thought that for a first go at producing a football highlights package, you did pretty well with filming and editing it. Your camera movements were too shaky at some points and you move the camera too much, almost every time the ball moved or a player on the ball moved, you moved the camera. The best way to do it is to find the ideal zoom level so that you don’t have to keep moving the camera when the ball moves, but it still lets the viewer see all of the action and the shot stays smooth.

I thought your editing was good though, you used all of the best chances except for one of Concord Rangers’ chances when the striker skied the ball when in a one on one with the keeper. I think Tate’s footage of that chance was quite good so you could have used the main camera shot as well as her footage of the chance in the highlights.

Also, your after watching Sportsweek back, I realised that your voiceover sounds too relaxed. You needed to put a bit more emphasis on certain words and give the whole thing a bit more ‘oomph’.

Tate – Your camerawork was pretty good considering it was the first time you had filmed a football match, my only complaint would be that you didn’t get the ball going over the line for Eastleigh’s goal, I saw the ball in the net but your camera movement was too jerky so I saw the ball being struck and then the ball in the net, but nothing in between.

 

Laura – Same as Tate really, the clips we managed to use were good and your footage of the Concord goal allowed Drew to combine his clip with yours to create a nice edit. To avoid the fans getting in the way at the next game, maybe move along a bit from where you were last Saturday. This will allow to get a better angle of the action if it is on the other side to where you are.

Lewis – After watching through your package a few times, I realised that it probably wasn’t up to standard, simply because of the interview. I was going through Sportsweek with Brian and he likened it to the TV programme Creature Comforts! Your voiceover was also a bit confusing at some points. It would have been a good article for the website though, maybe if something like that comes up again write it up as an article and then think about how you will make it into a VT.

Charlie – For a first package I thought it was quite good, there were a few things wrong with it though. The main one was that your voiceover lacked any punch (no pun intended!), I know you have a quiet voice anyway but you need to almost become a different person when recording voiceovers! There probably should have been a PTC in there, but that was a joint decision we made when we were at the boxing club.
 

Also, , don’t say ‘I spoke to’ before your voiceover, it sounds a bit unprofessional. To be honest I should have picked up this on when I read your script.

 

We need to have more written stories on the website, so each week if you don’t have a package you need to be writing an article. I want 3 or 4 articles on the site a week, including the match report. I’ll talk to all about this more on Monday.

After talking to Brian about football highlights packages, the opening shots of the teams coming out of the tunnel, shaking hands, warming up etc aren’t the best shots to have. Maybe start with the build up to the first clip of a chance or a goal. Even if you show shots of the teams coming out of the tunnel, shaking hands, warming up etc, we could have graphics to show the lineups, I will find out how to do them and will hopefully have these graphics on the VT next week. I will get score graphics done for this week’s VT though.

Also, at the end of highlights packages we perhaps need to stop having the players shaking hands at the end of the match. End the highlights of the football with action and an extension of the final clip.

After each chance or goal, please record lots of the aftermath e.g the player who has missed walking away from goal. I always used to find the player who had scored or missed a chance and zoomed in on him, this means you have to be quick with zooming and focussing, something you get used to if you do it often enough.

It wasn’t a fantastic week for us, but we have nine or ten more to make things better.

MSN News and Sport work experience

I recently spent a week at MSN News and Sport on work experience, I learned a lot during the week and was able to contribute articles and picture galleries to the website

Despite MSN not being the biggest news organisation it has a huge audience. I mainly worked with the sports team, which only consists of a few journalists, but it is not a problem as a lot of the sports news content is fed through by the Press Association - just like the news content. Features, match reports and interviews are mainly written by members of the sports team as well as freelance contributors.

Picture galleries are widely used on the Sport section of the website, they provide readers with something more interesting to look at rather than just words. I created some galleries during my time at MSN. I was given the responsibility for creating and maintaining the 'Premier League confirmed transfers' gallery, I had to research all the transfers that had been confirmed and compile the information into a gallery of pictures. I used an image of the club's biggest signing as well as listing all their other transfers. I also created two 'live galleries' for matches at Wimbledon. I updated the score after every game and used images from the Press Association.

