WINOL: Critical Reflection 7/12/13

WINOL’s circulation figures improved at a much greater rate than they did this time last year. The website was competitive in the Alexa rankings within the first few weeks. Figures from the final week of October for the UK show that WINOL sat firmly in the middle of the highest student-lead news sites and Hampshire’s biggest news outlets, although the global position was more disappointing. The most recent figures show that WINOL is higher than East London Lines in the rankings but below JMU and Leeds Universities.

To improve on these figures the team will have to come up with a broader range of stories with a better style of writing. Although this has been improved upon over the last few months, the quality of the writing did not improve at the same rate as the quality of the video packages. There needs to be more of a focus on written stories and they can’t seem so slap-dash and be put up at the last minute. The subs had a tough job editing the stories with a lot of people turning in scripts. This problem persisted until they introduced a ‘Subs Bible’ that outlined exactly what the stories needed.

Another problem that affected the circulation was the lack of a clear target audience – were we aiming to be a local news outlet for Winchester, or should our output have focused on students? I feel that the WINOL news output needs to be a local news outlet and let the features deal with the student side of the target audience.

As a local output, WINOL hit the target on numerous occasions with most stories having a clear local angle although there was nothing as big breaking as the Eastleigh by-election. We covered the BAE job losses but I feel that more could have been made of it by being in Portsmouth at the time of the workers’ protests. This would have allowed to us to reel in some hits from Hampshire’s biggest news item. With that being said, the initial news broke on a Wednesday and although attempts to get to Portsmouth failed we did utilise a link-up from the studio to the newsroom to discuss the developing story. A story we did capitalise on was the Chief whip’s decision to retire. He is the MP for North West Hampshire so that provided a local angle to a national story.

The features side of WINOL struck the student audience with well-targeted material on fashion, technology and entertainment. Access Winchester was introduced this semester and I feel that it was a success. It had interviews with TV personalities, sneak peaks at theatrical shows and a look at some of the latest advancements in technology, all of which speak to a student audience. The fashion magazine, Absolute:ly, also catered for the audience with make up and clothing tips, as well as some interviews with well-regarded people in the business.

The quality WINOL’s video output was hit and miss until the last bulletin where people started to get the hang of things. Technical issues continued to plight VTs throughout the semester with shots being either out of focus or over-exposed. Reporters need to reshoot shots that have these issues. I understand that it’s hard to do this with interviews but with GVs there’s no excuse for them to look bad. If they don’t look like they do on the TV then something isn’t right and it needs to be changed. Other issues with VTs include a lack of shots and a lack of sequences, although this can be put down to inexperience.

As far as the news stories themselves go, the VTs, technical issues aside, weren’t that bad. There was an obvious improvement in story telling as the semester continued and eventually the graphics started to look better too. Interviews were an issue for a while as no real quotes were used; instead people opted for exposition that should be in their own voice. Towards the end of the semester cameras were renamed ‘quote-grabbing machines’. This had a good impact as it meant people now had to focus on getting quotes from interviewees rather than getting facts.

WINOL Sport improved after a very slow start. I gave a short tutorial of how to film football matches which lead to an improvement in the match highlights.

This semester I had a new role on the news desk as a technology reporter.

After a debate on whether or not my news package on the PC game Minecraft was a feature or a news item it aired on WINOL as an ‘and finally’. I feel that it was the right decision to air this on WINOL rather than Access Winchester as, although it wasn’t the heaviest of stories, a local man had created something on a game played by millions worldwide. I also produced an obituary for WINOL Here and Now on the life of Tom Clancy.

My first item for Access came in week two and was shot and edited in one day – a feature on the top five mobile phone apps for students. With the tight deadline in mind, this feature came out well. I tried to make it as entertaining and funny as possible as the subject matter was a bit thin. This week also saw me present the WINOL bulletin for the one and only time. Despite making a couple of mistakes I felt that this went well.

My news story for week three was well shot but out of our target audience as it meant travelling to Reading. It was on Wolf Awareness Week but I had to film the wolves from other side of the fence whereas usually I would have been allowed in with the wolves. I made a point of making a joke about this in my script to give justification as to why I was on the wrong side of the fence.

