Full length interview with Rosie Mullender from Cosmopolitan magazine UK

Here is the full length interview with Rosie Mullender from Cosmopolitan UK. Visit http://www.journalism-now.co.uk/ 

Critical Reflection December 2013

 Critical Reflection

This year began with high expectations for ‘WINOL’ due to the success of the previous semester. In terms of ‘Alexa’ ranking we were beating local news sources such as the ‘Hampshire Chronicle’ and the ‘Basingstoke Gazette’. Therefore, it was essential to maintain this reputation of being a reliable news source for Hampshire. I believe we have managed to achieve this aim because our latest ‘Alexa’ ranking for ‘WINOL’ shows on the 8/12/13 was 34,210 in the UK which means that we are still beating other student Journalism sites like ‘Leeds Student’ and other Professional local news sites such as the ‘Hampshire Chronicle’ who have an ‘Alexa’ ranking of 49,025 in the UK. However, we have been unable to maintain our global ‘Alexa’ ranking, as the figures show that last semester we had a global ranking of 372,251 compared to our current global ranking of 776,668. For instance, on the 1^st of December only 8 people visited winol.co.uk through ‘Google’. I believe to help improve these rankings, we need to add more ‘tags’ onto our site which are relevant to what people will be searching for online.  Consequently more people will then be directed to the ‘WINOL’ site.

I also think the reason why we haven’t improved on our rankings is due to our summer break, there was a whole 4 months where no new content was uploaded to the website at all, so it is inevitable that people lose interest in the site. Once we were back up and running the content uploaded to the site has remained a slow process, I still think we are not updating it with enough new stories as quickly as we did last semester.

Another contributing factor could be due to various technical issues with production, the bulletin has been late most weeks. This is damaging to our reputation since our audience becomes doubtful that we are a reliable, creditable news source if we are not live at 5pm each week.

 I think the reason for us managing to still have a fairly reasonable ‘Alexa’ ranking in the UK, is due to an agreement made at the start of the semester, in our editor’s meeting. We agreed to focus the bulletin more on our local area. What led us towards this decision was the majority of criticism we received from our Guest Editors, which was that we were not keeping the bulletin local enough. Therefore, we’ve ensured that if we are covering national stories they need to have a local angle. I think our target audience needs to be Winchester, It makes much more sense to mainly cover local stories, however, this means that we are not to ignore the opportunity to cover national breaking stories too.

This semester ‘Access Winchester’ has worked well  as an additional weekly bulletin to include packages containing diverse coverage of local events such as new productions at the ‘Mayflower’ Theatre in Southampton, or ‘Coffee House Sessions’ being held at the University of Winchester Terrace Bar. ‘Access Winchester’ has brought a whole new audience to ‘WINOL’ due to the fact that it is local and consistent. It is produced and made available online every week just like the news bulletin.

The news bulletin itself has made vast improvements compared to the start of this semester but I believe that we are still not at the standard that we were at last May. This is reflected in comments made in the debrief of our last bulletin (4/12/13).   Angus explained how there is no such thing as a quiet news week and so it was down to the reporters to find the passion and the drive to ensure that their package is at the correct standard to be in the bulletin. This should mean that the News Editor has a tough decision to make as he or she then has too many packages to choose from.

A consequence of not having enough bulletin ready packages could be due to the fact that this semester the role of News Editor has been delegated on a rota system. This meant that no real relationship between the News Editor and the reporters was able to be established. Time was wasted each week due to a lack of communication of who was to be News Editor that given week and so reporters were unsure of who to contact with questions about their package. This meant that in the News Meeting it would be the first time that the News Editor had heard about the reporter’s story they’ve been working on and so if the News Editor is unsure about the story he or she is unable to give feedback beforehand. 

Another issue is that the news agenda is sometimes not strictly stuck to, in my opinion this is due to there not being enough drive to fight for your story to make sure that a package does work and that you’re able to overcome any foreseeable problems. If your package is turned into an OOV, this is the worst possible thing to happen but most reporters seem to have already given up on their work and don’t put the effort in to turn things around. All that said, package basics such as sound and shots have been greatly improved compared to the start of the semester where essential components of a package such as white balance and NATSOT were missing. The perfect example of this is Liam Garrahan’s scrap metal package.

Due to the effort of Social Media Editor, Georgia Spears, promotion for the ‘WINOL’ bulletin has been consistent and effective. The bulletin is back on top, with an audience for features being at a decline, in contrast to last semester when it was ‘the rise of the features’. I believe this is due to the lack of interest we have had from the team as a whole to produce any features. We have had all the magazines running throughout the semester without enough new content being uploaded apart from the fashion magazine ‘Absolute:ly’. This is because there is a team of four working on the magazine. I feel that each of the other magazines also need a dedicated team.

The decision to condense all the magazines into one magazine called ‘Here and Now’ is going to help raise the profile for features. I believe this to be the case because now that the magazines have been compiled into one there will no longer be any confusion of where to go to see the features and also the magazines will no longer look bare and lacking content. This transformation is still in progress but once the right look of the magazine has been achieved I’m sure that things will pick up from where things were left last semester in terms of traffic to the features. My suggestion is that all the editors from the magazines come together to work as one team to keep ‘Here and Now’ updated regularly.

The Sports Team has made an effort to produce packages which delve into different sports such as handball which has a big following and resulted in a vast amount of traffic being brought to the bulletin and ‘Sportsweek’. It is rare that in depth coverage is given to local teams and this is why so many people are drawn to our coverage which is promoted on Twitter.  All this considered I feel it is necessary for Sports to have a more dominant presence on the ‘WINOL’ front page.

My role on ‘WINOL’ this semester was Managing Editor; this meant it was my job to take responsibility for the marketing and promotion of ‘WINOL’. This is including both advertising and competitions for the news and features team.  We agreed that this semester we need to attempt to make more of a connection with our campus, so I came up with the idea of creating an advert for the bulletin to be displayed on the TV screens around campus. The reason I suggested this idea was because I believed our University campus didn’t know about the ‘WINOL’ bulletin.

The next step I felt was necessary to complete the link between ‘WINOL’ and the campus was to get into contact with the University of Winchester Design Team to discuss the possibility of streaming the bulletin live at five every Wednesday on the TV screens. It soon became clear that the Design Team believed this to not be possible due to the fact that the TV screens do not have sound and also the complications with streaming from the internet. I think that this is a real shame because students are lazy and if a bulletin is broadcast to them directly on the screens then they have no choice but to watch it.  Despite this setback I do believe that the ‘WINOL’ advert has still increased our traffic to the bulletin and the site.

Arranging competitions for the magazines was another one of my responsibilities. I phoned around companies such as the theme park ‘Thorpe Park’ and ‘Benefit’ the make-up brand to ask for prizes for our competitions. ‘Benefit’ sent make up samples which were perfect prizes for the fashion magazine ‘Absolute:ly’. ‘Thorpe Park’ also sent back a 2 for 1 voucher to the park which I thought would be great for the ‘Adventure and Travel’ magazine. I also arranged competitions and prizes for the ‘Volt’ and ‘New Winchester Review’ but unfortunately the Editors were unable to cooperative, so I decided just to go ahead with the ‘Absolute:ly’ competition. It was a great success with over 11 entrees for the competition which consequently brought more followers to 'Absolute:ly' and 'WINOL'.

