Student demonstration in London - short version

This is the shorter version of the student demonstration that took place in London on 10/11/10. This package was produced for Wichester News Online (WINOL) and broadcasted with the weekly news bulletin on 17/11/10.

WINOL back on track

So third year is kicking off with some more WINOL action. This year we're joined by the second year students, and we are an even bigger team working with our weekly bulletin than we were last year - so potentially we can expand, improve and be an even better success than last year! With extra resources, we will also expand on features and make this an area just as intense and exciting as the news area.

When I myself started off my secon

d year I had basically no camera and editing skills and therefore WINOL couldn't take off until middle of October last year, and we all lost out on precious time where we could have produced material for bulletins, if we had only had the experience. This year the second years already have the technical skills and only after the first week of the semester we're off producing material. Very exciting and a lot of fun to be working with the new guys just joining our team.

This semester my role is chief news reporter. Sounds very fancy. Maybe. It b

asically means that I am the one supposed to cover the main stories of the week - hopefully I can turn them into good reports and be able to top the bulletins with them.. Expectations, expectations, expectations.. Should be lots of fun!

For the news meeting Monday morning I had a story idea I was eager to go for. Seeing that Primark opened in Winchester yester

day, I wanted to cover this event but not turn it into a puff piece - rather find out how local businesses look ahead on the future with such a massive low price company in town - would they potentially face a hard time loosing out on customers because of this? As Monday morning went on, we decided to pass on my story to one of the second year students Jack, as he was not assigned to anything, and seeing it is a dummy week we decided it is better the second years get the camera and editing training so they're all ready to go when the live version kicks off next week. So I ended up helping the news reporters out with filming, sound issues, editing skills and other tips and tricks I have come across throughout my last year working as a news reporter for WINOL.

I guess it's only Tuesday and too early to predict how this weeks bulletin is going to turn out, but I feel confident and hope that the reporters taking on this weeks stories realises how important it is to keep track on time, on all the technical things and practical things at the same time while putting your piece together. It is not an easy job, and I hope we all realise this during this week so that next week will be a success for us all.

Tip of the day: Save your editing in Final Cut every second. You don't want it to freeze on you. Again.

TV Masterclass - the do's and don'ts...

So, just a few important points made at the TV Masterclass

Overall:

contact book - contacts, relations - not only phone calls, face to face contact will give you more information and more detail straight away

targeted audience - think WINOL land - 500 viewers would be the golden target

be more ambitious than last year since were a bigger team - team work absolute vital!

Generally: sport - men, feature - women (balance)

Bulletins:

put work in before monday morning - always bring at least two stories - it's about people not an issue

press officers will not help you and call you back and won't be helpful

talk to the affected people first - for example the Union if job cuts - then council

hit problems and overcome them = success

no need to explain how we've done things or haven't been able to do something

we are journalists

persistance!

right place right time!

you need to write text stories and have photo to go with it this semester and publish on the site alongside with the VT

Harry Evans book! to get the style right

take still photos when you're out and about

fight for your stories to get them in the bulletin and justify why you want it in there

prep before output - watch and scrutinise daily TV bulletins - half hour every day

running order - why to put which story in what order - think of your audience (1,2,3 story)

organisation of bulletin

balance

reporters - hero reporter/presenter that you respect, story crafter

deconstruct, interpret and use in your own work

listen to links (!) - worst aspect at minute - ours are being overlooked at minute - not least important - explain it in link prior to it

*start piece with natural sound - not through reporter

*conflict = story = angle

*develop a story

*soften things - it makes things more natural

*humanise/personalise the story

*change camera around to get different angles for same shot (sequence)

*framing - we shoot in thirds

*best picture first to engage people in your story

*don't start with PTC (piece to camera)

*no guilty signs

Phrases to ban:

I couldn't find a story/feature (- lots of stories going all the time)

I want to do a story about the ... recession (worse than 1)

you have to talk to actual real people, most read papers - especially local ones, listen to radio stations, bulletins

I couldn't do the story cause they didn't ring me back - you can't be passive as a journalist

too little too late - don't use

remains to be seen - don't use

I spoke to (name)... / I'm at (place)... - don't do - use captions

Targets:

women sport and other sports (not only football) better mix

not rely on highlight packages every week

one featured team from campus in bulletin each week

cultivate sport

Production:

a bit more ambitious with production - especially since we've got the tricaster now so use it more from outside the studio (OB's preferably 1 a week etc)

work on projects, not only the bulletin, such as updating the intro, the look at the show, green screen

team has to get trained in using Joomla (CMS - content management system)

and also some Flash training to be able to make headers and such on website

Features:

a lot more pictures, photography, think visually!

feature program to go on back of WINOL bulletin

booker - someone to book guests etc - maybe a first year student?

need to be more fun and eye catching

cross pollination between departments to promote each other

WINOL week 12 and Vision Mixing

This week was a rather slow news week - especially compared to last week when the ideas came in from everywhere and gave us good, quality stories. But as our guest lecturer and guest editor Andy Steggall said, you do learn so much more from these weeks when you need to actually think hard about how to angle the things you've got to get a proper story out of it.

Production wise everything worked really well this week, which was a relief for us as BJTC came to visit our university to have a look and talk around, making their minds up whether or not the course should get accredited or not. I think, and truly hope, we made a good impression as this course definitely deserves to be accredited. It is absolutely brilliant! In our run through - about 30 minutes before going live - we realised the running time was actually 46 seconds over the 10 minute golden limit - PANIC! - but everyone managed to stay calm even though I think the majority of us panicked quite a bit inside and pull it off to a spot on 10 minute bulletin. Kudos to Glenn Hutt and Catherine Hayes for working efficiently with the reporters in the news room to cut out seconds here and there and make it all manageable.

