WINOL Critical Reflection- Did the project work?

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 1^st 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!