The competition for 'Adventure and Travel' was a little simpler; all that the entrees had to do was re-tweet our tweet posted on the magazine's account to win the vouchers. Unfortunately the winner of the competition was unable to come onto campus to collect her prize. We felt it was necessary for the prize to be collected instead of posted so that we could take a picture of the winner with her prize. This is important because it proves to the readers that we are true to our word and that our competitions are real. I think this is why we don't have as many competition entrees as I would like, because we are only a student run site so the public don't seem to think we're legitimate when it comes to competitions. However, the more we run, the more we build a good reputation for ourselves whilst drawing more traffic to the site and bulletin.

Georgia Spears, and I agreed that we would both like to work on an exclusive interview for ‘WINOL’ using social media to conduct it. We decided the best way to go about this was to find and interviewee and ask the public to tweet in questions for them. Our followers on Twitter would be given the exclusive chance to put their questions to the interviewee. I decided we should aim high and so I emailed the Deputy Features Editor of Cosmopolitan Magazine UK, Rosie Mullender. Originally we planned to both do the interview but due to the lack of space in the office provided, there wasn't enough room to sit next to each other while we interviewed Rosie. We made the impromptu decision to just do the interview one on one which was a struggle as we had to fit two cameras into the room. I am really glad that I put in enough time to write the appropriate questions for Rosie as the interview just seemed to flow. It wasn't until we went to edit that we realised that due to the cramped conditions of the interview, we had made the error of 'crossing the line'. Luckily it was only the footage we filmed of Georgia that was affected and so to overcome this issue we used a voice over to ask Rosie the questions and flipped the screen on a cutaway of Georgia.

I believe that in order for things to improve next semester for ‘WINOL’, reporters need to follow on from their stories and report on any updates. Too often a story is reported on in the bulletin and then not revisited. Updates will secure a niche audience will continue to watch the bulletin to see if there is any updates on any particular story they are following.

Also all reporters need to update their twitter a couple times a day with pictures and ‘teasers’ of what to expect in the bulletin. This will keep the ‘WINOL’ audience interested in the up and coming bulletin all week.

Finally, all reporters need to ensure that they continue to film too much footage so that when it comes to editing packages they have plenty of footage so that reporters are not made to compromise on what footage they use in their end results.

 

WINOL Week 10 debrief

Angus' Feedback

Overall Angus felt that since it is our last WINOL of the semester that we all just kind of trailed off. Spence, who was News Editor this week, saved the bulletin with his range of ideas. We should have had a shed load of stories and also drive because this was our last bulletin and we wanted to go out with a bang! There is no such thing as a quiet news week, we are given a whole week to do a bulletin therefore it should be full to the brim with stories. There were some good stories in the bulletin but need to spice/sex up the headlines. The end title sequence has a glitch and a horrible jump cut that needs fixing. The 'coming up' needs extending.

-Callum's Uni lecturer strike story had a good use of NATSOT which really gave a flavour of what the story was about and also what was going on. In the first interview however, the eyeline was all wrong and also the gun mic shouldn't be in shot. If the interviewee is taller than yourself, ask them to sit down etc. don't be afraid to control an interview. It's your shots, make them good. Good angles/interviewees, needed just a bit more detail as to why the lecturers are striking. 'More flesh on the story'.

- Sam (presenter) The presenter of the bulletin should always have a copy of the script on his desk in the event that you are going live and the autocue fails. This is what happened this week and Sam carried on seamlessly. Was calm and collected and just read form the hardcopy on his desk. Well done. This does happen, technology can fail. It's life.

-Liam's Chief Whip Story still worked despite there being no interview. In the right place (Westminster) was worth going to try and get an interview. Very good graphics.

-Zeena's police on buses story was well thought out. The PTC worked well on the bus however, needed footage of the police actually on the bus. Good graphics. Maybe should have picked up on a more positive point in the recorded phone call with Policeman.

- Harvey's Unemployment package was a very dry piece since there was only one interview. The Christmas style sign off was a contrast to the seriousness of the story. Should have said soemething quirky to give a reason for the Christmas sign off.

-Tom's death row story needed to be linked to the Innocent Project here at Winchester. Interviewed Brian perhaps? Get some opinions from people in the audience of the talk. All these things would have added to the story.

Sport

Relax, 'lighten up' when presenting, soften it.

Drew- don't describe what's on screen but is nicely paced.

Laura- Handball- Like the idea of delving into different sports. Problems with the camera so must ensure you always have a spare battery. Needed to decide what your focus was going to be in this package and stick with it.

Poonam Bahal from BBC South Today was our guest Editor this week. She explained how she was very impressed with what we do here. Poonam said how at 2:30 (30 mins before our deadline) she felt the 'buzz' in the newsroom and this is what she loves about Journalism.

The headlines she thought had a good choice of stories. Always think what would make a good headline shot when you are out filming. This helps editors on the day .

Strike- Good top story- current, good actuality. Need to still know more about the story e.g. facts and figures. Needs to be relevant and verified.

Chief Whip- Very impressed with graphics, used to explain a lot of facts very well. Always check facts. Could have used vox pops to give it a local angle.

Buses- Forward planning of the story could have led to filming police on the buses. Good script.

Unemployment- Story is almost a month old so needed more content/developed more. Could have gone to Portsmouth to do PTC to break up constant screen time.

Death row- Good story but limited pictures. Could have got vox pops of students to break up interview? Needed footage for cutaways.

Sport

Need to introduce yourself when pass over to sport. Sport is important so it was the right thing to do to include it in the 'coming up' clip.

Ian's Feedback

Pleased to see that reporters are now at the standard where proper packages are being produced. We still need to film more footage than necessary though so that packages aren't left with limited shots. Too light on stories this week, without death row story bulletin would have been even lighter. Need to be 'News Junkies' and see what is going on out there that interests you or find a new angle to add to a current story. More effort needs to be put in to bring more to the table. Should be spoilt for choice with the packages, not just have the bare minimum for the bulletin. Any that don't make the bulletin go on the website.

WINOL Week 9

This week we were really lacking in stories for the bulletin, there was no actual news in it. As a news editor, you need to think of ways to overcome a lack of pictures, or simple ways to deal with this problem. When news editing, the shape and style of a package is as important as the news content.

Angus' feedback:

- It needed that bit of experience and sprinkle to make it a better bulletin. Quiet news week due to third years being away, this meant that it was down to the second years to step up and take control but this didn't seem to happen.
- The main issue this week was with sound, cannot empathise enough how important sound is. 3 packages in the bulletin had sound issues, also one clip used in the headlines didn't have good enough sound.
- Zeena's package - illustrating stories with human interest using a case study worked. Couldn't get filming in care home, so overcame this issue by using a family who are worried about it as a case study.  The piece to camera was an issue though, there was too much noise on piece to camera and the shots used were too wide so that you see the microphone. It looks cleaner if you don't see it. Go for an MCU and put the mic lower.

- Court story: Kate - two headlines with two stills in it. Headlines are about moving pictures, exciting shots, if you have no choice but to use two stills, you need to at least drop one of them. Or use alternative stories which have better pictures. This is a court story which has no pictures, we have a piece to camera and still of victim that's all, its an underlay, it needed to be a package.
- Alex - 'Save the rec ' story- had to take a load out from the package. Don't assume knowledge, explain everything in detail with your package.

- Lucy's world vision story was focused more on the interview which was great. She decided to focus more on the one to one exclusive interview rather than the speech the world vision man made. Angus advised us that if we do hear a speech before you interview someone listen to it and make notes as you can bring up the issues the person raises in the public speech in your own private interview. Lucy then voiced over the pictures which worked much better than just hearing him speak to the public. Her package included three SOT of the interviewee this was fine but it shouldn't be repeated in other stories and we shouldn't always make our packages like this.