Overall the sound of this bulletin was a bit all over the place. Even though we seem to have sorted out issues with cameras, white balance, focus and framing, there is still an issue with sound that we need to work on. Not only do the packages vary in sound levels, but so does also the audio within a single package on its own - so in the future we definitely need to pay more attention to sound levels and how to get a nice audio level all the way through the bulletin.

Headlines this week were quite alright. But, another weak point is our links. Everyone are producing links for each and every week for their own packages - so the reporters should know what their stories are about and what sentences to use to link into their own packages - but still some of the links are quite dull and not capturing the viewer, making him/her wanting to watch the next story.. so it's definitely something we need to work on - it's our headline, this is where the audience decide whether they want to stay tuned or change channel!

Top story this week was Stuart's well found story about councillors rejecting a new housing development in Winchester, which had a bit of audio problems but a well made story with good interviewees and some great footage. Steggall said that this would usually not be a top story, but seeing what a slow news week this has been, it made sense to put it up there anyway.

Following this piece was Grant's story regarding the crime rate in Winchester, and how it has decreased. The link itself did not sell the story, but Grant's PTC (piece to camera) definitely did. The story in itself had to be more relevant to the actual people concerned - the people of Winchester - and it was a bit too vague, not addressing this issue properly to our audience - so we have to remember to localise the story even more and address it properly, clearly to our target audience. Also, when using library footage, make sure you either write 'library footage' (which may look a bit dull) or mention in your VO (voice over) that it is previous recorded material, by saying 'last month' or such.

Next up was James' piece on a Walk to School - this package should definitely have started with the 3rd shot in the package, which was his best shot. This way it would have drawn the viewer in right from the start. Also, since this package handles children you need to see them, and hear them since they are the main subject of this story. So, when the interview is with the adult, you should either put up the kids on the adult level so they are together in the shot on the same eye level. Or take the kid out if he or she is not talking or making a point in being in the shot.

Sports followed and this week we actually had some pictures. It started of with Jason's coverage of athletics. An absolute cracking opening sequence with a gun shot starting off one of the laps, which made the viewer jump and get straight into the piece and into the action. Unfortunately the link didn't sell the story but the opening sequence luckily did.

Followed this piece was a lovely World Cup coverage by Josh. A really good edit, with some fun added to it but it could have been even more fluffy and fun with interesting beer facts about how much lager pubs are expecting to sell in a PTC outside a pub - to make it a bit more factual, but still keep a fun twist to it, and to add some colour. The captions should have been kept longer, as the average time for a caption is 4 seconds, for people to be able to realise who he/she is and what they're doing in your piece.

And finally, Chanin brought us a piece on an art exhibition at the Discovery Centre in Winchester. A cracking link (!) with great camera work that showed off the art in a good, fun filled way - where this could actually, with the wrong footage, been quite a boring piece. The framing for the interview was a bit boring, considering all that great art was around him, and he was just placed against a wall that said nothing.

This week I was assigned the Vision Mixing role in the gallery, which means pressing the right buttons at the right time to make sure that the right content goes out live. It looks complicated, a big box with quite a few shiny buttons and black wheels to twist around, but once you get the hang of it, it isn't too hard, as long as you keep listening to the director for orders for when to change cameras or go into a VT.

Basically what you do is deciding what you want in the foreground, and what camera or VT you want to go with it. When using camera 1, 2 or 3 in the studio - which happens to be button 1, 2 and 3 (top line - foreground) - you have to combine this with button 9 (second line, green screen, background) to make sure you get the lovely WINOL live at 5 backdrop.

When going into a VT (a package) you have to press double 4's - that means button 4 (top line, foreground) which will show your package - and button 4 (second line, background) to make sure that the green screen won't show through and discolour your package as it is broadcasted.

WINOL Debrief - May 12th

Last weeks live edition of WINOL was probably one of the slickest, best looking and most news worthy bulletin we have managed to put on air so far. The stories were all in on time, luckily there was not many technical problems in the studio, or out on the field, and everybody knew what they were doing and everyone gave 100% in doing so. I think mostly this was thanks to the live general election coverage we hosted the week previous to last, when we all worked producing live television for hours and hours, and thanks to everything we learnt this evening, it was easier to put together the 10 minute WINOL bulletin than it has been before. Overall, the bulletin ran over with 10 seconds, which is the best running time so far - and I am sure it would have been spot on if the VT-computer had not frozen at the start of a package. Sound is still a hard nut to crack, and it seems we might need to focus on this issue in our practice run on Wednesday to perfect this, and as director it might be worth shouting even louder for the sound guy to hear what is going on.

The traffic was unfortunately not very high, only just under one hundred people watched it on LiveStream, and as Chris pointed out that we need to promote ourselves better with leaflets, social networking and other ways to promote what we are doing. One thing that might help is bringing back 'Date of Fate' which attracted quite a big audience every week, and maybe develop other similar type of shows that can attract an audience which might stay around our website to not only watch this, but also read our text stories and familiarise themselves with who we are and what we are doing every week, and hopefully want to keep coming back to our news service.

"Symmetry is boring"

Chris Horrie

Some technical details... Chris mentioned that we should not keep the presenter in the center of the camera, as this is very symmetrical ... and boring. Play around with the angles and get a more interesting and asymmetrical shot so that the audience can be a bit more entertained... Also, we should zoom in tighter on the presenter to give a feeling of him/her telling the news in your face, like a friend would. Additionally we have to get better at writing the scripts. At the moment they are alright, but they need some polishing and we definitely need to simplify them. We are telling the news. Simple. Not features. Complicated. So we need to keep the language structure simple so that everyone can digest what has been said first time around, cause you will not hear it twice. A more factual, less poetic script!