I also turned press releases and interviews into pieces for the site, these were quick and easy to do, but added something different and original to the website as most of the other content is sent to MSN by PA. I also created galleries from pictures either sent in by PA or ones that we had sourced.

I also wrote a news story about the harm Chinese lanterns can cause, I called several parties who wanted to have a say on the issue and used their quotes to write the story. This gave me more experience of making calls and working to a deadline.

Working at MSN helped me to improve upon the journalistic skills that I already had as well as learning how to use the Bedrock content management system and how a newsroom works, which will stand me in good stead for when I start a job after completing my degree.


Links to the pieces I produced during my week at MSN.

Chinese lanterns news story

Premier League confirmed transfers gallery

Wimbledon funny faces gallery

Lions third Test preview

Andy Murray animals gallery

WINOL Critical Reflection – Semester 2.

This semester, all areas of WINOL have been improved upon and I have been especially impressed by the quality of the news bulletins. They now look more professional, which is down to an improvement in the quality of packages, as well as a headlines section at the start of each bulletin. I also think that the new title sequence is the best that there has been on WINOL as it grabs the attention of viewers with the speed at which the graphics appear as well as the pulsing music.

The Alexa rank of winol.co.uk has improved over the course of the semester, but it has not been as good as last semester’s ranking. The website’s UK Alexa rank on January 30^th was 33,950 and the best rank was on March 6^th when it was 9,154. Circulation figures once again surpassed those of East London Lines and we didn’t see them as direct competition. In turn, we began to see ourselves as competing against the Hampshire Chronicle and Daily Echo. We were nowhere near the Daily Echo’s rank as it was always below 2,000, but we beat the Hampshire Chronicle’s rank, the average UK Alexa rank for the newspaper’s website from late January to late March was 31,569 and WINOL’s was 12,399.

The website has seen an improvement in layout over the past few months and it is now easy to access the wide variety of content produced by the WINOL team. The top half of the website looks professional and is easy to navigate, but the rest of the page looks cramped, which may deter people from coming back to the website.

The WINOL special this semester was the Eastleigh by-election. The work done by the news team in the build up to the election was good and we worked really well as a team on the night to produce two shows. My role was newsroom expert, delivering frequent updates to the studio on the social media and live blog activity. I felt that me and Sam Sheard (also a newsroom expert) did not receive much advice on what to say, which meant that what we did say wasn’t of a very high standard compared to the rest WINOL’s live by-election coverage, but we probably should have looked at more websites and feeds than we did.

Before the election, reporters produced some high quality packages, all the major parties were covered and some high profile political figures were featured including Boris Johnson and Nick Clegg.

The news output has been of a very high standard this semester and some of the packages have been the same sort of quality that are on local news bulletins. I was especially impressed by Luke Garratt’s round-up of the Eastleigh by-election, he covered all the main issues of the election and the scripting was very good. I also thought that the court and crime reports produced by Christina Michaels were of a good standard, she frequently had lack of GVs, but she compensated for this with extended pieces to camera, which worked well as they were either outside the court or in a location appropriate to the case that she was covering.

This semester there has not been a set news editor, but each week the quality of the bulletin has remained at a high level and this is because everyone on the team has the same sort of ideas on how the bulletin should look, as well as the production team working well with the news editor each week.

The work done by the features team has mainly been written articles, including fashion magazine ‘Absolute:ly’ and new magazines ‘The Volt’ and ‘New Winchester Review’, which I have been especially impressed by. Articles have been interesting to read and have covered a variety of subjects. There has been a lack of video content across all of the magazines and when there have been video features, they haven’t been of the same quality as last semester. The focus for the features team has been on getting the new magazines up and running, which lays the foundations for next semester, when more video content should be produced.

My role this semester was sports reporter and I have adapted to the role well. I produced highlights packages of Eastleigh FC’s home games as well as sports news and features packages. I am reasonably happy with the work that I have produced.