For week four I obtained press passes for Access Winchester to visit the Apps World convention in Earl’s Court where the latest mobile phone applications and gadgets were shown off. To avoid corporate speak and hit our target audience we chose to interview people with the most interesting gadgets. I also stuck a microphone in front of people who looked a bit weird and interviewed them. We framed the entire Access show from here with me and Jack dual presenting in an ‘Ant and Dec’ style, although this came across as a bit too cute.

Week five saw me take over as the news editor for WINOL. There was a good range of stories in the news meeting including a breaking story on job losses in Hampshire County Council that lead the bulletin due to the local angle. It contested the lead position with Ellen’s story on the large storm that battered England but I chose to put this second as the news wasn’t as fresh. I was a bit disappointed with the bulletin until I saw it go out. We had issues with timing as most of the stories were less than a minute long but the final product looked and felt like a news bulletin with a clear beginning, middle and end.

For week six I stepped up my game and produced what Angus described as the best student news package he had ever seen. It was on changes to scrap metal law. The natural sound was brilliant – it started with a car being crushed by a crane before moving on to the sound of a church organ. It also had natural sound of paper rustling in a three-shot sequence introducing the inspector. I had a piece to camera in a scrap yard that threw to a victim case study at the church. I also introduced the victim with a three-shot sequence - I asked him to play the organ. The victim gave me the holy grail of quotes not once but twice, using the words ‘horrendous’ and ‘disaster’.  The inspector was harder to get a quote out of but I eventually managed to get her saying that she feels that scrap yards will welcome the change in law.

Week seven of WINOL saw me return to the sports team as I had conducted an interview with Southampton FC legend David Armstrong, although without the link people may not realise that he’s a former professional footballer as it was shot in a bland office, as pointed out by Claudia Murg. I wanted to use AFC Totton’s stadium’s stands as a setting for the interview but there was a youth match going on so that would have caused legal issues. The feature interview itself is 15 minutes long but I made shorter cuts for WINOL, Sports Week and another website that I contribute to. I managed to get the interview by calling in some contacts that I had made at AFC Totton the previous season.

I was unhappy with the outcome of week eight’s package for Access Winchester. It was a nothing story about a new video game at Beaulieu National Motor Museum. I got access to the museum and got some great shots of some of the old cars but the actual package was a bit boring.

For week nine I produced another two stories, one for Access and one for WINOL. My story for Access was based on the word ‘selfie’ as it had been named ‘word of the year’ by the Oxford English Dictionary. I created a two-part feature where I went to Bournemouth in an attempt to take selfies with the general public. As I was having no luck I made a spectacle of the fact and tried to take selfies with squirrels and inanimate objects. Part one finished me chucking my ‘FREE SELFIES’ t-shirt on the floor, effectively giving up. Part two saw me take to the sky in a hot air balloon to try to the ‘ultimate selfie’ with all of Bournemouth below me. I felt that this package worked very well and I’m happy with the overall outcome. It’s entertaining and focuses directly on a student audience.

My story for WINOL was a look at how WINOL students performed in the BJTC awards. I was given two hours to make this package before deadline, with the final news of winners and runners-up not reaching the newsroom until half an hour before we went live. I quickly mixed a voice over to the sound on the packages and beat the deadline by ten minutes. Angus said that the turnaround was a real success.

Week 10 marked my final week as a WINOL reporter. I wanted to make the most of it so I produced three packages.

My first package was a review of the Playstation 4 for Access Winchester. I had a few technical issues with lighting so I opted to use a high gain setting. Luckily it doesn’t ruin the overall look and feel of the review. It’s well-paced and I made use of fair dealing by using videos of the games I review from YouTube.

My second package of the week saw me take on politics for the first time as news had just broken that the Chief whip, the MP for North West Hampshire, is to retire in 2015. It lacked images so I used some archive footage and created a graphic to show a timeline of his jobs in government. I also drove to London to film a PTC outside Westminster.

My final package for WINOL came in the form of a video interview with Southampton FC legend Matt Le Tissier for the website. I used the same contact I used to get the interview with David Armstrong and quizzed Matt on philosophy for my dissertation before asking him what he thought of UEFA’s idea of introducing sin-bins to football.