First package on air this week was Stuart's which, as always, delivered an excellent piece - this week about Winchester's own Conservative candidate Steve Brine and his first day in Westminster after the coalition had been made official. Potentially, there could be some juxtaposition going on in the piece when speaking about a former member of Parliament as the same time as the Cromwell statue is being shown - Cromwell former member of Parliament? Throughout the package the scripting improved and towards the end it was excellent, and the piece the camera was spot on perfect.

Secondly Grant provided a very well balanced package with an almost perfect script. As a pay off we all have to improve though, and cannot keep saying "wait and see" and such, it needs to be more concrete and definite! Like Chris said, a "near perfect package"!

Following these two political packages, Joey contributed with a well balanced piece about a race row that broke out at the University of Winchester during one of the BOP nights. Even though the angle was good, it might have been possible to have made it even more distinct. It was technically not excellent, but the script was simple and very good for a news package.

Last one of the more heavy news packages on the agenda for the bulletin was Claire's report on teenage pregnancy in Hampshire, and how it's risen throughout the last years. Unfortunately this was more of a featury package than news one, but a very good one. There was also quite a lot of comment going on, which tends to lean towards feature as well, since you are not allowed to comment in news.

At this point sports should have made an entrance, but this week we didn't have very much at all, except for Josh talking for a minute about rugby and what will happen later on this year. This basically due to the football season being over, and the sports team not being able to find very much else going on in and around Winchester.

Finally, Paul added some flavour to quite a heavy bulletin with his story about award winning tea - even though it was good it missed a bit of balance, and also that sting that makes people more interested in it. A nice puff piece to finish off one our best bulletins so far, which we all were very pleased with.

Hopefully, with BJTC coming around for an inspection this week, we can produce just as a good bulletin again!

___

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Election Night goes LIVE Gonzo Style

Question Time at the University of Winchester

Election Night goes LIVE Gonzo Style

About twenty-five nervous, excited and for once well-dressed students have been gathering throughout the day in the News Room at the University of Winchester. The date is the 6^th of May, 2010, and for most people this means Election Day 2010, just like it does for our students. But it is just not like any other election day for them. This is the day when their first broadcast is going to be put on air, online, live – and hopefully being watched by thousands of people who are not only their parents or other halves, but also more ‘important’ such as politics.

Everyone has been working hard to plan it all into detail but even so the panic is now starting to creep up on the Winchester News Online team as every minute seems to go faster towards that crucial 10pm live election coverage start. The WINOL team has been working for weeks and have known for just as long that it will be a long night, filled with sweat, yawns, too much coffee and a few headaches.

As the tedious script writing eventually takes off properly, a lady dressed in blue walks in, telling the team that they can no longer stay in the news room, which is equipped with all the technology they will need throughout the night, any longer due to security reasons. The ice cold, burning journalist eyes that meet these words fill the room with a fuming, negative and downbeat atmosphere that does not go away until the issue is later resolved and the students can go back to panicking about the “real stuff” again.

With only a few hours left until the coverage itself is about to begin, everyone is running around like silly geese, not really knowing what to do, but still somehow managing to pull it all together before 10pm. A script is delivered to the presenter. The studio crew is flying into the studio with just a few minutes before takeoff. The gallery is buzzing with nervousness and nail biting, shouting and directing, too much people but no one really knowing what to do next.

Ten. Nine. Eight. Seven. Six. Five.

PANIC!

Four. Three.

Light, check. Sound, check. Autocue, check.

Two. One.

Presenter cue. GO!

As with everything that involves technology something is bound to go wrong. First possible thing does. The unreliable autocue decides to crash but luckily the presenters are able to pull it off anyway and deliver what seems to be a fantastic show. Fiery spotlights are turning up the heat even more in the studio, while icy air conditioning works hard to cool down the equipment as well as the team yelling to people what to do next in the gallery. A can of Red Bull stands next to the presenters PC and he is asked to move it out of shot. He giggles and does what he is told.

‘SHUT UP’

A million voices are buzzing around the director who cannot hear what is being said in the studio due to the cacophony of noises that merge together as one big choir. But after about ten minutes some sort of calmness fill the studio and the gallery, and our hard working students manage to pull through and give their audience an amazing live show presenting the evenings results streaming in from all around the United Kingdom.

‘SOUND UP’

Sweat dripping down the presenters’ forehead as begging over and over again for the studio sound to be louder, ‘LOUDER’! First outside broadcasting is arriving from our fellow students around in the different constituencies in the South East of England, but it seems it is either sound or picture that does not want to work properly. The two different elements necessary for a broadcast can definitely not cooperate and agree on working as a team, instead all that comes through is either lousy sound with good picture quality or the other way around.

A sigh of disappointment echoes in the gallery as everyone had looked forward to being one of the few, if not the only, university doing something like this with live links around the UK, and other far off places such as Austria. But determined students as the team are, no one gave up and as the evening went on the broadcast came to include some almost professional outside broadcasts from around the country. When the next election comes knocking on our doors, the WINOL team will be more prepared on these challenges and knowing how to work their way to the end result without too much disappointment.

At midnight presenter number two is taking over presenter ones seat and realises the script has somehow not been fully finished, which leaves her with a lot of black holes and empty minutes to fill. The director keep frenetically whispering questions and ideas to her for discussions with the studio guests, and at the same time trying to puzzle the script from the first couple of hours together to something new for the remaining god knows how long time.

At half past two most of the constituency packages are not usable due to the fact that the result for that specific constituency has been announced. The crew ends up with an awful lot of packages with issues being discussed with the public and politics, such as trident, immigration and the economy, but as the minutes go on, even the WINOL team gets tired of seeing the same packages getting repeated over and over again so it is decided to throw in more live commentaries to our news room, where a third presenter does a brilliant job keeping track on what is going on in the UK and what might happen next.