After a few weeks of WINOL, the sports editor decided that reporters should promote Sportsweek using forums and social media. The episode of Sportsweek from March 13^th has received over 800 views and I believe that this has happened for two reasons. First of all, the Eastleigh game that I filmed that week was on the Tuesday night and Sportsweek was put on Youtube before the club’s highlights went online. I posted a link to the episode of Sportsweek on the Eastleigh FC forum straight after it had gone online to ensure that fans watched it before they watched the club’s highlights. Another reason for the high number of views that particular week was the excerpt from Liam Garrahan’s interview with Spanish football expert Guillem Balague where he asked him a question about the Southampton manager. Liam posted the link to Sportsweek on the club’s main forum.

The high number of views that Sportsweek received was also down the features on University sports produced by Kirsty Phillips. She posted links to Sportsweek on the Facebook pages of the relevant University sports teams and this is how we got a lot of the views in the editions of Sportsweek that her packages were featured on. One of her packages that I thought was produced well was about Winton 2013, she covered many of the sports that took place during the weekend and the edition of Sportweek that the package was on received over 600 views.

The sports editor recognised that the quality of football highlights packages greatly improved when more than one camera was used, so he decided that as a team we should produce a multi-camera highlights package. Five of us went to Eastleigh’s play-off semi-final first leg and filmed the game. I thought that the package we produced was of a very high standard as we had multiple angles of goals and incidents. We had a problem with identifying a certain player. If we had got this wrong, we might have defamed him on the graphic and in the voiceover due to him being involved in a violent incident. We checked his identity on multiple websites and came to the conclusion that the player we were referring to was indeed him.

We asked Angus Scott to watch a rough cut of the package and he gave us some useful tips on ‘crossing the line’, this is when you cut from a camera at one angle to a camera at another angle and is something that should not happen in a football highlights package the first time you see a goal or an incident. We ‘crossed the line’ a few times in the package but we rectified our error and removed the shots that we needed to.

The quality of Sportsweek episodes has been good overall, but having more football highlights packages with a multi camera set up would have further improved the quality. Due to bad weather, we were unable to film some football matches, but features packages from Jack Griffiths and Liam Garrahan filled out the bulletin’s sport section and Sportsweek when we had a lack of football highlights. These features gave Sportsweek a different dimension and attracted a slightly different audience.

I presented the edition of Sportsweek on February 6th and I thought I did a reasonable job. I didn't express myself enough in the first couple of links, but I corrected this in the rest of the links. I also had a go at presenting the WINOL highlights package and I thought that I did a much better job of expressing myself when reading the links than I did when presenting Sportsweek.

Sportsweek Radio continued this semester and I co-hosted a few shows. I thoroughly enjoyed my time on radio and I learned how to use the radio studio as well as how to write for radio.

I think that my football highlights packages have been quite good, but there were problems with some of them. The biggest problem I had was with voiceovers, despite the content of voiceovers being relatively good, I wasn’t happy with the way I spoke on a lot of them. For all but two of the packages, my voice wasn’t upbeat enough and when attempting to rectify this, I struggled to make my voice not sound overly dramatic. Whilst the voiceovers were much better on the Eastleigh vs Eastbourne and Eastleigh vs Boreham Wood match packages, I feel that there was room for improvement. Angus Scott said that I spoke too quickly on most of the voiceovers, which is something that I took on board for my James Taylor interview package as well as my feature on Fencing.

I didn’t have a 2^nd camera at enough of the matches I covered. After my Eastleigh vs Chelmsford City package, I realised that a 2^nd or 3^rd camera would really improve the quality of my packages as it lets viewers see the action from another position. When I had a 2^nd camera at a match, the quality of the package was noticeably higher and when other sports reporters used 2^nd cameras at matches, their packages looked much better as well. An example of this was Harvey Taylor’s package on Winchester City’s match against Swindon Supermarine, I liked the way he cut from one angle to another for one of the goals. I frequently struggled to get people to do 2^nd camera at games for me because other reporters were either filming for their own packages or unable to help for other reasons.

I had an issue with the post-match interview in my first highlights package - Eastleigh vs Farnborough. I framed the assistant manager well, but he was in front of a wall with a sign on it and this looked ugly on the final edit, but I included it in the package because I got some good quotes. I rectified the mistake in my next package when I positioned the manager with his back to the pitch and I made sure that the floodlight was behind him in order to light up the shot, which looked really good.