- The Choir OOV - there was no sound in it which didn't work. My understanding is that the sound was left on the OOV and then when it was handed over to be in the bulletin the sound was taken off. It is unclear as to why this happened.

- Harvey - relax a bit you can be reasonably chilled out when presenting sport.

- Liam  - football - written well, turned it around quickly. 2 minutes in 2 and a half hours, that's quite good. Liam got on with it straight away and dealt with it. If we are getting national awards we need it in our bulletin and we really needed to think about what a huge story it is.
- For those who worked on the budget programme, congratulations. We could of won a couple more with the standard of work we do. The more recognition we get, the more chances we get.

Ian's feedback:

- Congratulations to all of us for the award.
- Quite nice that we put the award and the end of the bulletin.
- Thin day story wise, but the most impressive stuff was on stories that were turned around on the day and pushing the deadlines. However, we still got there at 3 o'clock.
- Overall, really pleased with seeing much more credible packaging. Shooting more, giving yourself more set up space, and two very good interviews.
- Get more stories, keep filming more and improve the sound! We must get the mic's in the hot zone, the way to get good sound is to wear head sets and headphones then we can hear the sound that's coming through. It's no good just looking at the monitor, we need to wear headphones and hear the real thing.
- Can see definite progress on the packages.

WINOL wins BJTC award

This week has been a triumph for WINOL as our team travelled to Coventry to collect a BJTC Award for Student Journalism team of the year.

We received this award based on our 'Budget Special' which was produced earlier on this year. Harry, Ellen and Kate went up to Coventry last Wednesday to collect the award on behalf of all the team.

See the full story here: http://winol.co.uk/2013/11/head-itn-news-praises-winol-another-national-award-7571 .

Here is the award winning 'Budget Special':

Limited progress on getting WINOL streamed live around campus

I have been in contact with Chloe Battle ( part of the Design team for University of Winchester) since the start of the semester. This is because I was hoping to organise with her a way in which the WINOL bulletin can be shown live at 5 on the TV screens around uni. It seems that I have hit a brick wall as although at the start of the semester Chloe was optimistic about the possibility of linking the bulletin to the TV screens, I have since received this email pasted below:

 

" Hi Shona

I didn’t say that we would have it working by the end of November, I said that we might have time to investigate the possibility further.

I have had a conversation with the head of Marketing (cc’d) meanwhile, and her concerns are that a) there is not any sound available on the screens, so nobody watching would be able to hear the broadcast (the screens are not intended for someone to stand in front of for 5/10/15 minutes at a time), and b) if we schedule the screens to switch over to an internet/TV feed at 5 o’clock, and the broadcast was late (which it sometimes is) there would be a period of time when there would be nothing but a black box showing… which just isn’t acceptable. If we were to consider adding the Winol bulletin we would need to be assured that the bulletin would go live at 5 without fail, and run to a standard length (15 mins?) as we have to set the schedule in the plasma screen master box to switch function at exact times, there can be no variation from week to week.

Therefore at this point in time I’m afraid we just don’t think it is feasible to make the live link to the Winol bulletin. I hope that you understand.

Regards, Chloe"

 

This is a disappointing setback as linking the WINOL bulletin to the TV screens around our campus is the obvious way to obtain a larger/ wider audience from our fellow students which I believe is still a potential audience that we are missing. It isn't all doom and gloom though, as a still image advert is still being shown on the TV screens for the WINOL bulletin and also the WINOL website.

 

 

A couple weeks round up

It has been a good couple weeks for WINOL, we are improving in both news and features. Firstly, the winner of the 'Absolute:ly' competition was announced. I was pleased to hear that there was over 11 entrees for the competition which consequently brought more followers to 'Absolute:ly' and WINOL overall.

While the competition for 'Absolute:ly' was on-going I also managed to get 2 for 1 vouchers to Thorpe Park to be the prize for the 'Adventure and Travel' magazine. All that the readers of 'Adventure and Travel' had to do was retweet our tweet posted on the magazine's account to win the vouchers. Unfortunately the winner of the competition was unable to come onto campus to collect her prize. We felt it was necessary for the prize to be collected so that we can take a picture of the winner with her prize, just like the above image. This was important because it proves to the readers of all our magazines that we are true to our word and that our competitions are real. I think this is why we don't have as many competition entrees as I would like, because we are at the end of the day, still a student run site so the public don't seem to think we're legitimate when it comes to our competitions.

Myself and Georgia Spears have been preoccupied the past few weeks with planning our interview with Deputy Features Editor of Cosmopolitan Magazine, Rosie Mullender. Monday 18/11/13 was the big day that we made our way to Cosmo HQ in London. We were very grateful for the opportunity to interview Rosie but due to a renovation that was taking place in the office we had to conduct the interview in a spare office which was full of clutter. Originally me and Georgia planned to both do the interview but due to the lack of space in the office provided, there wasn't even enough room to sit next to each other while we interviewed Rosie. We made the impromptu decision to just do the interview one and one which even was a struggle as we had to fit 2 cameras in also. The interview itself however, went seamlessly. I am really glad that I had put in enough time to write the appropriate questions for Rosie as the interview just seemed to flow. It was natural. We originally thought we were filming the interview for the Journalism Now website but the Winchester Access Team asked if they could use it in this week's Winchester Access. It wasn't until we went to edit that we realised that due to the cramped conditions of the interview and the positions of the camera meant that we were 'crossing the line'. If the footage was used without altering it then the viewers would have been left confused. Luckily it was only the footage we filmed of Georgia that was affected and so to overcome this issue we used a voice over to ask Rosie the questions and flipped the screen on a cutaway of Georgia.

Here is the finished piece of Winchester Access:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=39gcgbYNTNw&feature=c4-overview&list=UUkWI6ETxu4RPuPRq9aBSGNQ

Overall we've learnt from this mistake and will know what to do in the further if we encounter the same problem of a cramped interview location. A full length version of our interview will be available on the 'Journalism Now' website shortly.

WINOL Week 8 debrief

Ian Anderson

Ian believed that we had a 'string' of real credible packages this week in the bulletin. The News Editor (Kate) had to make some hard choices as to what packages would make the final cut and be in the bulletin. We had options which are what real editing is about.

Nadine (presenter) - Nadine agreed with Ian that more rehearsal time was needed, getting the script done earlier for OOVs will help too. No last minute changes.

Lucy (Priests) - Good that she is filming set up sequences, giving ourselves space to tell the story.

Tom (Illegal rave party) - Liked visual ideas, the serenity of the castle vs the chaos of a rave. It just needed an interview with a person who attended the party or an eye witness. Also it could have been made clearer that the images shown of a rave weren't images of the rave you're referring to in your package. A good story.

Ben (Grit) - Good sound and pictures which are both very important. Could have used archive footage to show disaster pictures of what happens when roads aren't gritted.

Christina (Court Report) - Very good presentation in the PTC. Painting a scene for us of what it was like to be in the court room at the time. Satisfying to watch came to a neat conclusion.

Alex (Cuts) - More impact needed, too much overlay on UKIP. Needed a case study perhaps.

Ellen (Wind Turbines) - Ran out of pictures, needed a range of closeups and wides, variation of shots. It had both sides of the argument but just more explanation needed.

