Winol week 6: The tale of two press offices

I am going to be honest and say I was not happy at all with my work this week as I felt that I had a good story, but was restricted by the lack of interviews and balance for my story.

Over the week I knew I wanted to do a story, which would centre around the closure of the November 30th November 30th National Strike. I came into the news meeting on Monday looking at the story and feeling that I wanted to get the two side of the story across with the side of the trade unions and why they are striking and also the defence of the council, who feel that it is unfair for local residents who could potentially be affected by these strikes.

I was able to secure an interview again with Tim Cutter rom Unison Hampshire, but was having problem trying to obtain an interview with Councillor Ken Thornber, leader of Hampshire County Council as their press office said the council would not comment on the matter until the result had been released. I decided to try and e-mail every member of the County Council cabinet in order to get a response and hoped that Tuesday would be a better day.

How I was completely wrong, Tuesday was a nightmare to say the least as I came into the newsroom to try and find a different contact to obtain a interview with to balance the story, I received a phone call from a private number (Everyone has that fear when a private number comes up). I answered my mobile and it was a press office at Hampshire County Council who immediately started to have a massive go at me for trying to contact the councillors directly because they had already sent the council's response.

But, as a journalist it is my job to try and get the news across, so I tried every resource I had in my arsenal to try and obtain a interview. After consulting with Becky and Brian Thornton, I decided to construct a polite, but heavily worded e-mail to the press officer explaining that in a previous trip to the council's offices in my first year, we met Councillor Thornber who advised that if we ever needed help or advise on a story to contact him. After sending the e-mail I got in contact with Winchester City Council who said I would be able to interview their council leader, George Beckett later on that afternoon.


I went off to conduct my interview with Tim Cutter, which I felt was better than the last one as I was able to get the quote I wanted with him having a go at the local councils and the government and explaining how it was "the final kick in the teeth for the unions." After returning from the interview, I found a e-mail from the press officer and in one second I had a massive grin on my face as she had apologised and tried to defend her actions about what she said in our previous conversation. This was the one battle I did win this week and the final score was Louis O'Brien 2:Press Office 1

However, I had to find an alternative interview, because Lee had also obtained an interview with Councillor Beckett and this made more sense as his story on the bin collection problems was a problem centred to The City Council and my story was centred to the County Council. At the last minute when I thought my story was near enough spiked, I received a phone call from Councillor Thornber, but he only had the time to talk for a telephone interview and therefore I had to go with my last resort and use a statement to summarise his views.

Wednesday I was able to obtain the rest of my GV's in the morning and edit them into the piece I had started on Tuesday night, but I still had to do my piece to camera and thanks to Tom he helped me produce what I felt was my best PTC to date as my eyes were not distracted and were centred down the camera and made me not look shifty, but confident.

I edited the final piece together and knew that even with the statement (which is not a banned feature in our story unless in a emergency) there was a lack of balance to the story. Becky watched the story and agreed that their was no balance from the council's and therefore I had my first story spiked at WINOL.

It was not the best feeling in the world, but I completely understand that the story did lack balance and that in all without the second interview from Hampshire County Council the story was weak, but what I will take out of this week is that I feel I have become more comfortable in front of the camera and I will do everything it takes to try and get a story across and this is one of the key elements of a journalist to take risk in order to make a story work.

Hopefully next week I will come back fighting with a better story, but this week was a personal victory against the press office and all over press office's beware, I will not take no for an answer or take kindly to any rudeness as It will end in a kindly worded e-mail!

Winol Week 5: Two stories, twenty two takes and two wires that I am now in fear of

Week 5 and it feels like I have starting to feel that I am acclimatised myself to my role of Political Correspondent on Winchester News Online. After last week's baptism of fire, I felt that I needed to redeem myself from my story from last week, which was poor by my high standards. 

On Monday we had a different type of debrief where Chris Horrie reviewed WINOL as a whole including What's On, Sportsweek, Radio and the WINOL website as a whole. Not many relevant points came out of the debrief from a news aspect, but we were told about the aspect of fair dealing, which allows you to use a few seconds of footage from a copyrighted piece of footage for the purpose of reviewing or commenting on. 

