Critical Reflection
This semester WINOL has progressed greatly and without the third years being involved, there are a lot less of us although we are still a large year group. With that in mind, this semester on WINOL has produced a very high standard of work. Many students moved over from features to news which presented new challenges, as news and features are so vastly different.
We have reported a huge range of different types of stories from all over Hampshire. We have covered two of the most important people in the country The Queen and The Prime Minister, David Cameron. On top of this, with the run up to the general election, we have covered many big names in politics. This semester we have covered The Budget in a special programme, the earthquake in Winchester and other parts of Hampshire and we featured an iPhone Week, both of which generated huge success. One of our reporters, Bracken Stockley, had her ‘Immigration Street’ package featured on Channel 4 which was watched by nearly 1.5 million.
The quality of packages improved very quickly from the start of the term. In the first week the packages lacked pictures, cutaways and natural sound. As more and more packages were completed, with the feedback from our lecturers, WINOL looked more and more professional each week. The process slowly allows you to develop skills in how to make a package, what shots to look for, which interviews to get and how to generally improve overall. We also had guest editors with the likes of Arran Summers and Lee Atkins, both of whom showed me certain tricks to editing and gave great feedback.
This semester we produced a whole bulletin filmed entirely on iPhones. BBC announced that in the future you will not necessarily need lots of the equipment; instead you might just turn up with an iPhone. So to put this to the test we experimented. Before producing a WINOL bulletin on iPhones, Chris Coneybeer, award-winning BBC Broadcaster and Journalist, gave us three masterclasses on iPhones. We found out that iPhone 6 was best to film on due to the superb quality in the camera. Chris taught us how to film and keep the camera still without a tripod. If possible lean against a wall, lamppost or anything around you. For sound quality the iPhone is not as good as a gun mic or wireless mic however by getting very close to the person being interviewed you can get a very clear sound. Apart from the editing, everything was done on iPhones which bearing in mind that we are students, this is very advanced. Having this skill gives us the confidence to go out and film more packages on iPhones. If there is a breaking news story and you don’t have equipment or the time to get equipment, iPhones are a very useful thing to have as you can also edit and upload them straight off your phone.
In practise for the General Election, we covered The Budget. We had two OB teams in London, one at Canary Wharf and the other at College Green, Westminster. The teams went live via Skype from London, for which I was the Canary Wharf correspondent and it generated a lot of ratings. ‘The South Decides’ was introduced this semester and was another huge success, gaining a lot of publicity with the lead up to the General Election. We did student polls on campus to generate some interest from our local audiences. The South Decides looks incredibly professional and very well presented.
This semester we have had more in-studio chats, this makes WINOL look more professional. As many students moved over from features to news, there are not that many this semester on features. Regardless of this they have done outstandingly well producing some brilliant pieces of work. Fashion covered London Fashion Week, which was beautifully filmed and the editing was very high quality. They also produced many articles relevant to certain events to gain publicity such as St Patrick’s Day and Valentine’s Day themed articles. W2 was also reformatted and to gain more viewers a new Facebook and Twitter page was created.
Sport has also been outstandingly good this semester with some new reporters and some reporters improving even more from last semester. Sport has also branched out from football to reach a wider range of audience featuring cricket, snooker and basketball. They also feature sport stories from our campus teams which gained more viewers such as the women’s dodgeball team and the men’s cricket team charity run. Sport is important to WINOL as they get about 15% of our search traffic so it is important to keep them relevant.
The graphics this semester have been of an outstanding quality featuring mostly in news packages. Although as the graphics were so brilliant they were in high demand and with only two people on graphics perhaps for next semester it would be recommend to have more as they instantly improve a package.
In ALEXA, WINOL has risen by 954,554 as it is now ranked at 4,830,522 globally. Regardless of this being a student broadcasting website, it is incredibly successful especially considering we do not have a set target audience or demographic.
Each week our website is tracked to see how many circulation figures we get per story. Our website data shows that we get around 200 unique IP addresses. Our daily page views are averaged around 4,000 but increase to 5,000 on a Wednesday. In January our highest page view was 3,155 but this increased in February to our highest at 3,752. However it dropped in March.
This semester I moved over from features to news and my role was Environment Correspondent. As many were eager to try news we had many, probably too many, on news which resulted in reporters overlapping on the same beats. With only so many news stories in Winchester and Hampshire a way to solve this was to pair off with someone and work as a team. So this semester I was working with Holly Broughton. We would take in turns each week to be the reporter on camera and we would split the work load evenly. Some of the task we would do include; finding stories, contacting sources and potential interviews, script writing, filming, interviewing, editing, and many other aspects. Having the news conference on a Monday really helps as if you are covering a story and are struggling on what angle to take or perhaps someone else on WINOL can suggest a name to interview, or even pass along contact details, it allows you to get another perspective on things. Overall this semester I have produced 7 packages and 1 oov.
The first news package we produced on WINOL was the processing plant story. As it was only a plan we did not realise there would not be anything to film, consequently we did not have a range of shots. Although the story was interesting and relevant to Hampshire, compared to our last news package it was completely unorganised. However it gave us great practise finding people to talk to, interviewing a local councillor and NIMBYs, so overall it was a learning curve.
We covered a variety of stories including Hybrid Cars, Cold Homes Week and Student Housing. When these stories were covered, is about the time that Holly and I became more confident. We began to work together brilliantly as a team and knew what shots to look for. We began taking a DSLR each to get more shots and as Angus suggested we planned the story in a storyboard before filming anything. Although stories would change with interviews falling through or changes in the news, as a journalist you just have to learn to adapt and do the best you can with what you have got. Also when covering a news story you have to be careful to get balance within the story to make our news unbiased and professional. We also began using graphics in our packages to help explain something more clearly to the viewer.
We covered the first ever Pride Parade in Winchester which was a huge success and a huge news story. However as we were doing two lots of filming for two news packages that week we were not organised and didn’t ask which big names would be at the event. We managed to capture footage of the Lib Dem candidate, Jackie Porter and Hampshire’s Police and Crime Commissioner, Simon Hayes. If we had been more organised that week we should have obtained more footage of them and interviews if possible, but again we learnt from our mistakes as our next news package was coverage of The Great Waste event. For this package we got the Deputy Mayor of Winchester Angela Clear and Conservative Councillor Jan Warwick as well as Ron Meldrum the Green Party Candidate. This was an incredibly successful package with a wide range of shots and variety of interviews.
One of our most successful but challenging packages was being the Canary Wharf OB for The Budget Special. Initially we planned to film everything on DSLRs with a JVC, wireless mic and gun mic for sound. We then had an Apple Mac with us to send the footage via Google Drive to Winchester for others to edit and release. Although we had practised in Winchester sending footage online, when we were in Canary Wharf we had to use local coffee shop Wi-Fi, which it turns out, is not very good.
With the practise of iPhone week we filmed everything on iPhones, including vox pops and the live feed via Skype. Conducting interviews with the general public proved most difficult as the Budget had just been announced and people hadn’t heard it yet. Going live via Skype was quite difficult as the connection was very poor and kept failing on the other end in the studio. Eventually after hours in the cold, everything went according to plan and it was not only a learning experience but also incredibly successful, receiving very positive feedback.
I was very nervous about moving from features to news, however environmental news is the part of news I find most interesting so I had a passion to do it. Comparing my first package to my last I feel I have gained a lot more confidence on presenting and journalism skills in general, especially on how to conduct interviews. Although travel journalism is what I hope to pursue, this semester on news has been very beneficial and I have produced a lot of work that I am really proud of.