Zeena (Health app) - Very good and interesting story, health stories always hold the viewer's attention. Explanation in the PTC was very well done.

Sport

Drew- Good voice, credible. Camera work consistently good. No post match interview however. Generally all much better with camera work and sound.

Brian

Brian explained that he thought the order of the bulletin was wrong, there was no gradual progression. Our main problem is that we don't react to any breaking news stories on the day. We need to check for daily updates on our own stories too, to ensure that our packages are up to date. We need to react to things, have interviews of people affected by the cuts, get their reaction.

WINOL week 7

Ian Anderson

Congratulations to everyone in production, getting into the habit of sticking to a strict schedule now.
Story wise the bulletin was 'ok', we need light and shade always in a story (E.g. A good mix of serious and 'fluffy' stories). Ian found the heads and visuals were really good. Enjoyed the Pony headline story in particular, very well written. Overall the eyeline isn't right when filming an interview. It is key to be able to see someone's 'full' face.

-Ben's Flybe OOV was good to have a breaking story.
-Spence's PCC story was very well balanced and visually well thought out. Good use of sequence. Ian was impressed.
-Christina's interview with the Governor of Winchester Prison was great enterprise to go out and get the interview. Maybe he just needed to be in a more appropriate location?
-Ellen's Pony story, we should have seen the ponies first instead of the pigs. It was a great story but needed an interview to complete the package.

Our guest editor this week was Claudia Murg, an Investigative Journalist. She said that overall our bulletin flows, looks professional and is much improved from last year. However, she thinks that as reporters we need to be aiming higher to produce the best bulletin that we can possibly make. She said that some of our stories are quite old, none of the package had a new/ fresh angle to them that she hadn't already heard. We need to check all sources and find any updates that are relevant to the story. It is not our job to just echo what other journalists have previously said. With our packages we need to ensure that they always cover the basic journalist structure of who? what? where? when?

-Spence's story contained excellent graphics, good effort and very confident in front of the camera. However, she believed that in the interview with Simon Hayes Spence should have thrown the unexpected at him, used more challenging questions.
-Christina's interview. Claudia highlighted some similar thing, Christina needed to take more control of the interview and try to ask different questions. Use the interview as an opportunity to display the depth of knowledge you have for your story. Make your interviewee remember you, don't be too formal, just be yourself. Ask logical questions and need to really listen to your interviewee's answer, rather than just your own agenda.
Ellen- Agreed with Ian and said that we should have seen the ponies first; it needed people (an interview).

Sports

-Liam's interview was in the wrong location and needed some cutaways of players etc.
-Laura's report she said did work and looked professional.

Claudia's last piece of advice was that we need to remember that we are all constantly in competition with other journalists, therefore we need to constantly be the best that we are capable of. Be aware of our talents, use them to our advantage. A journalist is only as good as their curiosity and their contacts.

WINOL Week 6

Angus kicked off the debrief this week and was really keen to express what an improvement this week's bulletin was, compared to previous weeks. Angus believed this improvement is mainly down to team work, making important decisions together.

There was also a good mix of stories including a national breaking news story (Portsmouth job losses). Could spend longer rehearsing, taking our time to achieve a higher standard. Need to also extend the headlines visually as we keep getting a 'black hole' also in the 'coming up' section too.

His quick sum up of packages was:

- Rowenna Davis interview (Nadine) was dimly lit, not right for news.

- Scrap Metal (Liam) included 3 sequences, lovely opening with NATSOT.

- New Forest Toxin (Ellen) good interview with the Vet, very well explained.

- New 20mph speed limit (Ben) good effort, really thought about using a variety of pictures and interviews.

- Radar (Sam) wasn't sure if it makes total sense.

- Hedgehogs (Lucy) really well explained in the first 15 seconds, best explained piece of student work here. Just need to show more personality in the PTC.

Sport

Opening link banned, check white balance so that images aren't too blue.

Will Boden was our guest editor this week. Will is the deputy editor of BBC Politics. He was overall really impressed that we are able to produce a weekly bulletin. There was a really interesting variety of stories in the bulletin. We were right to lead the bulletin with the Portsmouth Job Cuts story; however, the Rowenna Davis interview shouldn't have been second in line. It isn't attention grabbing enough and also the interview wasn't explained in enough detail.

Liam's Scrap metal story he said was a lovely piece of TV, it is all about visual images with TV, crucial to bring the story to life. Use of NATSOT also draws the viewer’s attention in.

Ben's 20mph speed story was intuitive (use of the 'Go-Pro') but needed to see pedestrians and more cutaways/GV shots of the centre of town.

Ellen's New Forest toxin story contained a jump shot between 2 different dogs. Watch out for this.

Will explained the importance of Social Media, gets the whole world involved with what you're doing, useful to promote your work/ get a wider audience. At WINOL we dedicate a lot of time into updating our social media accounts. We currently have around 1,500 followers on twitter, our Social Media Editor Georgia Spears is confident she can reach 2,000 followers by Christmas. Reporters need to still tweet more, we say it every week but it still needs to be done. Tag relevant people in your tweets and get them to retweet you to their audience. For example Rowenna Davis tweeted about WINOL to all 15,257 of her followers which definitely led to more traffic being directed to winol.co.uk. People go to twitter for the news; it is a main source of news. 

In our debrief 11/11/13 Chris informed us that we had just under 2,000 page views last Wednesday. The main traffic coming for the Diane (UKIP) and Rowenna interviews.

Subbing was also really organised this week, running order of subbing is up on the board in the newsroom and the schedule is being followed quickly and closely.  

Exciting things to come exclusively to WINOL

This past week Georgia and I have been working on securing an  interview that we can stream online using all of WINOL's various social media accounts. This will bring additional traffic to the site which is fantastic for our bulletin viewing figures as well as our online magazines. WINOL currently had 1,500 followers which means that we have potentially 1,500 people who could view the interview.

This means that for people to be intrigued enough to go to the effort of watching an interview it needs to be a journalist that either works for a recognisable firm, or has a recognisable name. We have been in contact with Rosie Mullender Deputy Features Editor of Cosmopolitan Magazine and she is keen to meet us so hopefully in the near future we will be bringing an exclusive interview of her to WINOL.

This coming week we also have two prizes to give to our competition winners. I came up with the idea for the two competitions and I also organised the prizes too.

The first competition was a simple 'Retweet to win' contest for 'Adventure &Travel' the prize being a 2 for 1 voucher for Thorpe Park.

The next is the competition for 'Absolute:ly'. I organised for the make-up brand 'Benefit' to send me some samples of their latest products. 'Benefit' sent me three items which I took photos of and gave to the Editor of Absolute:ly. The three photos were then hidden in 3 different articles on the site. The competition applicants had to email a list of the three articles that the images were hidden in. I thought by getting readers to do this, it makes them look through ALL the articles on the site and not just the most recently added articles.

WINOL Week 5

Chris Coneybeer who has worked as both producer and reporter for the BBC was our guest editor this week. It was a pleasure to meet him and hear his detailed debrief about our 5th Bulletin this semester.

Chris said that the bulletin held his attention the whole way through. He explained that it is essential to keep to schedule every week and make sure the bulletin does go out live at 5pm.

He said that our headlines were very tight, short titles with good commentary.

For Alex's jobs story he explained that with a picture limited story such as this, it is an option to use archive material as cutaways while the story is being explained. Chris also explained the dangers of using over complicated graphics, it is too much to take in, in this instance. A simpler graphic with less figures would have preferred.