I think that the best highlights package I produced was Eastleigh vs Havant and Waterlooville. I had a 2^nd camera at the game and the content of the voiceover was better than previous packages as well as sounding more upbeat. I made sure that I didn’t just describe the action and this is something that I thought I did well in all of my highlights packages.

I think the Fencing feature that I produced was one of my best pieces of work for WINOL. I was pleased with the interview as the fencer gave me some good sound bites, the shot was framed and lit very well. I also thought that the shots of fencing were good and I plenty to choose from as I had filmed a lot. I used GoPro camera footage at the end of the package, which looked good but the clip I used was the only useable footage. I had to do filming for the feature twice because the first time I filmed, I didn’t check the camera before I started filming, it was on a low light setting which meant that all of the shots looked grainy. One problem I had when editing the package was a lack of cutaways of the fencer that I had interviewed. I got around the problem by getting permission to use two photos of the fencer.

I have enjoyed my time as a sports reporter and have learned more about camerawork and editing as well as improving my scripting skills.

HCJ4: The New Journalism

American Journalism

In the mid 19th century, penny papers were set up as a source of news for people as their desire for news grew. These papers had allegiance to political parties e.g. the papers produced by Horace Greeley, such as The New York Tribune, were linked to the Republican Party.

Objectivity became more important in the mid 1800s and agencies such as Associated Press needed neutrality to be profitable.

The first New Journalism was the Yellow Press in the late 19th century, it was more interesting than previous publications.

Sensationalisation: These new papers used eye catching headlines and pictures to get readers' attention as well as shocking people and causing a stir. A lot of the stories covered were about sin, sex and violence. The modern day equivalent would be tabloid newspapers such as The Sun and Sunday Sport.

America in the 1960s and 70s: There was a great deal of political upheaval - foreign wars and military threats from other countries.


Political and Cultural scene: The 1960s were turbulent, but JFK brought hope to America. That was gone when he was assassinated and when the Vietnam war started.

The Baby Boom after WW2 created a generation of radical young people who had more choice e.g. the pill and drugs.

The prohibition of drugs created subcultures such as hippies and communes. There was the idea that all bad things come from youth (this still exists today!).

Music was central to these youth subcultures - for Satre, Jazz was authentic music. The music of the 60s was an attack on the norms of society e.g. The Doors and Bob Dylan. The Revolution Will Not Be Televised by Gil Scott-Heron.


Influence of Existentialism

The ideas of Satre and Heidegger influenced a lot of the ideas that young people had, as well as song lyrics. There is no superstructure (social or religious) when you're born, your choices shape your world. The next choice that a person makes is the most important one and could shape their life. According to Fanon, violence is the acceleration of choice.

Are journalists in bad faith when they use press releases and press conferences as bases for stories? Journalists such as Tom Wolfe and Truman Capote sought to gather information differently, they went directly to people, instead of reading a statement that had been put out. They couldn't trust those in power when they were lying and the Police were shooting students.

New Journalism became a subjective experience, rather than objective.

Tom Wolfe

The way he wrote was similar to that of Steinbeck - focussing a lot on simple details and his surroundings. He looked at apparently normal things. He was influenced by Emile Zola.

Feature writing also changed, all details were put on paper.

In New Journalism, Wolfe describes 4 key features that all feature articles should have:

1: Scene by scene construction
2: Capture dialogue
3: Take a 3rd person point of view
4: Record gestures, habits and traits to extreme detail

WINOL critical reflections weeks 9 and 10

Week 9

I filmed a feature on Fencing in this week, but the footage was grainy and I didn’t want to use it, so I arranged to do the Fencing the next week. I had to find something to do a package on, so I interviewed Winchester City’s manager James Taylor. I turned the interview into a package about the club’s low position in the league and made light of the club being unable to be relegated and there only being 6 players at the training session that I interviewed the manager at. I felt everything went well except for the interview itself, I had to redo it as I wasn’t happy with the first interview I did. The second one went better and I think the shots I got of the players training was fine and that the package turned out OK in the end.