Around 4am the team decides to keep going until the results for Winchester has been announced, which should be “any minute” now. Countless of coffee mugs can be traced between the News Room and the studio, and the apples, bananas and cookies provided in the News Room seem to decrease rapidly as it gets brighter and brighter outside, and as Winchester starts waking up again.

When the results are finally being announced for Winchester the entire studio held its breath waiting for the word – KEEP! – that would keep Winchester under Martin Tod’s regime with the Liberal Democrats, or – GAIN! – which would make the constituency a blue or red part of the map for the next five years. Tiredness, frustration, headaches, excitement, smell of coffee and a big sigh of relief fill the room as the outside broadcaster announces that Winchester has fallen in the hands of the Conservatives, and Steve Brine, and whether the members of the team agree or disagree with the public’s choice they all burst out in a round of applauds – most likely due to the fact that the University of Winchester, and its team of WINOL journalists, is being the first university covering an election live for seven hours and still being alive at 6am in the morning. It has been an amazingly well organised night with memories for the rest of everyone’s lives.

There is something special about that WINOL team.

Question Time at the University of Winchester

On Monday the 19^th of April the University of Winchester hosted a local version of the nationwide known Question Time – the first university ever to host a local event like this. The event was hosted by the university’s vice chancellor Joy Carter who during the one hour show took on the role of David Dimbleby, making sure that everyone got a chance to speak about the subjects of the evening. The questions were given by the public after Joy Carter had started the hour off with the first question of the night. The politicians involved, Michael Mates (Conservative), Alan Whitehead (Labour) and Sandra Gidley (Liberal Democrat) all had a fair deal of questions to deal with and a chance to react to the public’s questions about everything that concerns them, both locally and nationally. Also by their side was the editor of the Daily Echo, Ian Murray, who participated as the non-political part of the show, trying to get the public’s general view through to the politicians as an hour is unfortunately not long enough to get an equal chance for everyone to speak their mind and ask their questions to the different parties.

To be able to organise this event, our tutors seemed to work day and night to get everyone to appear at the same place at the same time, and the final product turned out very well. We managed to put this hour together by using six cameras, four static ones and two handheld which Veronica Frydel (year 2) and Catherine Hayes (year 2) handled very nicely. James Kenyon (year 3), Paul Carrett (year 2) and Shira Pinzcuk (MA student) operated the static cameras and made sure there were tapes around when the cameras decided to run out of it. Andrew Giddings (year 1) and I operated the two gun mics, which was a completely new experience for both of us as we have never operated them during a live event with such a big(ish) crowd before.

Also there to sort out the sound and other technical things, such as lights, was Chanin Lloyd (year 2) and the staff at the university, Chris Horrie, Angus Scott and Brian Thornton. It was a great experience as I have never been doing anything like this before, the closest I have come is doing the news packages every week, but that is nothing similar to this. With them you have got a good few chances to re record and make sure you get what you want out of an interview and the angle you want to give your story. This is all a one time only opportunity and if you don’t get it there and then you will never get it. Thanks to this opportunity I feel a great deal more confident in dealing with live television, even though it was just a first time chance, and hopefully I will be able to do similar things during the next year of my course as it gives me good experience to take with me for the future.

The event went online last night, Tuesday the 20^th of April, on our website, WINOL, and will be there for you to watch and make up your mind on how to cast your vote for the election.

Scripting and Counting - naah

We got through another week of Winol. We were 20 seconds under the golden 10 minute limit though. Not brilliant. But not bad. We're on a medium middle kind of standard. But I know we can do better. We need to get more original stories, and not only depend on finding them in the newspapers on Monday or Tuesday -or on the University's Portal page on the Wednesday. This week we kind of ended up with, as Brian said, a top story and lots of 'and finally' stories after that.. Like I said, not brilliant - but we've seen worse.



My role this week consisted of scripting the entire thing together. Quite a slow work as nothing seems to happen for days - and then all of a sudden a million things get thrown at you and you don't really even know where to start. It's not too hard, you put the stories, their links and other vital information into the scripting program, ENPS, and woop it counts out the time for you and tells you whether you're spot on (which never seems to happen at the moment) over or under the 10 minute golden limit. I think I have discovered that my dream would not be to end up as a script writer, but who knows what the future may bring.

As well as scripting this week, I kept my fantastic job - keeping track of the time during the live production in the studio (see previous blog). It is good fun and a little bit nerve wrecking every week as 1 second can screw everything and everyone up - badly! But I think we got through without any difficulties in the end, and even though we were 20 seconds under the 10 minute limit, it worked out much better than we thought it would do an hour before we went live - when we thought we might even had been 1 minute under the limit as a package got cut out of the bulletin with short notice.

In the short debrief after the live broadcast, we got told that we are doing well, but that we can do better. That we still need to think both twice and three times when it comes to legal problems so that we don't end up in dangerous water with news concerning crime and such. Also, all reporters were told that they have to bring their own stories, preferably three each, on Monday mornings so that we have something to play with when we're creating our bulletin, otherwise we will get stressed out every week if one story collapses, and we cannot afford that as we are not that experienced yet. We also need to think a bit more about the hard news vs the softer fluffier news so that there is a nice balance between these two that the audience will appreciate, and return to the following week.

I think that we are doing a great job and I could never have thought that I myself would be working in a TV studio during my Uni time, applying my skills to real life situations and experience what it takes to be a journalist 'out there'. I thought it would be more of a theoretical course where you sit reading your literature everyday, all day, but luckily it isn't! I really do appreciate all the experience we get every week through Winol, and hopefully this will make us more confident once graduated and out there looking for the future job- which hopefully won't be 100% script and counting based...

Winol Week 5!