Kate's court report was very well done, however, you shouldn't stay in vision for the entire VT. It was good that Kate read the Judge's quote off the piece of paper. This is because it tells the viewer it is a reliable, accurate quote.

Focus on wording in scripts as all needs to be explained simply.

Sport

Tate's camera work was extremely good, steady and calm on goals. Vast improvement from last week.

Drew's piece on visually impaired football was an intriguing, good quality story. We also need to make sure that we research for groups e.g. on facebook/ an online forum, relating to the people mentioned in the bulletin and plug it to them.

Ian Anderson added:

Good use of ATSOT in headlines. Need to be calm and speak slowly when presenting. Try and be as natural as possible.

The Prince Edward OOV needed a much clearer script, it wasn't developed enough and not was it interesting.

Still need yet more shots and sequences to help tell the story/further develop your package.

Overall felt like the bulletin had a beginning, middle and end. It flowed coherently. Text stories are still not up quick enough or when they are submitted to go onto the site hey aren't completed. It is not the sub's job to complete unfinished text stories. No story should be submitted without a decent image either. We need to bring the site to life on Wednesdays, the written stories advertise the bulletin. Very important to have a 'living' site.

WINOL debrief week 4

This week was great in terms of stories, but the lack of pictures overall let the bulletin down. Angus made the following points:

•  We need to put more focus and attention on shots and sequences whilst out filming. Every time you interview someone you must get some shots of them to use to establish who the interviewee is, or to use as cutaways.

• Always use a gun mic/ radio mic when interviewing someone.

• Always explain your story, never assume that your audience will know what you are talking about. Plus always think about how your story is coming across, even what background images you are using so that there is no confusion there either.

• Use of natural sound at the beginning of your package sets the scene of your story.

Sport

• 'I'm here at' is now a banned phrase.

• Don't explain what the viewers are seeing, you are meant to compliment the pictures being shown, not describe them.

• Also ensure that the camera isn't too wide, need to see detail on the pitch etc.

Graham Bell was our Guest Editor this week, he is a Journalism graduate from the University of Winchester (4 years ago) and is now working at Omnisport. He added that:

• You should drag the sound back before the picture you see the picture, this should help you package flow better.

• Graham agreed with Angus and said that you shouldn't assume the audience know about everything you reference. Explain all content.

• Ensure all packages have BALANCE. This is crucial.

Ian Anderson also said:

• That we need to develop our stories more, push them on as far as they are able to go.

• Sound is just as important as pictures in your package.

• Work on filming sequences.

Now with all this great advice given by 3 Journalists taken on board, we need to make vast improvements on pictures and sound for next week. 

My Role as Managing Editor

The first week of WINOL involved me discussing ideas on how to improve the overall views/ traffic to the site and also in Georgia's absence I managed all social media on her behalf. Attracting as much traffic to the site as possible is so important because this shows that although we are students we are producing real Journalism for a real audience.

At present, I have designed and submitted an advert for WINOL (which advertises our bulletin) to the University of Winchester design team and now the advert is included in the slideshow shown on the TV screens around the Uni campus. This should most definitely see an increase in views and in general promote WINOL across the campus. The next thing I am working on is taking it a step further and working with Chloe from the design team to set up a live link to the bulletin which will broadcast it every Wednesday, live at 5.

Part of my role is to also to greet and show the guest editors around our newsroom on a Wednesday. I really enjoyed speaking to Joe Curtis from the Hampshire Chronicle last week, I learnt a lot from him and was pleased to hear that he is an avid viewer of WINOL.

WINOL Week 3

Joe Curtis, reporter from the Hampshire Chronicle (newspaper) was the guest editor this week. Despite his profession being predominantly text led, he had plenty of ideas and feedback for the WINOL team.

Last semester one of Joe's biggest criticisms was that we don't focus enough on Winchester for finding stories/ making our target audience.  This agrees with Angus' debrief on WINOL last week. Joe's advice was to localise our bulletin as we're missing out on the opportunity of securing a reliable audience each week for our bulletin. We took Joe's advice on-board and the bulletin this week was filled with local stories. The first being Harvey's local shops on the high street story.

Joe was disappointed with the lack of images to go with the teachers strike story but filming children is legally complicated. However, Emma used a good range of graphics which impressed Joe.

Graduation- Loved the 'Walky Talky' good range of presenting skills. Spencer appeared confident and made a good package.

Overall Joe was impressed with our bulletin and admitted that he is a regular viewer of WINOL.

His piece of advice to us was to use cross promotion as much as we can. For example in the bulletin refer to the website. He also said that we are leaving it til too late to put our written news stories online. By the time that the written news stories go online they are old news.

Ian Anderson said that generally the sound, camera work and editing is letting the VTs down. Pictures need to be the strength of your package- if the pictures aren't there then no one is going to listen to your script. A variety of shots needs to be included too.

WINOL Week 2

Things appeared to be less chaotic this week, everyone worked really hard once again to pull the bulletin together. All deadlines need to be met and also it is better to be paranoid about potential legal issues as opposed to not double checking and issue.

In Angus Scott's feedback of the bulletin he explained that we didn't focus on Matt Spencer's graduation story and we should have pushed this line to the top of the bulletin. This is after all a local story about our University so it should have been the story to bring more viewers in. Our fellow students should always be our main target audience.

The specialist magazines are generating the most views for winol.co.uk. This is the opposite to how things were last year. Before people came for the news and then stuck around for the features, meaning that we had a 'sticky' site. This is how it should be, people viewing our news first and then people having a browse through our features. We all need to make an extra effort at promoting the bulletin.  This is what I have done, I have made an advert for 'WINOL' which is now being shown on the TV screens around our University campus. I am now attempting to make the tech people agree to broadcast the bulletin live, every Wednesday at 5 on the TV screens.

A conscious effort has gone into taking more photos and also tweeting more about the progress of each reporter's story. Twitter is the best tool for free advertising, the News Team and Features Team are increasing the number of tweets and are also using twitter to promote on-going and upcoming competitions. All these things considered we should see a rise in traffic to the site.

Third year on WINOL week 1

So far this semester we have worked really hard to achieve the standard of News and Features which we had in the previous semester. This has been a lot easier than I first envisioned due to the fact that the second years have done a great job of slotting into place within the 'WINOL' structure.

Our first WINOL debrief contained far more positives than negatives. The majority of all reporters were able to produce a broadcast worthy package only with the occasional mistake . For instance, introducing your interviewees in your script and interviewing someone by a window.

Ian Anderson was this weeks guest editor and his general advice was to next time focus on the choice of stories and also the quality of them. It is essential that we establish who our target audience is.

Ian was also impressed by the effort of the production team, led by Nicole. Everyone really pulled together to work on making the bulletin a success.

Critical Reflection 2013

Shona Race Critical Reflection

‘WINOL’ achieved so much in the previous semester and as a team we continued to exceed our expectations for what we could achieve this year. As a team we could have become comfortable with our previous semester’s success, but this was not the case. We took on various opportunities which tested our individual abilities and how we work as a team.  Overall our team’s biggest strength was the fact that we all have different abilities and yet we come together and are able to work efficiently as a team, the features team included. These two teams are interlinked. For instance, if there is a news story that is likely to be in the headlines for a while, the features team will discuss what will be produced based on that particular news story. This is done because if the public interest is there for a certain news story, then the online magazines have the opportunity to attract readers too. For example, at the time of the Eastleigh by-election campaign, Absolute:ly’s ‘Dr.Fashion’ aka Georgia Spears gave her opinion on the fashion ‘faux-pas’ of the by-election candidates. 