Week 10

I filmed the feature on Fencing in this week and the footage looked good. I used the interview from the week before as it was shot well and what the fencer said was not time sensitive. I had someone film me fencing and that footage looked good as well, except for one part but due to fencing being difficult to film and the camera being close to me and the man I was fencing, it was unavoidable.

Overall, the package was quite good as I thought I gave a good amount of information, but not too much that it would have bored viewers. It also had an element of fun, which I thought stopped it from simply being an information piece on the sport.

HCJ4: Totalitarianism

The lecture focused on 3 aspects of Totalitarianism: How it can happen, the language used to control the population and the personal responsibility that people have in these regimes.

How can it happen?

One of the first Totalitarian regimes was Plato's republic, it was against the state having limted power and that there should be any sort of social contract theory.

After nearly 100 years of peace after the French Revolution, huge atrocities took place in countries that were considered to be civilised such as China, Russia and the philosophical powerhouse that was Germany. Society was supposed to be cultured and sophisticated and past terror would never be repeated, but people that thought that were clearly wrong.

The real kick-start for these regimes was the imperial nature of the 19th century, one example is the British Empire, it controlled around 1/4 of the Earth's total land mass by the early 1920s. The Nazis were influenced by the actions undertaken in the empires, some of those served as inspiration for the concentration camps in Nazi Germany, including the camps of General Kitchener in the Boer War.

The key features of a Totalitarian regime: Ideology, a dynamic/charismatic leader, control of individuality and some form of inforcement (msot likely violent). "Everything in the state, nothing outside the state" - Mussolini.

Hannah Arendt wrote about the Totalitarian regimes of the 20th century in her book 'The Origins of Totalitarianism'. She said that the ideology of the regimes gives them "the total explanation of the past, the total knowledge of the present and a reliable prediction of the future". For HA, the first mvoe of the Nazis was to stop the Jews from being free. She was shocked by the actions of the modern day Totalitarian states and said that they were nothing like those in the 19th century. She also highlights that civilisation is fragile.


Control language and control minds

George Orwell was horrified by how much leaders could control their own population with language. A key quote from 1984 relating to language is "Don’t you see that the whole aim of Newspeak is to narrow the range of thought? In the end we shall make thoughtcrime literally impossible, because there will be no words in which to express it."

If a Totalitarian leader can control the language in their regime, he can control his people's thoughts. Therefore, mind control is possible if you can control language. A leader can abolish certain words and phrases and essentially make their own 'super-language', this was done in Soviet Russia to a degree. The main idea of controlling language is to control people's thoughts and even their actions, therefore destroying individuality.


What is my personal responsibility?

We looked at the trial of Adolf Eichmann, a Nazi bureaucrat who was in charge of the transport for the Jews going to the concentration camps. Although he didn't kill anyone directly, his actions ultimatley led to millions of Jews being murdered. He was put on trial for what he did was sentenced to death.

This raises the question of how much responsibility a Totalitarian leader has. Take Soviet Russia as an example. Although Stalin never killed anyone directly, he ordered KGB officers to kill millions of Russians during the time known as the Purges (or Terror). It was his actions that led to his people being killed, but there is the argument that he had no personal responsibility as he didn't actually shoot or torture anyone. This can also relate to people under the control of Totalitarian regimes, if someone was to do nothing to stop the actions of Stalin, does that person have any responsibility for what happened?

Coming back to Eichmann, Hannah Arendt was shocked to see someone like Eichmann - a seemingly boring man who spoke in cliches and had no characteristics to suggest that he could commit such unspeakable acts. HA called it the "benality of evil". She thought that Eichmann's worst crime was not thinking before doing what he did and simply following orders. Eichmann followed Kant's Catergorical Imperative: 'Act only according to that maxim whereby you can, at the same time, will that it should become a universal law.'

Satre said that if we just follow along and don't make a choice, then we are living in bad faith. We msut make a personal judgement rather than following the law when making decisions.

