My role: Reporter for Hampshire County Council and Winchester City CouncilWINOL created an amazing new experience which connected students of year 2 and 3 BA Journalism students at the Winchester University. Being part of an authentic atmosphere of the News Room makes a great work experience. It is an incredibly intense, challenging and highly valuable experience for all the students.
Hard work and professionalism of third year plays vital role in WINOL experience.
Everyone present from year three was willing to help, give advice or give a hand with editing. They are all giving us important lessons for the future.
Our Video interviews should be usually finished relatively early to give us sufficient amount of time for editing, and then preparing written versions attached with pictures as well as links for the News presenters in addition to our Packages. Our articles will be uploaded to Joomla where they will be edited and published onto the website.
In week one I took inspiration partly from City Council’s and Hampshire County websites and also from my own research:
1. More people were set to qualify for Housing and Council Tax benefits from November 2nd, was unfortunately to early to be investigated on and had only small impact on the community.
2. Small businesses in time of recession on example of The Winchester News Café which was accepted to go on air as a Video package I made that went onto the bulletin unfortunately, because of technical errors on WINOL production side the bulletin was not recorded.
3. Unemployment figures falling, what plans did the Council have to improve it further, which was postponed and not used in week 1.
News Editor, James Kenyon, managed to put together most effective stories and keep our spirits up till our very deadlines. Omar Mussa was of great help in editing. James made a decision to leave to film a story which shouldn’t have happened as there should have been enough reporters to send out when needed. However as we could see Rich Taylor and Ben King tried their best to handle the situation well in his absence. Despite an inexperience, Claire and Tom did really well in the roles of presenters. Sport Reporters team seams to stay on top of the news quality and reflecs their great potential.
All the team worked incredibly hard to fulfil their roles, however there was also few students that approached our task of first edition rather light, with lack of passion and engagement. An issue also lied in student’s low attendance, as we realised later all of us should be available and willing to help in whichever area it is needed.Some of us experienced difficulties from the side of getting through the Press Officers which can certainly be an issue that could ruin our plans for the story and effect in missing the deadline or even not completing the Video Package at all. Some of the students found it challenging when it came to editing part and other even finding a story.
Our deadlines seamed incredibly tight, yet as we all found out they were loose for the production team and directory to work on the script and prepare better News bulletin.
In overall, there were both good and bad points that effected our bulletin however, with the joined efforts of the whole team we managed to put our first Dummy Edition of WINOL News bulletin together with valuable lesons for the following editions.