Verrrrry important week as we were told we were having the BJTC coming around to inspect our progress as journalists and how we work with our stories, content, interviews, and such to make sure we follow the curriculum for our course and know about for example the law and how to approach different stories to make justice for all the parts included. 

When the live bulletin went on air, we discovered that the BJTC weren't around and we all breathed with a bit of relief cause I think we all kind of knew that this  week was not as good, content wise, as the week before. We got through the bulletin and everything went quite smooth. The production team pulled it off well, and everyone seem much more calm now and I think part of that is the fact that we've had quite a lot of practice and we've taken the opportunities to run through old scripts just to get the feel and the flow of producing the bulletin and knowing what to do when and how. 

Story wise this week was a bit slow. Added to that, the news team was short on staff so once stories started coming in, there was not enough reporters covering the stories. This left the production team, which went out to help covering the stories the news team didn't have enough personnel to cover on their own. Me and Veronica ended up in a spam email drama that took place at the University of Winchester, and we had to tackle different legal issues, such as privacy, and with this learn extra bits and pieces about the law and the different rights you have as a journalist, or 'simply' as a human being in the English society.

On Monday I spent a good few hours trying to sort out the web page once again, tidying it up a bit, making it look a bit more professional and easier accessible. Chris showed me briefly how to work with Fireworks, a problem where you can build different images to look the way you want them on your website. It's brilliant! Apart from the fact that you cannot link different web pages on here, that is using html language to make a direct link to whatever that picture is telling you to read more about. To do this we have to upload the picture we made in Fireworks into Flash to insert the html language from here and eventually upload to the web via another web domain and FINALLY use it from everywhere to access the finalised piece... Sigh... Quite complicated, and taking forever!

Tuesday and half Wednesday was spent trying to get the images, the right people and right information about this spam email going out via the Universities email system due to two members of staff 'ignoring the rules of not giving out their personal details' and therefore indirectly inviting these spam emails to our servers and them being able to access our data bases to multiply themselves to thousands and thousands other email addresses being stored in the University's web base. We managed to turn it into a package in the last minute and it went on the bulletin, which was quite a relief seeing we had spent so much time trying to build it in the first place. 

This week I kept my role, which means keeping track of the time all the time within the gallery, making sure everything runs smoothly and no black holes appear on the screen. When I first heard about this role I thought it sounded as quite an easy job, seeing as counting down from 10 can't be too hard. Mistake. It is very intense and time consuming as you have to be absolutely 110% focused all the way through the running time of the bulletin, if you don't give the right timings and keep everyone up to date with what's going on there will definitely be black holes everywhere in your bulletin and it will look absolutely crap! I quite enjoy doing this but I have done it for three weeks now and I feel as if it's time for a new challenge.

Overall, good week. Not great. But on the other hand not bad at all. We've still got things to work on, and my main issue is the fact that we haven't got very many text stories coming through, and therefore not enough material to publish on the website which makes it look out of date from time to time. But we will get there, sooner or later. I'm sure, it just takes its time, like everything else.

SUCCESS!!

This weeks edition of Winol was a great success! Everything got puzzled together in time, and we all had a few spare hours to practice the live edition and to change bits and pieces that didn't work and needed slight changes.

The week overall was quite busy. Monday was spent, as usual, for the news team with them focusing on their news stories, interviews, GV's and such, and it seemed they managed to work very well as a team this week, cause almost all the stories met the deadline - which hasn't been the case previous weeks! Monday on the production front was spent to redesigning our webpage, and I learnt a great deal about how to do these things, how to work the different modules around and import audio and/or video from other URL's and being able to use them on our site to make it a bit more alive. Chris guided me through Joomla, and even though I have always seen these technical IT things as very complicated, I think I understood way more than I thought I could learn about URL's and html in my life.

Tuesday was a quiet day in the newsroom as team News were out and about sorting their stories out, sports more or less done with theirs - as always, they've been spot on time every week so far (I think!) - and we, production team could focus on the few written stories that had been submitted over night and publish them on the website.

Wednesday is always the most stressful day when being in the production team, since this is the day we are going live, but even though most Wednesdays so far has been stressier than anything else, this Wednesday brought a bit of a calm atmosphere and we were able to focus on minor details such as scripting, sound, minor glitches in packages and such, thanks to most of the things supposed to be submitted at a certain time, were submitted on time, with headlines and everything else that's required.

This helped us a LOT as we could go into the studio and practice, practice, practice over and over and over again! This made all of us more comfortable, knowing that we could do it! I think most important when going live, whether it is for two minutes or two hours is that you know exactly what is going on around you all the time during that time. If you, and everyone else know, confusion won't happen and everything can be handled in a more relaxed, yet professional way.

It sounds close to perfection! But of course there are things to work on still. We need to create sexier head lines, a more inviting and engaging script and not rely on the viewer to know everything already - we need to provide all the information in our package for them to watch it without any knowledge and still understand what message we are trying to deliver to them. Production team, which did the best job so far, must start providing the entire team with in and out words from the packages so that everyone knows when we're going from a package back to live in the studio and the other way around, so that sound for example knows when to change the output sound to avoid glitches in sound, so that vision mixer knows when to change back to studio camera to avoid black holes and so on.

Overall, we are very happy with this week and what it has given to us. Everyone seemed to cooperate more and thanks to everyone being aware of the time and deadlines this week, the final product is close to perfect.

That deserves a pint or two tonight!

A quick debrief..

Monday morning = Debrief morning

We had quite a good bulletin on Wednesday, we're definitely getting better and better. Considering we are continuing to try on new roles within the media team, it feels more safe and secure now with s knowing more what is expected from us. 