Overall I feel that WINOL has been a bit hit and miss for the last few months and that there is a lot of room for improvement, but that is a very similar position to last year; more care and attention needs to be given to the text stories. On a personal level I think I produced my best work for WINOL this semester.

WINOL: Week Ten 4/12/13

So here it is - the last ever WINOL (for me...)

This week I produced three packages - a report on the retirement of the Chief whip, a review of the Playstation 4 and an interview with Southampton legend Matt Le Tissier.

To get the interview with Le Tissier I managed to call in the same contacts I used to get the interview with David Armstrong at AFC Totton. I primarily went there to get him to take part in my dissertation project, Football vs. Philosophy, but also asked him a question on one of the biggest football stories of the week - Michel Platini's plans to introduce sin-bins to football. This went up on the WINOL site today.

My review on the Playstation 4 was a lot more difficult to film than I expected due to poor lighting. The only way I could get enough light was to shoot it with a high gain setting which looks a little naff. The end product looks good despite this. I used footage of me using the system to demonstrate the new camera's abilities and used footage from YouTube for the three games I reviewed under fair dealing.

The Chief whip story was given to me on the Monday - I wasn't in the news conference that week as my work for WINOL had already been completed but Spence had nobody willing to take on possibly the biggest story in the bulletin. It's completely off-beat for me but I thought why not? I hadn't done a politics story in my time on WINOL but it turned out to be one of my best. The graphic took a while to throw together but the end result was good. The only thing I would change is that I would add an interview but I couldn't get one with him. The sound mix was poor at the start but I've fixed that since the bulletin has gone out.

WINOL: Week Nine 27/11/13

This week I produced a package for WINOL and one for Access Winchester.

My Access package was on 'selfies' as the term had just been given the title of 'word of the year.' I went to Bournemouth on the day they switched on their Christmas lights, aiming to take as many selfies with people as possible, trying to find out just how popular the word is.

The experiment was a failure but I think that this worked out to my advantage. I was able to use this a as a catalyst to go up in a hot air balloon to take some selfies.

There was some discussion about how to present the piece and in the end we settled on cutting it into two parts - my selfie quest being the first and the hot air balloon as the second. This meant a bit of a rejig with the voice over so I re-recorded it.

Overall I was pleased with this package although there was a technical issue in that the footage was very grainy. I managed to get round this by applying the black and white filter.

The second package was a lot more difficult because of time constraints. Two and a half hours before we went live I was asked to produce a package for the BJTC awards which were happening. This meant collecting together the nominated packages and putting them into a VT.

The awards were ongoing and we didn't receive all of the information until half an hour before the deadline which meant a quick voice over recording and sound edit was needed. It was an adrenaline rush but I beat the deadline and I'm happy with the outcome.

WINOL: Week Eight 20/11/13

My news story this week was more of a PR push for Beaulieu National Motor Museum than a news story as such so I turned it into a feature for Access Winchester.

Students at Solent University had created a game for the Xbox 360 that enables you to piece together four cars from around the museum into a custom racer which you then had to race around a track, vying for the best lap time.

The opening piece to camera is well framed, sticking to the rule of thirds and with a Ferrari Formula One car on the wall behind me, but due to the radio microphones playing up I was standing still. The original plan was to walk through the museum but I didn't want the gun mic in shot so I opted not to do that.

The issue I had was that the images that I filmed looked like stills. I filmed all four cars on the game but it looked a little bland, so I put an effect and some moves on my footage to add a bit more life. I was aiming for the 'Top Gear' feel which I would have been able to achieve had the cars been moving.

The game itself was disappointing and hard to film. I chose to use a shot from behind of me playing it but I'm not sure that it worked particularly well.

Overall I feel that I did all I could with the story but I'm a little bit unhappy with the outcome.

WINOL: Week Seven 13/11/13

This week I reverted back to my previous role as a sports reporter as I had gained access to interview former England, Southampton and Middlesborough midfielder, David Armstrong. He was doing promotional work for his new book at AFC Totton. As I had made good contacts there last season I put in some phone calls and managed to arrange a 15 minute interview.

