Still a very long way to go...

Even though this week turned out to be a bit of a disaster and a catastrophe, we did manage to pull something together and in the very last minute broadcast our weekly bulletin. It was unfortunately not a bulletin up to the standards we have produced before, and hopefully we will not see one like this again. The week started off with a news meeting where not even half of all our reporters showed up - which makes it really difficult to plan the week ahead of us, seeing as noone knows what is going on, and if the reporters not present are working on a story, or not even awake yet...

It is vital that everyone attends the news meetings, the Monday morning debriefs and anything else that concerns us as an organisation, and us as a team. If we aren't fully updated on what is going on from week to week, I don't think we can contribute and produce material up to the standards as we did before the summer. It is understandable that things to happen that concerns for example your private life and due to this you cannot attend a meeting, or even a whole news week - but if this is the case you need to be sure that you catch up on what you might have missed while away, both for your own and everyone elses sake.

The bulletin, as I said, was far from perfect. The few things that sort of saved it was Andy's piece, concerning GBH (Grevious Bodily Harm) and his interview with the victim whos attacker pleaded guilty to the charges, and the sports teams packages that holds the standard week in and week out.

When we are accompanied by guests in the studio, which is a really good and interesting thing that also looks professional, we have to think about the backdrop and the greenscreen, because it looks quite random and sloppy when the same backdrop appears all the time and it looks as if the presenter and the interviewees are jumping between the shots. Is there anything we could do about this?

Also, we need to pay attention and work even harder to improve our technical skills, such as pictures and sound - it is important, once we have got the story put together and the interviewees on camera, to make sure the sound quality is usable. One of the worst things ever is listening to something that you find interesting but you cannot hear the interviewee due to for example wind. In addition to this, I personally think we use too many zooms and need to cut down on these as the human eye is not used to this movement. Rather get more general views, than using the zoom - unless the zoom adds something to the piece.

I think it was a good choice to change presenters to give others a chance to try it out, even though Claire and Tom always make a brilliant job! Seeing as we are at Uni and want to learn everyone should get a shot to try this, and other things they desperately want to try out, as this is really the only opportunity we get to try these things out and find out whether or not we enjoy doing this.

Even though we all felt a bit defeated and quite frustrated after this week, I am sure we will be in next week again, giving it our best and hopefully producing a bulletin we can be proud of again!