The stories are getting better as well as the news team seems to focus more on what the actual story is and how to put this forward in the most interesting way to the audience. Chris gave us some good and interesting tips on how to write links and voice overs, and also how to get the crucial quotes from the interviewees that are needed to create a strong news story. As a journalist, your job is to tell the story with your words and your voice to give the background information - we don't want to hear any background, facts or figures from the interviewee, they are our object for quotes. We want them to give life to the less interesting facts and liven it up with views and opinions, what they think and want to do about the subject being reported on.

Wednesday's stories covered a seasonal bug's outburst in Winchester's Hospital, a court report, students and their parking problems, Trinity Winchester and a lighter story about a one woman band performing at the University of Winchester. There was also a few sports reports covering rugby and non-league football. An alright mixture, but a few too many heavy, hard stories that might not concern our main audience as much as it could.

As always, when covering court reports, legal issues are a big part of it and it must be handled with extreme care, so that no one can accidentally get identified when not supposed to. This weeks court case met all these standards, and was meeting all the legal requirements for being broadcasted live.

Technical issues will always exist, and every week there's something new that decides to mess up in the last minute. This time the green screen caused a lot of hassle before we finally got it to work, and  the auto cue did once again stop working on us. But with issues like these we learn to work under pressure and cooperate as a team to explore new ways of coping with the difficulties - just as we will have to do in real life. 

Traffic was better this time, almost twice as many hits, which is very good news as it inspires us all to work harder to gain an even bigger audience for this week. I think a big part of this has to do with us keeping the website up to date all the time even when it is not Wednesday's and live bulletin days, cause the people interesting in our news would most likely visit our site more often and rely on us more if news, sports and small features would pop in all the time to keep a consistent flow of new material coming in.

Overall we are growing stronger as a team, and I am convinced this week's bulletin will be even better!

Last years WINOL - a little journey back in time

Just sitting here, watching and criticising my news reports from last year.

My very first news report was made for the dummy run we had at Winol. It happened during the week when Armistice Day took place and I made a report on what was going on around campus on this day. It was a very nice ceremony that took place, and I learnt all about working under pressure. This mainly due to the fact that Armistice Day (11/11) took place on a Wednesday, at 11am, and my deadline for a finished story was for 1pm - I made it and was very happy with my outcome. But looking back on it, I know that with the knowledge I have today, I could have done even better!

First story I covered, that went on air, was about being homeless in Winchester and what the councils and the government are doing in general to handle the numbers of people sleeping rough. More than 500 people got turned away in 2008 from Winchester Churches Nightshelter, and manager, Michele Price, let's us know what they are experience through cooperating with the local council etcetera. A very interesting story where my views on society changed quite a lot, and also made me realise how organisations like this do incredibly much to be able to help the sometimes forgotten ones in society.

The following week I got trapped in the middle of a news story as a car smash happened right in front of the bus I was travelling in. Unfortunately I did not have any technical equipment with me and couldn't record anything, but was able to get in contact with the news room and get a few reporters out on the road to cover the story. I felt really excited, at the same time as I felt sick. A very weird thing but a very good learning experience. Instead, I covered the Christmas Lights being switched on in Winchester and from this I made a little interview with the people involved in getting this all together and angeled it with the huuuge amounts of money being spent each year to get this up and running. Quite interesting as I just a few weeks earlier explored the decline of money wihtin organisations that deal with major society issues such as homelessness and now finding this amounts of money going into sparkling lights...

I also managed to produce a report on how Winchester has been affected of the unemployment during the ongoing recession, and I interviewed Martin Tod and Steve Brine and got their views on the job climate as well as the publics. Interesting, but hard to find a proper nice angle, it's much easier to do that with fluffy news!

Throughout this period of time I also helped Maxine to puzzle together her news report considering mushrooms growing in students homes around Erasmus Park in Winchester, and yes, it was disgusting!! An experience that was everything but pleasent, but we were very pleased with the end product!

A period of time where I have learnt a LOT! But it seems I have still got some more work to do before I can feel 100% pleased about my contributions to Winol - if 100% ever will be reached as a journalist.. I think not..

Winol - week 1 semester 2

Oh my God. Most intense, confused, stressful edition so far of Winol I would say. This due to the fact that all of us changed roll for this week and everyone was getting introduced to totally new things than they did last semester, and yeah it does take a little time to get into it if you've never done it before and haven't got a clue what you're doing..

When I chose to go for the role as director I knew it was going to be hardwork - but not that tough! Cue - Roll VT - Standby VT - Move camera 1 to reposition presenter - Move presenter during next VT - Camera 1 for handover in 10 seconds - waaaaah! I am surprised that I came out of the this production alive - but at least now all we can do is get better.

After the bulletin went live I felt absolutely rubbish and disappointed. Even though I kept hearing that I had been doing a great job for a first attempt, I couldn't help but feeling low and gloomy about it all. It took me hours before I could look back on what we all had managed to pull together from scratch and actually see that what we did was not too bad, and the final production was better than I first thought it was.

Saying this, yes there are so many things we need to get better at, and firstly and mostly I'd say planning and working as a team need to work better than it did this week. Winol isn't something one individual can get together and broadcast on his own, it's all about being a team - which we kept repeating til our ears were bloody on Wednesday afternoon. And I think coming out of this - what everyone thought - disaster, we will do miles better next week. It's all about experience - and boy, did I gain experience and knowledge about things I never thought I was able to do myself this week!

Roll on week twoooo!

And don't forget to tune in here for your news concerning Winchester and Hampshire!

Internet and all its wonders...

Joomla and Module managers, Quicktime and Final Cut Pro, Youtube and Bandwidth, Livestream and Autopilots... Gaaw!