This Semester we continued to produce a weekly 15 minute bulletin which contains a variety of national and local news stories from Winchester, as well as neighbouring cities such as Southampton, and Portsmouth and the large town of Basingstoke. We also took on new challenges this semester, such as our ‘Super WINOL’ called ‘Eastleigh Decides’ and ’99 second News’ which was produced by the News Team. Given that the Eastleigh by-election was so close to campus, we streamed live coverage of the event well into the early hours, when the results were announced. Weeks of planning and testing allowed Outside Broadcasts to be sent into the ‘WINOL’ hub, as well as having live guests in the studio giving comments and predictions on the pending results. The event was a success that we were all proud of.

Our series of ’99 second News’ tested our ability to find, write and produce news for a 99 second bulletin every hour. The time pressure was intense but because of everyone’s ability to work as a team we pulled together and proved that we were capable of producing a condensed news bulletin in a limited space of time.

I believe that what we should be most encouraged by the fact that we have continued to attract and maintain an audience for our weekly bulletin. Each bulletin receives an average of 158-200 views on ‘Youtube’ each week, which could be higher, however, the ‘Alexa’ ranking for winol.co.uk shows that our views to the site fluctuate but still increase. Therefore, more people are coming to the site to watch our bulletin instead of watching it via ‘Youtube’. This means that we have attracted an audience to the website rather than relying souly on third party video sharing websites. Our highest ‘Alexa’ ranking for this semester was 6,426 in GB (13/03/13) which beats almost all local newspaper rivals apart from the ‘Daily Echo’ which had an ‘Alexa’ ranking of 1,587 in GB (13/03/13) but we are in a much higher position than the ‘Hampshire Chronicle’ who had an ‘Alexa’ ranking of 50,315 in GB (13/03/13) and the ‘Basingstoke Gazette’ with an ‘Alexa’ ranking of 17,738 in GB (13/03/13).

These figures prove that we have established ourselves as a reliable news source. Our audience trusts that we will have our bulletin online every Wednesday of term time at 5pm. I believe that we have improved on this compared to last semester, because previously there have been issues with the process of saving the finished packages to the hard drive. There was never enough time for the hard drive to be taken into the gallery to upload the packages in the studio in preparation for the bulletin to go live. However, this is no longer the case as finished packages are submitted in plenty of time to meet the 5pm deadline.

The rise of the features section of ‘WINOL’ has meant that our website has become ‘sticky’. This explains why our ‘Alexa’ rankings have continued to stay at a competitive level because our audience are being drawn to the site to watch our bulletin, but are staying on the site after they have watched the bulletin to browse through our other various features. This shows that the website contains a variety of news stories and features that appeal to all interests.

This semester has also seen the unveiling of the new magazine ‘Adventure & Travel’. Features are going from strength to strength and this is shown through the diverse selection of online magazines. Each magazine has its own audience demographic which brings new groups of people to the site each day; however, I still feel that we are missing out on potential site traffic from the Winchester campus. They should be our prime audience but yet we are still missing out on roughly 3,000 potential views a week on our bulletin. There was indeed coverage of the Student President Elections, but there wasn’t enough promotion or emphasis on the fact that students need to visit winol.co.uk to see the election coverage. I believe that if a tab to the ‘Events’ diary was introduced back onto the home page of ‘WINOL’ this could be a starting point to encourage traffic from fellow students. When I managed the ‘Events’ diary I included a ‘what’s on’ section for the University campus so that all University events were available on our site. Therefore if this was included on ‘WINOL’ once more, we could advertise the fact that winol.co.uk provides students with the latest campus information.

 On the other hand, the features team have showed clear attempts to branch out to our campus and bring people to the site. For example, as part of the ‘Absolute:ly’ team, myself and Georgia Spears did a number of ‘Ask Winchester’ features which involved asking fellow University students their opinions on various questions. We then told them to head to winol.co.uk to see the feature. Georgia Spears and I also did a Hampshire style wars- Winchester vs. Southampton students, which brought Southampton University students to the website.  

Social networking has played a huge part in promotion of ‘WINOL’ because as well as the official ‘WINOL’ account, each features magazine has their own ‘Twitter’ account too. All accounts are used to promote all ‘WINOL’ sites, the weekly news bulletin and all feature and news articles found on each site.

On the whole I think news gathering amongst the News Team has improved compared to last semester, since many new stories brought to the news meeting were being simply ‘lifted’ from local newspapers or news channels. However, now all reporters understand the importance of finding news stories themselves from original sources such as press releases, various council meetings or through a reporter’s own investigating. The reason this is so important is because as journalists it could be legally fatal to rely on another unverified source for information. All facts always need to be checked and approved.  I believe that ‘WINOL’ Court Reporter, Christina Michaels, has shown great strength in her ability to find a story from its original source. Throughout the weeks on ‘WINOL’ she has never let legal problems stand in her way of producing an accurate fact filled package. Every week she has been consistently thorough and has protected herself and ‘WINOL’ legally with every finer detail of her court report.

‘Sportsweek’ has managed to improve their views from last term to such an extent that in some weeks they were higher than the news bulletin’s ‘Youtube’ views which is positive because ‘Sportsweek’ consistently create good quality content. I’ve noticed that although the views are increasing, there is still no obvious link or tab to ‘Sportsweek’ on the ‘WINOL’ homepage. This needs altering straight away because if ‘Sportsweek’ can get as many as 866 views on 13/03/13 then there is no doubt that a link to ‘Sportsweek’ on the ‘WINOL’ homepage would further increase ‘Youtube’ views. Fans of the local sports clubs that ‘Sportsweek’ covers would also then be brought to the ‘WINOL’ homepage and could decide to browse other sections of ‘WINOL’.

This semester I made the transition from being part of the News Team to the Features Team and have thoroughly enjoyed it. I am working on ‘Absolute:ly,’ ‘WINOL’s’ own fashion magazine as Beauty Editor. ‘Absolute:ly’ is aimed at women in their early twenties, therefore, it’s essential that throughout this semester we created an assortment of features which met this demographic. I have been really pleased with how ‘Absolute:ly’ is run, I especially found our features meeting to be really helpful as it gave the team the chance to discuss new feature ideas and receive each other’s opinions. We all understood the need to produce new features each week in order to keep the site up to date and our content fresh. This meant our readers were kept satisfied and wanted to keep returning to ‘Absolute:ly’.

At the start of the semester ‘Absolute:ly’s site layout was completely different to how it is now. Georgia Spears, editor of ‘Absolute:ly’ and Jason French made the decision that ‘Absolute:ly’ needed a redesign for the site, as the site didn’t reflect the image which ‘Absolute:ly’ wanted to portray. The bold colours and mishmash of style was far from the sleek, modern, sophisticated layout that we desired. Jason French worked hard and we now have a site which resembles high-end fashion magazine websites. The main scroller, which was used for main images and features to be clearly advertised on the site has been removed which I think we might have to look into replacing, as at the moment there is no way of advertising all of our sites content. Also we have condensed our 7 previous sections into: Hair, Fashion, Gossip, Competitions, Beauty and Relationships. This means that with fewer sections we are able to focus more on what we currently have to ensure they are continuously up to date with new content.