The interview itself went well although I was a little bit disappointed with the location. It wouldn't have been so bad if I'd decorated it a little bit but at the end of the day it was just an office. I would have happily interviewed him pitch side but the issue was that there was a youth team match going on so A) there would've been a lot of legal problems and B) the sound would've been awful.

In the interview we discussed his book, who would take over at Tony Mowbray at Boro and how well the Saints were performing at the time. He was a very good talker, having worked as an analyst for Southampton games for a number of years. So far it has a combined number of over 200 hits on YouTube with the full interview having been put on WINOL, SportsWeek and my own website, with a snippet of it also going out to a separate website I write for: The Sports Review.

http://www.thesportreview.com/tsr/2013/11/southampton-lallana-lambert-rodriguez/

Angus commented saying that he enjoyed the interview but suggested that the black and white shot wasn't needed. I put it there to add some variation over the 15 minutes.

Claudia Murg also picked up on the issue of the location but I explained that the office was the only place I could do it. For later interviews I'll try to dress it up a  little more.

WINOL: Week Six 6/11/13

This was a triumphant week for me. I created a package on the new changes to scrap metal law that was dubbed by Angus as the best student news package he had ever seen. Following Ian's VT masterclass the previous week, I aimed to get as many features I could into the report to make it as compelling as possible.

I opened the package with some brilliant natural sound of a car being crushed by a claw. This was followed by shots of the aftermath and scrap dealers clearing out a truck, also with natural sound. Following this I had a piece to camera with a car getting flung around by a crane in the background.

The PTC threw straight into my case study - a victim of scrap metal theft who believed that the changes to the law had come too late. Set in a church, I unashamedly stole the idea to use an organ as natural sound from Andrew Giddings, but unlike Giddings I chose to use the organ as a method of introducing the victim as, after images of the roof, I cut to a sequence of the victim playing the organ. The interview with the victim went well - he gave me the holy grail of quotes in "it's horrendous" and "it's a disaster."

This was followed by the introduction of the Inspector in charge of the law change in Hampshire, Jackie Wilson. I used a three shot sequence of her looking through the file with the information about the law change in. The sequence had crisp sound of her flicking through the paper and a good, tight, close up focus. The Inspector was tough to get a quote out of but I eventually managed to get her to say that she thinks the scrap dealers will welcome the change.

The package ended with one final sequence in the scrap yard.

I feel that I could improve the package by having a scrap dealer's opinion on the law change, however, time constraints and the fact that nobody wanted to give me their view limited this opportunity.

Monday 4th November – Debrief

Text stories are full of fatal errors

Editors need to be more assertive

Press release quotes = “He said in a statement.” – Could be denied if you just say “he said.” / Tweeted

It’s okay to lift quotes IF you attribute them. “Speaking to the press,” or “told a newspaper/news organisation.”

Verbs of attribution – just say “he said” or “she said” – put a date on it. “Says” – no date.

Comment (opinion) [never pass off as fact] vs. Fact (independently verifiable truth statement) [always in our voice, must check]

If you’re not sure if a fact is true the best thing to do is fudge it – attribute it OR leave it out.

TREAT FACTS LIKE A BOMB

Quotes are bollocks

Angle your stories for WINCHESTER

Subject and verb must agree on case – the subject must be capable of producing the verb. Homes can’t be upset but people can. Object of the sentence must be capable of receiving the verb – ‘the cat sat on the mat.’

Always use the active voice

-----News Story Structure-----

Headline: Subject – Verb – Adjective (Subject first – ‘Leader of Hampshire County Council Roy Perry’ unless celebrity ‘Lady Gaga did this stuff)

Top line: Who, what, when, where

Explain why it happens

Quotes

News stories are like cakes, cakes have layers

News Editor Review - WINOL Week Five 30/10/13

Just a note to start with here - always tell the news editor if there's a change to your package before you send it to the gallery; a couple of things here needed sorting but nobody let me know.

Anyway... Gonna try to keep this relatively brief #BulletPoints. If I don't write up much about you it's not me being lazy, it's just there's less to note - take that however you like ;)

Good effort on the whole though, guys, it was a tough week!