We then were sent to call our contacts in order to have a story ready for the news meeting at half 2. I went into the meeting with a story I had found that Hampshire County Council were planning to implement video technology into their council meetings to promote transparency between the council and Hampshire residents, but at a cost of nearly £250,000. 

I had got in contact with Unison Hampshire and arranged to interview the Branch Secretary, Tim Cutter with the angle of showing if this equipment was a waste of taxpayers money during the current economic climate of cuts in both jobs and public services. I was given the task of putting together another story in regards to the announcement by UCAS in the falling number of university applications this year. 

From past experience this year, I knew that this would be a hard task to pull on by Wednesday morning, but I was confident and went on to interview Tim Cutter and was able to gain what I thought was a couple of good quotes. Tuesday morning I was able to meet up with Councillor Colin Davidovitz who is the cabinet member for communication at Hampshire County Council. After I finished my interview, I went into town and filmed my GV's ready to then focus attention on the university application story.

I got in contact with the four local universities in the area, but both universities in Southampton and Portsmouth University were unable to give me their application figures, as they had not yet been released. Therefore, I had to use the information on a national scale to focus the angle on my story, which had been decided to be an in-studio piece with help from a graphic. 

Thanks to Chris and Charlotte were able to create a graphic and a graph, which would help explain the extent of the problem and I was then able to pass my other story onto Flick and gave her the background behind the story and what was left to be finished. I decided it would be more helpful to capture the footage, but we then found that the interview with Councillor Davidovitz had technical and sound problems, which were not evident when I played the interview back through the camera. 

Thankfully, I was able to give Flick the statement I had received from Council Leader, Ken Thornber for her to use in a piece-to-camera in the morning. At the same time, The University of Winchester had got back in contact with me, which allowed me to make the story more relevant with a local angle, but with it being 2am on Wednesday morning this point, I decided to leave the news room and try and get some sleep to be ready for recording my in-studio piece in the morning. 

Wednesday morning came and it was decided that we would only use the graph in the in-studio piece and that the presenter would explain the first part of the story. The time then came for me to go in the studio to record my piece, ready for the bulletin. After a near-hour long constant struggle with sorting the wires out and with the help of five pieces of tape, I was ready to record my piece. After what felt that twenty takes, the piece was recorded, but what was clear is that I need to slow my pace down as sometimes my nerves take control and I will speak to quick, which will make harder for the viewer to understand what the story is about. 

A big thanks to both Angus who helped me relax and pace myself with the piece and to George and Dom for great direction helping me ensures I remained focused throughout. 

After editing the piece together, I handed it in and awaited this week's debrief after the bulletin at 3. After the bulletin had been played out, it was clear straight away I had made a fatal error. I had announced Tommy Geddes as the Vice Chancellor, not the Deputy Vice-Chancellor. Therefore I had not checked my facts 100% and if this has been live it could of been a major legal error and it was not the best thing when the real Vice-Chancellor, Joy Carter came in and witnessed this error during final rehearsal.

Other points that came out from the debrief including that the majority of the images this week were poor and did not tell the story. Brian mentioned that if you turn the sound down on the news, you should be able to tell the story from the pictures and this week's WINOL did not do this. Also, you best picture should be used at the beginning of your story and should keep the viewer engaged throughout.  

Broader points included the use of verb structure between the use of singular and plural verbs. It was also evident that this week the interviews were mainly dull and we were not filming with the story in mind or the quote we wanted. This has now been decided that no story will be used without balance and decent soundbite and without being seen by either Will or Becky to ensure everyone facts are right. 

From a personal standpoint, I think I did very well with the workload I had this week, but feel that I could of put more effort and time in with one story and could of made it better. My in-studio PTC was good, but I know that I need to relax and pace myself in order to get my point across, but also ensuring the viewer is able to understand. My biggest weakness is still keeping my eyes focusing down the camera at all times because there were a few small occurrences where my eyes wandering from focus.

This week has helped me appreciate how hard work does pay off, but the key thing now is to ensure that my non-verbal interaction is as polished and strong as my verbal interaction on camera and during this week's story.