At the start of term it was really difficult to submit work in order for it to be then uploaded onto the site. I was finding that I was submitting work and then it wasn’t going onto the site until maybe a week later at the earliest. This was damaging to our site’s traffic because with limited new content it wasn’t enough to keep people interested. However, submission was soon made more efficient because the editors of each magazine were given admin accounts, instead of only Sam Ashton and Jason French. Subbing of work is now able to be shared amongst all of the editors. This was also a plus because the editors know exactly when the deadline for uploading the features onto the site is, meaning that there is no longer any delay.

Learning how to use ‘Adobe Fireworks’ was a time consuming process but was crucial for me to learn, as it is the best programme for producing professional looking photographs, that you would expect from fashion magazines such as ‘Elle’ and ‘Vogue’. As I have previously mentioned, this is the standard of features that ‘Asbolute:ly’ is aiming for.

It was also my responsibility to think of and set up a series of competitions for ‘Absolute:ly’ in addition to creating a beauty feature each week. In total I set up 3 competitions but only one competition I can say was successful, as although there was applicants for all of the competitions there was only one winner for our nail art competition who was available to collect her prize. I believe that this was because we are a student run site and people didn’t believe that the competitions were genuine. Although ‘Twitter’ proved to be highly efficient for free advertising I believe that I should have invested in additional promotion, such as fliers to be handed out around campus to promote our online magazines and the ‘WINOL’ bulletin.

The feature that I am most proud of is my ‘Nicole Scherzinger-how to get the look’ and Hampshire style wars- Winchester vs. Southampton. This is because I feel that I produced both features to a high quality magazine standard. Both of the features had problems which I was able to overcome. Firstly, I was unable to find any decent ‘Creative Commons’ pictures of ‘Nicole Scherzinger’, but after contacting various photographers through ‘Flickr’ I found a picture which was perfect for my feature and all consent was given to use the image. The second issue I encountered was when Georgia Spears and I went to Southampton University without checking the term dates. We didn’t realise that there would be no students on campus as they were all on their Easter vacation. Therefore, in the future I would certainly plan ahead and check all details about a location I am going to visit for a feature, to prevent any unnecessary delay.

I am really pleased with my own individual progress this semester, I feel that I have grown in confidence and am producing a high standard of professional work and hope to continue this into next year.

The New Journalism

Brief history of American Journalism

• Started off with 'Penny Papers' in the USA- deeply partisan- merchants and politicians. This was a move towards the possibility of writing news regularly for the public rather than the elite. Papers began to be targeted at the working class.
• Mid 19th century, objectivity becomes a factor in journalism because of the creation of wire services. The associated press-AP- needed objectivity to be profitable.
• The first new Journalism-'The Yellow Press' (late 19th century). In New York there was competition between 'Hearst' of the 'New York Journal' and 'Pulitzer' of the 'New York World'.
• Sensationalism- Papers began to use huge, emotive headlines with big striking pictures to allure new readers and keep their interest. There were exclusives, dramatic stories, romance and shocking crimes. This was the start of the tabloids e.g similar to 'Sun on Sunday'. Chris Horrie explains this to be like 'Frozen TV'.
• Many called 'Yellow Journalism' the 'New' Journalism without a soul since all stories published were about sin, sex and violence.
• In the 60s/70s journalists were recording daily events in a formulaic way. (The 5 W's- Who, What, Where, When, Why- the news pyramid). The 'New Journalism' was an attempt to reflect/record events mirroring language and style of the events, therefore, letting it bleed into the copy.

Political and Cultural Scene

• 1960s was a turbulent time- great hope of JFK was destroyed in assignation and also in 1963 disastrous war in Vietnam-controversy of the draft- Muhammed Ali refused to be conscripted into the Army (Vietnam War). 
• Demographic Reasons- baby boom after WW2 which created a powerful youth culture. Organised marches/protests etc. The voice of radical change was young people who wished to rebel against conventions of the older generation. 
•  Sexual Revolution- Sexual freedom- the introduction of the pill meant that women had a choice and therefore gained sexual freedom.
• Reichian free love in mid 60s - (Feud says bad stuff going on in your mind and subconscious) He was a follower of Freud but then fell out with him. He said that Freud had it wrong, you should just let it all hang it, people are unhappy because they keep things in.
• The student movement- worldwide protests of 1968. Civil rights, Black power-use of LSD (introduced by CIA) to access altered thinking of counterculture.
• Prohibition of drugs created subcultures- Hippies, communes, collectives etc. and established much of youth culture has other- deviant.
• LSD was seen as a way to escape controlling hierarchy. Believed that all bad things come from young people.
• Music was central to counterculture. Sartre thought jazz was authentic, the music of the 1960s was a full frontal attack on the norms, drug fuelled and anti Establishment (Bob Dylan)- with the aim to be subvert and political.

Influence of Existentialism

• Ideas formed by Existentialism- Heidegger's Authenticity, Sartre's 'Bad Faith'. Key ideas- freedom and choice. For example Fanon's view of a path to freedom via accelerated choice (violence). As we have seen, for Fanon the act of violence is essentially the extreme expression of choice- choice with real, immediate impact.
• Anti-establishment feeling-''There is a policeman inside your head- he must be destroyed''-began to seep into Journalism.
• Journalists questioned whether basing stories on press releases, press conferences and official statements made by the establishment was really objective- more importantly a true reflection of events? Bad faith.
• New forms of Journalism began to emerge, focus on setting, plot, sounds, feelings, direct quotes and images while still being as careful as before with facts. Truman Capote, Tom Wolfe and Norman Mailer are examples of this new breed.
• This alternative journalism was personal and expressed an individual point of view. It was also unconventional- shift in form of narration 'telling to seeing'.
• Marshall McLuhan's 'Hot and cold media' in 'New Journalism' objectivity is junked in favour of subjective experience. Most famous example is Tom Wolfe. A huge fan of Emile Zola- greatest writers of natural realism. Zola crowned himself as the first scientific novelist, a 'naturalist' to use his term, studying the human fauna according to Wolfe. 
• Wolfe enters into Journalism first thing he notices is the status competition. This varies though, reporters in 'scoop comp'. 
• People started to use dialogue, new articles with real, intimate dialogue. Real people speaking in a real way. Dramatic shift to try and replicate real life events exactly how they are, exactly the same in print. Attention to detail. Learn everything/ all details to enable you to write in this way. Need to invest time to get this sort of material.

New Journalism page 46 & 47

These are the 2 most important pages about features.

The Journalists embraced social realism. Learnt the techniques of realism from Balzac, Zola, Dickens etc. 

This power is derived from four devices: 

1. Scene by scene construction - telling the story in scenes and not in a sheer ‘historical narrative’. Journalists needed to be at the event to witness it. 
2. ‘Realistic dialogue involves the reader more completely than any other single device - it also defines character more quickly and effectively than any other single device.”
3. - third-person point of view - “giving the reader the feeling of being inside the characters mind.” need to interview the subject about his thoughts and emotions, along with everything is. 
4. The fourth device is the recording of everyday gestures, habits, manners, customs, styles of furniture, modes of behaviour towards children, superiors, inferiors and other symbolic details that might exist within a scene. Symbolic of people’s status of life.
   Small details gives ways in to explain what people are like.

• Ultimate New Journalism piece is 'Fear and Loathing' (Hunter Thompson).. “Gonzo Journalism” Gonzo Journalism can often be obvious by such features as: fly on the wall, shaky footage, being authentic. Louis Therox - Gonzo Journalism
• “Performance Journalism” (eg SUPERSIZE ME) Michael Moore etc
  You become the story and are central to the story.