HCC Jobs - Alex

• Really needed that case study - I appreciate that shots are hard to come by for this type of story but as top package it lacks the desired impact.
• Interviews are well framed although Tim Cutter could've done with a setup shot.
• Good cutaways
• Good setup for Stephen Reid & good cutaways
• Eye level is a bit off
• White balance is slightly off, gives his head a shiny punctuation
• I agree with Chris Coneybeer that the graph is a little much but there wasn't much we could do about that with the time we had left
• Confident PTC
• Great in studio chat

St Jude Storm - Ellen

• Great opening shots, really shows the damage this storm caused
• Good voice as always
• Really could do with a PTC and interviews to bring it to life. We needed to kick up a storm about it ourselves
• I probably should've asked more people to go out with cameras but everyone had their own work to worry about
• I like the RNLI footage, it has good sound but Ian was right to suggest to put it further back in the piece

Diane James - Nadine

• Great interview overall and definitely deserves all the hits it's getting on YouTube

Witness - Christina

• Really well turned around in a day, couldn't ask for anything more!
• Awkward highlights on her hair though, although there's not much you can do about that

Attempted Murder - Kate

• Had some very good ideas about going down to the scene of the crime, it's a shame that we couldn't get the shots without trespassing. I didn't want to run the legal risk of using that footage, but it was a good effort.
• Could've seen the mugshot again but with that in mind how you remembered that PTC is beyond me!

OOVs like Jagger - Various

• Books: Needed more shots of... Books
• Romanian business: Not too bad!
• Fireworks: We really had nothing else!

Prince Edward - Zeena / Emma

• Gotta be honest - I know that this was a very quick turnaround but it was a bit of a balls up.
• I know there were some changes made to it but you really need to let the news ed see it, I would've dropped it from the bulletin last minute.
• We were restricted to using archive footage of the Prince's visit which is fine
• This one's an error on my part - I should've got you to get shots of the cathedral rather than just using Creative Commons images. The pressure of keeping everything else going got to me a bit, I think.
• Spence's v/o (as wonderful as it is) got a bit of an airing where it shouldn't have - one of the changes I wasn't told about
• THAT BLURRY IMAGE - When you remove a quote from a package always de-blur/remove the image it was set on top of. It looks naff, and that's being kind.
• Probably a bad judgement on my part but we needed an extra story as we were a bit late.
• Just a learning curve!

SPORT - Tate / Drew

• Much better this week!
• Tate - your filming was excellent and your voice is getting there too. Try to sound a bit more enthused and a little less wordy - you don't have to explain word for word what's going as people can see it.
• Drew - it was nice to see an actual sports news piece in the bulletin, much better than having a feature there.
• Aim to have a news story every week (I know it's difficult, I've been there myself) because they add more life to the bulletin than the features which are better suited to SportsWeek.

Bike - Lucy

• Really good package
• Exposure was quite off / White balance
• Good to get a box-pop in!
• Needed balance
• GOPRO!!!!
• Natsot dropout after edit - should've gone past me one more time before going to the gallery!

Like I said guys, it was a tough week so well done for pulling through and pulling me through!

WINOL: Week Four 23/10/13

Due to attending an Apps Convention I didn't produce a story for WINOL this week although I was on the lookout in case there was anything there to use. Instead I produced VTs for, and presented, Winchester Access. I feel that this was a huge success.

Jack Webb and I bantered about who was supposed to be presenting as we shared the role and both had a VT each from the convention, AppsWorld. Mine was on a virtual reality gaming device called 'Omni' which was pretty incredible.

We mimicked other entertainment shows in that we took the mick out of the people there. I encountered some 'colourful nerds' dressed up in odd costumes and maybe exploited them a little but it worked as an entertainment element.

The final show was probably the best Access so far with content including: a new ballet opening in Southampton, an interview with Celia Imrie, another interview with the creator of the JCB song, as well as footage from graduation.

WINOL: Week Three 16/10/13

This week for WINOL I checked out Wolf Awareness Week. This was a bit of a departure for me as I would usually fill it with puns but I wanted to avoid using any and see where that got me.