HCJ4 - Seminar 4 (inc. Seminar Paper on Existentialism)

Due to WINOL covering the Eastleigh by-election, the seminars were doubled up and seminar 4 covered Existentialism/Albert Camus' book 'The Stranger' as well as Economics inc Keynes and the book 'The New Industrial State'.


Existentialism/'The Stranger'

This is my seminar paper on 'The Stranger'.


The book highlights many existentialist ideas such as there being no higher power to guide people in life. It also looks at how society is unnatural because it can shape our views. Another important existentialist idea is that choice is key. We have the ability to choose to do what we want to do and when we want to do it.

The first chapter of ‘The Stranger’ deals with the death of a character simply known as Maman, who is Meursault’s (the main character) mother. It is obvious that her death doesn’t seem to matter to him, this is shown when he says “Maman died yesterday. Or maybe yesterday, I don’t know”. Meursault doesn’t express any sort of emotion when he hears about the death of his mother, which is a trait continued later on in the book. He only seems to be concerned with the timing of her death, not the fact that she is dead. You could say that this quote highlights an idea that Nietzsche advocated - human existence is meaningless. Maybe Meursault’s viewpoint is that ‘we are all going to die’ so it doesn’t matter that Maman has died as she was going to die anyway.

Kierkegaard said we should accept that death is both unpredictable and inevitable, as many people struggle to grasp the idea that they will one day die. He blames society for our attitude towards death, society seems to deny death and this makes it harder for people to accept death and move on when it suddenly affects them.

Meursault’s detachment from any sort of emotion is highlighted again at Maman’s vigil. Meursault can’t understand why the women are crying because as far as he is concerned, Maman’s death shouldn’t matter to anyone because she is dead. Meursault takes the existentialist viewpoint that we should simply accept death. In prison he accepts the fact that he is going to die and doesn’t seem to mind that he will be executed because as he has previously stated, death is inevitable. He says “I’d never really been about to regret anything. I was always preoccupied by what was about to happen, today or tomorrow”. The future is the most important dimension for existentialists. Our most important decision is the next one we make.

Meursault doesn’t grieve for his mother the day after her funeral. He goes about what we believe is his normal Sunday routine - going swimming, seeing Marie and watching a film. At the end of chapter two, Meursault says “It occurred to me that one more Sunday was over, that Maman was buried now, that I was going back to work, and that, really, nothing had changed”. This is a clear example of him not really caring about Maman’s death and that he has accepted what has happened and already moved on.

Meursault’s lack of emotion is once again shown when he kills the Arab. He doesn’t have any regret for the murder as he doesn’t seem to dwell on past events and is only concerned with the present and the immediate future. Heidegger said that if we dwell on past events, we will only feel guilt.

Meursault murdering the Arab also shows that death is meaningless and unjustified. Meursault affirms his belief that this is the case when he reads a story in a newspaper about a man whose mum and sister killed him because they thought he was a rich guest to their hostel. Meursault also sees that there is no rational order to the world.

Another Nietzschean idea that comes up in the book is ‘God is dead’. Meursault might be behaving in the way he is because he doesn’t believe in a higher power, so he doesn’t have to please anyone as many religious people think they do.

Meursault’s only show of emotion is at his mother’s funeral. Her good friend Perez is flagging behind the main group and Meursault seems to feel sorry for him. There is a stark contrast between their reactions to Maman’s death. Perez is really hurt by her death, whereas Meursault sees it as meaningless that anyone is sad that she died. This again relates to the ideas advocated by Nietzsche and other nihilists - life is meaningless and the existence of the world is also meaningless.

Heidegger talked about ‘facticity’. A person’s facticity is made up of all of the events that have previously occurred in their life. Heidegger said that if someone was to use their facticity as an excuse for things that they have done (e.g. someone using their bad upbringing as an excuse for committing crime) then he is a ‘das man’. Being a ‘das man’ also means that you would let what people think you should do affect what you do.

Throughout the book, Meursault proves that he is not a ‘das man’ because he makes choices. He chooses not to show any emotion at his mother’s vigil and makes the choice to shoot the Arab. Meursault would be expected to cry after finding out that his mother has died and would be expected to not shoot to Arab as he has withdrew his knife, but he chooses to go against what society would expect him to do, as he is his own man and no one can make decisions for him.

