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