Absolute:ly- Style Wars: Southampton vs Winchester

Totalitarianism

Key question: 'Can good people commit evil acts?' How could this happen?

• Focus on the 20th century where there was nearly 100 years of relative peace before World War One but then there were huge atrocities in Russia, China and especially Germany.
• Totalitarian Regimes-Plato's Republic- against these ideas:Contract Theory, idea that the powers of the state should be limited (even by Hobbes). Liberalism personal freedom protected by the state.
• Hannah Arendt argues that the 20th Century Totalitarian Regimes were different to anything that had come before the central purpose of Totalitarian Regimes was to destroy the individual. She was fascinated with the newness/strangeness of this new political model: ''Everything we know of Totalitarianism demonstrates a horrible originality- its very actions constitute a break with all our traditions.''
• But she saw the imperalism as a precursor to Totalitarianism because it contained so many traits which the new regimes could use. One such trait of imperialism was the development of racism. Once established, ways of thinking and behaving that denied rights and therefore was available for Totalitarian Regimes to adopt. ( Eg. General Kitchener's actions in Boer War).
• Our individuality makes us difficult to control and gather up into a collective movement. To destroy this individuality two methods are used:

1. State terror
2. Ideology

• The purpose of the terror isn't just to murder vast numbers of people but to also destroy their individuality and ability to act against the government- not just to act, but even the thought of acting (Orwell).
• Ideology compliments the policy of terror, it eliminates the capacity for individual thought and experience among the executioners themselves.
• Ideology is also a type of specialist knowledge as Popper pointed out is often used as a justification for the authority of rulers. It is also a way to avoid responsibility.
• The ideology (natural or historical movement) gives them ' the total explanation of the past, the total knowledge of the present, and the reliable prediction of the future.' It frees you from common sense, blissful don't have to worry. This breakdown of the stable human world means loss of the institutional and psychological barriers that normally set limits to what is possible.
• For Hannah Arendt the first move the Nazis made on the road to the 'Final Solution' was to deny Jewish people citizenship. Therefore making them stateless and with no 'natural rights'.
• Society is fragile and can break down very quickly. In order to be civilised human beings we need to inhabit a man-made world of stable structures. Being part of society enables us to be civilised- gives us access to a shared reality.

Control of Language

• Orwell was horrified by the capacity of Totalitarian Regimes to attempt to control minds, by manipulating language. Thought takes place in purely linguistic terms.Therefore, Control language, and you control thought and so mind control (may be) possible through manipulation of language.
• In the USSR - experiments with ‘linguistic reform’
  Idea was Utopian - ban words for racial difference, and this was to abolish racism. This resulted in horrible, ugly distortion into Communist-speak - all - jargon, cliches, ritual phrases, slogans. A form of language designed to prevent thought.
  
  1984:Ministry of Peace - organises war
  Ministry of Love - organises the police
  Ministry of Plenty - gathers taxes

What is your personal responsibility in a dictatorship?

• Would I collaborate?
• May 11 1960, Israeli secret service kidnapped Nazi fugitive Adolf Eichmann in Argentina and he stood trial in Jerusalem  for crimes he had committed during the 'Final Solution'. Eichmann's main responsibility during the Holocaust had been the organisation of the transport of millions of Jews from across Europe to concentration camps.
• For the Israelis the trial had 3 purposes:

1. Trying Eichmann for his crimes
2. Educating the world about the nature and the extent of the Holocaust.
3. Legitimising the Jewish State.

• For Hannah Arendt it was a shock to see Eichmann since he was no monster, not what she expected him to be like. He claimed to be a law abiding citizen and so it became apparent that you don't have to possess great wickedness in order to commit great crimes. She believed that he did not think while he committed the crime- didn't make a choice. This thinking is crucial for existentialists. He claimed to just follow the rules- it was his required role/duty.
• Hannah Arendt is saying that he didn’t make a choice and you can not avoid choice. He didn’t chose so he got put in this position.
• He had derived this particular moral precept from his reading of Kant.
  Kant’s categorical Imperative: Act only according to that maxim whereby you can, at the same time, will that it should become a universal law. 
• Arendt responds - this was outrageous on the face of it and also incomprehensible since Kant’s moral philosophy is so closely bound up with man's faculty of judgement which rules out blind obedience.
• Satre: the only thing I cannot escape is the need to choose but the possibility of recreating oneself is rightening - people will try to avoid this freedom. This is ‘bad faith’. 
  Arendt rejects the physiological interpretation - Eichmann is neither perverted or sadistic. In her view he just acted according to a brutal law that had become normal. What was his crime according to her was that he failed to think, he failed to judge 'he failed to choose’.
  Even if eighty million Germans had done as they did that would be no excuse for you - what had become banal was the failure to think. This is Eichmann’s crime - HA
• Arendt is saying that we must look to our personal judgement (thinking) rather than the law in order to know how to act because law may turn out to be criminal as in Nazi Germany. In which case we have responsibility to oppose bad law even a responsibility in those conditions be defined as disobedience - indeed sometimes disobedience is exactly our responsibility and this is what Eichmann failed to grasp. 
  
  

Spring Trends Hair- for Absolute:ly

Absolute:ly nail Spring trends

Bureaucracies

• The new industrial state= the system which satisfies everything that is a human need.
• Max Vaber looked at the rise of bureaucracy. He believed that charisma is essential to gain bureaucratic power.
• The main source of power is by having a legal routine authority (dividing and sorting out rules).
• Keynes was concerned with over population. He believed that foreigners will come to wherever the money is. Government spending can defer the problem but isn't able to ultimately solve the problem. In order to forever defer the problem, money should just be printed according to Keynes because even inflation can be controlled.

The Depression

• Capitalism collapsed in 1930s and so there was famine and mass unemployment. This meant that many went into the army. Keynes supported this military movement ( military Keynesianism).
• 1950s was the era of American prosperity. Keynes is the great 'God'. The far left/ far right (including Heidegger, Sartre, Maoism and Franz Fanon etc) is 'beaucratic technological militaristic nihilism'.
• Global fight between capitalists and workers.
• America spend vast amounts of money on the military in order to keep people employed. This is the equivalent to the NHS in the UK.
• Nihilism is prevalent for Western civilisation according to Heidegger. The most obvious form of nihilism being religion.

The new industrial state

• 'The military Industrial Complex' (Eisenhower). Need to avoid conspiracy theories, people from elites naturally think the answer is to increase public spending but tell everyone it's being reduced.
• People want an aristocracy not a democracy. A highly trained, intelligent bureaucrat is what's needed to run the country.
• Heidegger suggests it to be a violent movement ( nuclear weapons-government spending).

Critiques of the managed society

• Intellectual revival of Adam Smith and Hume (and Aristotle against Kant and German Idealism). Reaction against subjectivity and against existentialism. The importance of money as an objective measured of social worth and the point of social existence.

1. Joesph Conrad- Heart of Darkness.
2. Anthropology- reveals the essential irrationality of man, rejection of Rousseau's (and Marx/Engles) point of view of pre-historic human nature. The true human is a violent monster and females exists only to reproduce.
3. Frazer- The Golden Bough- Real human nature is subordinate males.
4. Vietnam- The first 'entirely bureaucratic technological' war, an 'automated death machine'. The end of the age of the nation state (the defeat of the USA). Also the end of the age of Enlightenment in terms of Heidegger.