Do you feel like it's just not your thing? Well, here's my attempt to clarify some bits and pieces for you:

JOOMLA

this is a leading open source Content Management System (CMS) platform which enables us to post items, update and change, and finally upload them to our website. It enables us to work with our text stories, and keep our website looking simple and nicely constructed, which makes it much easier for the readers to come and enjoy their stay.

Basically, use your login and your password details that you have obtained earlier (the same ones you use when logging and handing in your story) here to get started. (You need to be an administrator to be able to do this, which the production team and the editors should now all be selected as - let me know asap if it still doesn't work for you and we will sort it out!)

Once logged in you've got eight different colourful icons to choose from. We are going to pay most attention to three of them; Add New Article, Article Manager and User Manager.

Add New Article: this is the option that we've had access to since we started, and all it does is basically to upload your new stories, articles and features into the wonderful world of Joomla. They will then stay here until the subeditors, and the editors have proof read them and confirmed that they are fair and accurate and then finally tick the box and upload them to Winol. So, as an author all you really do have access to is posting stories, but not uploading or editing them once they're posted - this is what the production team and the editors will do on Tuesday afternoons between 3-6pm - and therefore the deadline for the written stories from all journos is on Tuesday's at 3pm.

Article Manager: Through this option the subs and the editors can proof read and edit the articles that have been uploaded. The articles not yet published on the website will still have a red cross right next to them which indicates that they are hidden from the public, and should also say Ready for Production in the headline which means they've been put on their and the author is happy with it. Once a sub editor has proof read - that is, checked grammar, spelling mistakes, made sure names are correctly spelled, football scores etcetera correct and so on - you have to remember to save what you have done and add Ready for Publishing and your initials in the headline which indicates that it is now time for the editors to have a final read through before publishing.

If you discover spelling mistakes and such, Change - but if there are bigger problems that needs changing, contact the journo responsible for the article and make sure they change it ASAP! The articles should be around 200-250 words, except if there is a big investigative article, or a featury kind of article.

User Manager: In this menu you will find everyone that has registered with our website and their rank within the system, what they can and can't do. As I already said, everyone should now have their right 'title' here but if anyone is unsure about this, do ask and I will look at it. An administrator can change the 'title' if the person is ranked lower than him or her, but not the other way around.

Also, when you first log in and arrive on the frontpage, you have the option Extensions --> Module Manager up top of the page. Through this you can change the appearance of the website - where you want the header, the ticker, the video output etcetera. Chris will talk more about this in the following lectures but an example can be found here.

Enough about Joomla for today. Tomorrow, Livestream.

Ready, Stea(u)dy ... Semester Two!

Year two, semester two - time IS flying!

I'm now into my second semester of my second year as a journalism student and cannot believe that means I'm actually halfway through this course! Time to reorganise WINOL and get assigned to new tasks, exciting and terrifying! After last years stress and struggle as a news reporter, I decided to try my luck as a sub-editor/director to be able to gain some more knowledge in how to actually handle the productive side of things, for example uploading stories, both text and video to the web, getting all the technical bits and pieces together to be able to produce a finished bulletin at 5pm every Wednesday... I'm looking forward to my new role, and will hopefully feel as if I gain as much new experience as possible throughout these weeks before the Easter holiday that's coming up in March/April.

This semester we've decided to focus on the news and sports, and produce video stories and text stories (for the web bulletin and the site) and keep the website up to date with what is going on around us and effects us everyday - to do this we have cut out the features that we tried to keep up with last semester. Luckily, the third years are gonna focus on keeping the features alive on our website through he feature magazine, LIFE, that can be found on the website as well.

Hopefully there will be time to cooperate with both the news and sports team throughout this year, so that I can develop my skills with technical equipment, get even more news sources, new ways of looking on stories and so on, to provide me with a wider and deeper understanding in how the entire news organisation works.

I am very much looking forward to it!

Journalism 2010 - or Multimediaism in the Twens

We are now moving into a new decade, the 2o1o's (which by the way I don't know what to call ... the twens?) and this puts me and my class mates back to action at the University again where we will continue our second year towards the journalism degree we are longing for.

Why I do enjoy this course so much is due to the fact that we are not only focusing on writing articles regulated by a fatal error system, just like it works in the real world - we do also focus on the different types of journalism that exist in our multimedia society today. Like I've mentioned earlier (see previous blogs) we run Winol (Winchester News Online) every week, which is 100% student run, and with this we get excellent training in the everyday work that a journalist does once out on the field. This covers everything from finding stories and contacts, get to the place where the action is, interview and record it on your own with the equipment we have been trained to use before finally putting it all together to a news package that will be seen every Wednesday at 5pm on our website.

Thanks to all this training and a lot of opportunities that have come up during the time we have been working with this I have managed to get lots of new contacts and a very useful insight in how it actually works out being a journalist in the UK - which is extremely stressful and hard work, but a great lot of fun!! I am very happy with my choices for this course, and journalism definitely is my cup of tea.

I think 2o1o is gonna be the best decade so far for journalism. Basically due to all the different ways in which multimedia moves, and thanks to all the new chances and opportunities that open up for us, the younger journalism generation, over the Internet, through blogs and other public bodies online, which enables us to stretch out and reach more people now already, even before we are graduated. I think this decade is gonna rock multimedia journalism!

WINOLive

Another couple of weeks with WINOL live have passed since I last updated this blog. Two weeks ago we had quite a good bulletin up and running almost at 5pm (a little bit delayed due to technical issues) but we felt good to be able to produce an even better bulletin than the previous ones. This week the headline news included a car crash taking place in Winchester and the various Children in Need events that took place on campus.



I went out to get some photos from the annual Christmas lights that were put up in town and also to interview BID's manager Keith Wilson to find out more about the annual event. In the end, my package got scrapped - even though I absolutely loved it - and I ended up helping Maxine Erasmus putting together her package on the dreadful conditions students at Erasmus Park lives under in their student halls.



