This
has been the third semester that I have been involved with the independent,
student run project Winchester News Online (WINOL). The project is run by a
group of journalism students at The University of Winchester, which is split
into individual teams covering news, sports, features, production and web
production. We venture and produce content for all mediums of broadcasting
including television, online and radio.
This
semester has been the most rewarding and challenging for WINOL as it became
clear early on that we had finally established a true competitor in the form of
East London Lines (www.eastlondonlines.co.uk), which is run by journalism
students at Goldsmiths College, The University of London. The demographic for
each news operation is different as Winchester is covering a population of just
over 70,000, whilst London is covering an area of just over 8 million people.
Therefore, the scope for news is much greater for East London lines than it is
for WINOL.
Establishing
a competitor was ideal as it gave the team a goal to achieve and this saw a few
major changes made to the operation, including a major overhaul of the WINOL
website (www.winol.co.uk). The website was redesigned into a broadsheet format,
which looked better and made the overall layout of the site more professional. The
focus of the site was to use stronger pictures to push the top stories on the
site, but also combing the strong features section that included for the first
time a dedicated online "fashion" magazine. This pushed WINOL towards
the female demographic much closer than we have before. The quote from a famous
journalist I have known for the last three years was that "people come for the news, but stay for the features" and
this was evident in the strength of the features produced, which was running
the core of the website.
The
use of social networking has also pushed the publicity of the site with
reporters using Twitter and Facebook to promote their stories and to push
traffic towards the website. This has become a major factor as it clear that we
have now created a established audience that returns to the site on a regular
basis as statistic have shown that 50% of the WINOL's website users are
"return users". This means that they will constantly come to the site
to watch the weekly bulletin or to see the latest features. Therefore, we have
created a loyal readership.
In
the second part of the semester my role as Managing Editor has been to track
the competition and to ensure that WINOL came out on top. This has resulted in
WINOL establishing itself as the number one student journalist operation in the
UK. This is shown in the graph below comparing the Alexa ranking of both WINOL
and ELL over the last four months:
The
comparison shows that even though WINOL was behind ELL by 10,000 at the start
of the semester, we have steadily caught up and thanks to our superior website
layout and content, we have managed to beat them by over 15,000 places to become
the number one student
journalism website in the country. WINOL has also placed under 500,000
worldwide and this is way ahead of our nearest local rival, The Hampshire
Chronicle.
This
shows that we are making the most of our target audience, which has now
branched outside of Winchester into the majority of Hampshire and The Isle of
Wight. WINOL covers stories in Southampton, Portsmouth, Basingstoke, and London
and beyond. This has shown another change in the website with dedicated sections
to certain areas and topics like “Southampton” and “Campus”. This shows that we
have directly targeted the split in our audience between the local residents in
Hampshire and the student population in Winchester.
The
work that has been put in this year has reaped success across the board with
our former cohorts sweeping the board at the BJTC Awards (which was also hosted
and produced by WINOL), earning recognition from the BBC College of Journalism
and Journalism.co.uk. This has combined with two live WINOL specials covering
the results of the US Presidential Election and a Debate for The Hampshire
Police and Crime Commissioner election, showing student journalism at it’s
finest hour.
The course has also seen a number of major
names in the journalism industry come in as “Guest Editors”, who have given
praise to how professional the WINOL operation is and that it seem like a
professional news team, rather than student led.
Guest
Editors have included Geoff Hill, Editor of 5 News who said that was hard to
hit both of our target demographics, but we did this “very well” and WINOL “replicates
a local news bulletin”. WINOL also had the presence of Mike Bushell, Sports
reporter on BBC Breakfast commented on how WINOL is “well-rounded, professional, polished programme.”
Positive
feedback from leading figures in the field of broadcast journalism has been a
testament to how well the WINOL teamwork together and in my own opinion this
has been the most successful semester of the three I have been involved in.
This is down in part to the positive communication links between everyone as we
all work together as a team to strive for the same common goal of producing the
highest level of content every week that we can broadcast or publish.
For
WINOL to continue in this path the communication links must stay close as it
was evident at points this year when senior members of the team were ill,
communication links failed and problems started to arise. This is my one main
criticism of the project this semester as there were
times
were links between news and production were not met and this caused the bulletin
to not go out on time or for problems with packages, which had to be rectified
in post-production. In broadcast journalism, it would be a disaster for BBC or
ITN to go late for a live bulletin and WINOL should follow this example and aim
to go out every Wednesday at three, without fail.
