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.