Meursault in turn shows that he has ‘transcendence’. This means that he reacts to his facticity by making decisions. Not based on what other people would do or expect him to do, but based on his own morality, this is another existentialist idea.

Meursault’s ability to make a decision also relates to Franz Fanon and Nietzsche’s desire for people to ‘do something’. They would want existing political/social structures to be destroyed so that future improvement can take place, this can only be done if people make choices.

It is clear that Meursault is an outsider to society. This could be because he looks at the physical aspects of a situation, rather than the emotional or mental ones. A quote late on in the book that highlights this is when Meursault says that the prosecutor “announced that I had no place in a society whose fundamental rules I ignored”.

This goes back to the point I made that existentialists say that society questions people who don’t follow the conventions and unwritten rules in society. This is shown when the prosecutor tells the jury what Meursault did the day after Maman’s funeral, probably in an attempt to make the jury see Meursault as a bad person. This is despite the fact that what he did on that Sunday should have no bearing on the jury’s decision. After all, Meursault has as much choice and free will as any of the members of the jury.

Despite existentialists believing that we are in control of the decisions we make, Meursault has no control at one point during the book. After the first part of his trial, Meursault is taken back to prison and then back to court in a short space of time. You could say that he is in control though, because he chose to kill the Arab and he would have known that that decision would have led to him being on trial. During the trial, Meursault asks why he is actually there, because he knows he is guilty.

The way that Meursault reacts in certain situations could be considered inhuman or even similar to the way that a ‘psychopath’ would react, but that is only because certain things have been ingrained in me. This is something that existentialists are firmly against and say that we must make our own judgements on the situations we are faced with using our own internal morality and no one else’s.

 

 

Notes from seminar

 

Schopenhauer said that life is meaningless and that we should just kill ourselves. We must find something to avoid our hellish existence, this can be alcohol or drugs, but also something like music - which is the most pure form of intoxication! These fixes are only short term though.

 

Humans are motivated by their own wants and desires, this is known as the will.

 

Existentialists believe that stuff exists without having any inherent meaning. If we strip away everything we end up with a blank canvas, but we can 'paint on it' and make the world what we want it to be. Make the world 'our own'.

 

The world is full of meanings, but we put meanings on the world.

 

In The Stranger, Meursault decides what is important and what is not. He doesn't care about the past as it is just that - the past. We can't do anything to change what has happened before. If you regret not doing something when you had the chance and spend the next few weeks regretting it, you should then be looking back to a point in history before you were born. You have no way of changing what happened before you were born, so why should you think about it? As the Oasis song 'The Masterplan' goes, "Everything that's been has past". Do what Noel Gallagher says - don't think about the past, you can't change it.

 

If we do think about the past, we are living in 'bad faith', according to Jean-Paul Satre.

 

 

 

Keynes/'The New Industrial State/other Economics stuff

 

The book 'The New Industrial State' advocates the need for a managed society, whereby the state controls corporations and the production of goods as well as providing services. Galbraith (the writer of NIS) said that too much control from the state is bad.

 

John Keynes advocated an economic system whereby money is pumped continuously being printed. Nowadays it is called 'quanatative easing'. It is essentially just printing money in order for the economy to 'pick up'. The main problem is that this new money goes to the banks, not the general public, so it doesn't get spent.

 

It could be argued that Keynes was a socialist as he wanted to print more money and give it to the less well off people in society and not richer people. He doesn't want to do it for moral reasons or be a modern day Robin Hood, but simply because poorer people spend money on things like cigarettes and alcohol (another Oasis reference), this in turn boosts the economy and those who sell and produce the goods being bought.

 

If you give a man £100 he'll spend it, not save it. Rich people are more inclined to save it (giving it to the banks).

 

The government taxes rich people higher because the government needs to get back the money that rich people stow away.

