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 4th
November, WINOL’s ranking was 32,503, JMU Journalism’s rank was 4,719 and Leeds
Student had a rank of 18,349. On 4th December, the rankings for those
three were as follows, WINOL – 30,063, JMU – 156,743 and Leeds Student –
65,803. The figures from 13th 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.
