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.