Interesting right? Well better check out bulletins out every week to be sure not to miss anything!!

Everything from the first sparks of news ideas to producing the final product seemed to go so much smoother and easier this week than the three weeks before, which is a good sign - hopefully! Also, teamwork and communication appeared to exist in a much larger scale then earlier, which I think helped everyone in all positions to not feel as stressed and concerned about getting everything ready in time.

Unfortunately I was sick last week and could not participate in the bulletin being put together then, but from what I have seen and heard it did not go as smoothly as the previous week. The wonderful world of technical equipment was not on our side and even though packages were produced on time, things fell through due to dodgy equipment and such.

Hopefully this week will be a super hit, since it is our last real bulletin before our Christmas break! So do not forget to tune in on Wednesday at 5pm when our bulletin goes live :)

Guest lecturer - Steve Power, Wave 105

Instead of one of the usual Thursday lectures, we were accompanied by Steve Power from Wave 105. It's always interesting to hear from someone who has got experience in the profession I'm aiming to get into myself, this does not only giving me more knowledge about the profession itself, but also inspires me to actually get there - eventually.

Steve has been working for yearrrrrrrs within the media, even before I was born, and he happily chatted away about his breakfast show, collegues, scripts, audiences, balance between private life and work and so on. It all sounds very interesting, and the more I hear and learn about radio and what is actually going on in the studio and its surroundings, the more I appreciate my choice in doing a journalism degree. I will now start pester all the studios nearby Andover and make sure that I can get as much experience out of it as possible while still at university. Hopefully, this will be additional experience for me that I can scribble down on a future CV when I go out to tackle life after uni in a battle for a 'real job'.

Even though lectures in themselves are important and most of the time interesting, it's always a nice change to hear someone else who doesn't usually exist within your university world. The same thing applies to the guest editors we've got in on Wednesdays when we work our butts off to get our live edition of WINOL ready for 5pm. This way you do not only learn more, but also want to prove what you can do to a completely new face.

More guest lecturers/editors to the universities!!

Caught in the middle

Half drifting of to sleep, as usual, on the bus to Winchester this morning, a huge amount of police cars and ambulances woke me up - and finally me and the bus were caught in the middle of a massive traffic accident. In front of us emergency services were piling up to take care of a female who was caught in a car after a crash. A couple of years ago, when I wasn't introduced to the journalistic way of thinking in life, I would probably have stayed in my seat, curiously leaned over trying to get an idea of what was going on outside, leaning back and sighing because of me being delayed to wherever I was going. This was not the case today. As soon as I heard the sirens and saw the flashing blue light my mind thought - hang on a minute, this must be news! So, I contacted my news editor James and told him what was going on. At the same time I was running around in the bus, asking students - who couldn't care less - if someone had a video camera, a still camera, anything! No luck there.. Eventually I managed to find out what road the accident took place on, and we were able to send out a Colin and Stu to battle for some facts and pictures. Turned out to be harder than I could imagine due to police press officer, no press pass and so on...

It is weird how things can change. And what is even weirder is the way I felt when I realised something was going on. I mean, it is absolutely terrible, the worst thing basically that can happen to another human being. Still, my adrenaline was buzzing around in my body, my mind were trying to think of what to do next to be able to get information from the situation and how to get any further with the little bits of knowledge of real time, breaking news kind of situations. It was an experience, and I do not know if we will be able to use the material for our bulletin tomorrow at 5pm, but hopefully we can.

It was a strange kind of cool feeling - very hard to explain - to be the one with the information, to actually being the one letting someone else know what's going on that very second and actually feeling like what I did was the right thing. Anyway, very strange day, compared to my usual news/interviews/editing days, but oh so exciting.

News happens, and WINOL is here to report - the buzz of life

Over and out
Buzz buzz

WINOL - finally live!

Yesterday at 5 pm it happened. WINOL went live.

This week has been great. The more time I get to spend in the news room, the more confident I get and the more I want to do this. I still don't like the camera. I'm alright with video, can kind of manage to record things that are actually quality enough to put on air. But the audio lets me down over and over again. I just can't seem to understand how to get everything to work in harmony. Maybe one day. But that day is not here yet.

Also, this week we had a guest editor, Kay Oliver of GMTV, Sky and ITV, to help us with various issues and guiding us to improve our work to get even better.

Packages were done well in time this week. We decided to shorten the bulletin to 10 minutes though, so there would only be time for three packages in the bulletin. This week we led with Stu's story concerning the proposal on student fees being raised. In addition to this package, we had Martin Tod, lib dem MP, in for a live interview in the studio. Great to have someone else to talk in the studio, makes the entire bulletin feel more alive and buzzing. Homeless in Winchester was the second story which I managed to puzzle together after interviews with Winchester Churches Nightshelter, Emmaus Winchester and Councillor Andrew Palmer. I had a very interesting time meeting up with these people and got a few new contacts to add in my address book, which always is a really nice feeling. 

Veronicas story about parking problems around the University of Winchester went on as third story. A few NIB's (news in brief) were also included, followed by the Sports news. Catherine and Tom made a great job presenting the bulletin. I would love to give it a go at some point, but with a non-English accent I'm not sure I will be able to produce a final product as good as the ones we've produced so far. 

The production team made a good job, but as a reporter it's hard to realise what's actually going on with the other members in your big team, because you're so involved in your own work so you kind of forget what else is going on. But, since we managed to make it - even though the final live bulletin ran a bit late due to technical issues - they must have made a great job.

Overall, this week was far better than the two previous weeks, and it feels as if we're able to engage in a new, more exciting way than we actually were able to do at the start of week 1.

Bring on the weekend!

Bring on week 4!