In
order for the success for WINOL to continue the team must continue to progress
with the development of the website that has seen great improvements already
and to continue the close communication links that will help the smooth running
of the operation. There is also room for improvement, but this semester has
shown that WINOL in my opinion look more like a professional journalism
project, rather then student led journalism.
For
my final semester of WINOL, I continued my role in news, but as Political
Editor. I have
had the opportunity in taking my experience of political reporting from the
first two semesters and taking this to the next level.
For this
semester I decided to come up with the idea of producing a live debate for The
Hampshire and Isle of Wight Police and Crime Commissioner election, which was
due to take place in early November. My work began throughout the summer with
various meetings with the Vice Chancellor of The University of Winchester, Joy
Carter, who I had to obtain permission of to organise and produce the debate.
After consultation she obliged and my work began.
I had to
get in contact with each candidate once they had announced their candidacy to
run for the post. This is where my contact book came into my favour, as I had
to contact a few of my existing contacts to gain contact information for the
candidates. This shows in journalism that you need contacts to fulfill your
ideas.
The HPCC
election was the first of it’s kind; therefore there was a new set of election
guidelines and regulations that I had to follow. I followed the BBC Editorial
Guidelines that said I had to remain impartial throughout, have clear balance
over time for all candidates, not just from the main three political parties
(Conservative, Labour and Liberal Democrats). I also had to remain accurate in
my reporting and to ensure that all of my facts were correct and ensure that I
did not breach any part of the Representation of the People Act.
During
the build up to the election, I previewed each candidate in a series of news
packages. I had to ensure that each profile was exacting the same time for each
candidate and that all of the facts included were correct. I created a new
graphic sequence that profiled each candidate and then include a small
interview grab. I felt that each package got more professional as the weeks
went on and would be similar to news packages you would find on local BBC or
ITN news during election season.
I was
able to add another MP to my list during this process in the form of former
Labour Minister, John Denham. This was a personal achievement as I have been
trying to interview the Southampton Itchen MP for sometime as I live in his
constituency and is the established marque name I have been looking for to add
to my list of political interviews.
Due to an
ongoing legal problem, I was unable to interview the Conservative candidate,
Michael Mates. Conservative MP for Meon Valley who I interviewed in his support
of Michael Mates. This helped because I was able to go up to Westminster a couple
of days before the election to drive how important the outcome of the election
was, which made the package I think as close as you would find on a regional or
national news bulletin.
Then
came the main event, the actual debate. I had gone through various sources to
obtain a chair for the debate that would have the level of experience needed to
take charge of such a forum of debate. I decided upon contacting BBC South Home
Affairs Correspondent, Alex Forsyth who was more than happy to take part in the
debate. We had the candidates, the chair and the venue; all I needed now was
the audience.
Thursday
November 1st 2012, the night of the debate I feel was my best night
as a student journalist by far. In front a live packed out audience of 300 and
over 100 people watching online, the candidates took part in the debate, which
was streamed live by the WINOL team. BBC South Today covered the election the
following evening and there was subsequent coverage used during the BBC South
supplement of The Sunday Politics. There was also coverage in The Hampshire
Chronicle. This I feel was a major achievement for an election that had very
little publicity and quite a low turnout. I feel that the coverage the debate
received was testament to the hard work I had put in over six months and the
efforts of the WINOL team that night.
The
coverage that followed with my interview with the newly elected Hampshire
Police and Crime Commissioner, Simon Hayes was personally my best news package
as it included a face-to-face interview, graphics and coverage of the live
debate to summarise the results of the election. This concluded six months of
work, which I did have some doubts about when I decided to take on the task,
but I feel that I showed great persistence and was able to deliver on
everything that I promised I would do. As a journalist you need to deliver and
I feel that this project has helped me when I undertake employment for the
first time in the field of journalism.
I
was also part of the small team that created WINOL 99, the first daily bulletin
undertaken by a student journalism course in the country. My role in the team
was to be the news planner each day and write the script. This was a new
challenge for me as I have never scripted a bulletin together and I found this
to be slightly tricky and I had to ensure that my top line was also about
people doing or being affected by things, as this is the core of any news
stories, people. I feel that I this helped as establish that I still can work
and develop on my news writing as it is one thing to write a story for your own
new package and it is another to write links for a entire news bulletin, even
in this case a very short one.
The
last four months have helped me grown as a journalist to the extent where I am
now on first name terms with the majority of the senior political figures in
Hampshire. I feel I have contributed massively to the success of WINOL this
year and helped it grow and improve. I was skeptically about being a political
journalist when starting on WINOL, but it has helped me and I have shown that I
have the three things needed to be a journalist. I have ideas, I have contacts
and I always deliver without fail!