 

Another example of Keynesian economics at work nowadays is when 'NEETs' (Not in Education Employment Training) have to go to classes that keep them off the streets. They get money for going to these. This seems pointless at first glance, but by giving them money, the government knows that the NEETs will spend that money because they are poor. In the true spirit of Keynesianism, not just one person is employed to give the NEETs their money, because by paying more and more people to hand out the money, the government is in turn putting more money into the economy because it knows that the employee will go and spend their wages, just like the NEETs.

 

Hayek took an opposite view to Keynes and Galbraith. He wanted a completely free and open market. He was loved by the right wing especially Margaret Thatcher, who wanted a smaller state and less state intervention.

 

This leads me to wonder if governments of the future will become smaller and smaller so that everything run by the state at the moment is privatised. This is slowly taking place in education, while there are many private schools, more and more 'free schools' are popping up. Will the government privatise the whole of primary and secondary education in the near future?

 

 

 

 

WINOL critical relections week 5-8

Week 5

I filmed Eastleigh’s game on Saturday and everything went well at the match in terms of filming.

Editing the clips wasn’t really a problem, although after watching the package back a few times I can see that I need to check the lengths of each clip when editing so that it all flows better.

The biggest problem I had this week was my voiceover. In general, my voice sounds fine on the package, but I had a problem with scripting. I had a clip that was 25 seconds long (due to a series of chances for Eastleigh) and I had to script my voice over to match what was happening on the pitch and not have long gaps between me speaking. I spent quite a while working on the section, but wasn’t totally happy with it. Eventually, me and the sports editor came to the decision to cut out the clip all together, which was probably the best thing to do.

The sports editor charged me with promoting Sportsweek in order to get 1000 views by the end of the semester, if not each week. I put the link to Sportsweek on the forums of the teams we cover, various non-league Facebook pages and Tweeting the link to sports journos.

In future weeks, I will put a link up on the forums of the home and away teams featured in the games we cover as well as other appropriate forums, making it almost like a routine on Wednesdays and Fridays.

Week 6

I co-hosted Sportsweek radio on Tuesday and I felt that everything went well.

I then filmed Eastleigh’s game on Tuesday night, with a fellow sports reporter doing 2^nd camera for me. The footage that he got made the package look a lot better than previous packages with only one camera, I was glad that Jack came along for another reason, the last few clips on the memory card I used in my camera corrupted, so I couldn’t use them. One of the clips was Eastleigh’s 2^nd goal and a contentious offside decision. Jack’s footage meant that I was able to show the two incidents.

I finished the package at 4pm despite being under pressure to get it done by that time (because Sportsweek is usually edited together by 4, although this week it was online at 6. Last week’s SW received nearly 600 views, so the promotional work really helped.

Week 7

This week I went to Eastleigh’s game on Saturday. I wanted to have more than 1 camera at the game but I was unable to find anyone to do it. All of the other members of the sports team were busy and none of the first years that I know who want to help do some filming were available, so I only took 1 camera to the game. The previous package I produced had a reverse angle camera which made the VT look much better than the ones I had done before.

The editing of the package went well and I had no real issues with scripting.

Week 8

On the Monday I was given the role of temporary sports editor as the usual editor could not be in that day. At the news meeting I knew that we had 4 packages lined up for Sportsweek and I was reasonably happy with what I had to work with, I had some time on Monday to get organised as I didn’t have a game at Eastleigh until Tuesday night. A technical wizard from the multimedia team helped me find a solution to the problem that we had previously been having in getting the sport for the bulletin into the correct aspect ratio (4:3).

I went to Eastleigh’s game on Tuesday night and got someone to do 2^nd camera. The filming went well and I finished the bulletin version of the package quite early and tehn got the Sportsweek version done soon after. I was praised by Angus for the bulletin package, he said that the pacing and content of the script was good but that I need to slow down my actual voiceover.

Despite there only being 3 packages on Sportsweek I think the programme looked quite good and it has 678 views so far (15^th March at 11:55). I believe this was mainly due to the Guillem Balague interview.

Eastleigh vs Boreham Wood highlights 12/3/13

My 7th package for WINOL as a Sports Reporter

Eastleigh vs Eastbourne Borough highlights 2/3/13

My 6th package for WINOL as a Sports Reporter