I encountered an issue instantly in that I wasn't allowed in with the wolves. The sanctuary usually let you visit the wolves up close and personal but as it was a busy week they didn't have enough handlers to allow me to for health and safety reasons. Instead I chose to film through a fence and pass comment as to why some people may be glad that I was on this side of it.

I was hoping to leave with a news story and a feature for Winchester Access, but that fell through because I couldn't get enough access.

I opened with a pull-focus which looked good but Ian suggested that I may have had too many mid-range shots. My reasoning for this was that otherwise I would've ended up filming a fence from a distance with wolves as tiny dots on the other sides. I wanted to focus on the animals as much as possible.

In his debrief, Angus suggested that I needed to get the handlers to say why the wolves weren't as bad as horror movies have lead people to believe. Instead I opted for a quote where the handler said that working with the wolves was a "dream come true" for her.

WINOL: Week Two [9/10/13]

This was probably the toughest week I've had on WINOL, with three failed stories, a role-change and presenting the bulletin.

Story 1:

The first story I had fall through was on scientists at the University of Southampton charging a Nokia mobile phone with a lightning bolt generated in lab conditions.

This story fell through pretty quickly when the press office refused to give me access to interview the scientists. They offered me awful promotional interviews and some decent footage of the experiment to make a package out of, but I declined.

Story 2:

Although not technically ditched, this second story is about laser technology being used on planes to see through the canopies of the New Forest to spot historical formations.

The aim is to get this filmed in a couple of weeks time, with a piece to camera on the plane if possible.

Story 3:

Although this story was short-lived it deserves a mention: a new patent has emerged in America for technology that will enable couples to see the percentage chance of their child contracting a hereditary disease.

Although this is incredibly useful technology it does have it opponents - some say that it will lead to 'designer babies'.

I was going to go to the Princess Anne Hospital in Southampton to get the opinions of a doctor and mothers with their children.

New Role:

After these stories fell through and my Minecraft story last week was more suited for features rather than news, it was decided that I would take on a new role that would encompass technology news when I have news and technology features (as part of Winchester Access) when I don't.

Top 5 Student Apps:

The first feature for this segment was on the Top 5 Student Apps - I had a day to turn it around. I made a list of apps and narrowed them down before getting permission to film on campus at the University.

I'm pretty pleased with the end result - there's a few things to improve on such as stumbling over my words and pronunciation of certain words, but overall I think I managed to capture the 'Xtra Factor' style that I was aiming for.

Presenting WINOL:

This was my first attempt at presenting WINOL and with this in mind I don't think it went too badly. I made a mistake in the very first link but I ploughed on through it and carried on. It was later re-recorded.

We had a few issues with the headlines and script. First of all, the original headlines seemed to libel Hampshire Police's Chief Inspector, so this was changed. We had to keep changing the script as we were going along - the last change was made in the last minute before we went live, which threw me a bit.

Overall, I'm pretty happy with this first effort.

WINOL: Week One [2/10/2013]

So this was to be my first week on the News Desk - alien territory for someone who spent all of last year on sport. I've been given the Sci-Tech reporting role: anything that is science or technology based is right up my alley.

http://winol.co.uk/2013/10/worlds-largest-minecraft-map-created-in-southampton-5832

My story for this week was on the video game 'Minecraft.' A summer intern at the Ordnance Survey in Southampton had created the world's largest map.

It proved to be quite a talking point in the news conference as some people were unsure whether it counted as news or whether it was just an impressive feat by someone with a little too much time on their hands.

I fought valiantly for my story, arguing that Minecraft is played by 33million people worldwide and as far as student publications go, they could do far worse than reporting on the latest student phenomena.

It's easy for anyone to see that this story isn't hard news but I pitched it as an 'and finally,' and after much deliberation it made the bulletin.

Ian Anderson pointed out a small issue with the sound during the interview where I had the microphone too far away, but was impressed by the story overall, especially the use of natural sound at the beginning.

The main issue I have with the story is that it doesn't have an interview with Joseph Braybrook, the intern who created the map. His manager stepped in as he is now back at university. He hasn't done any of the press for the map and I could not get his contact details. I aim to improve the story by adding an interview with him at a later point, replacing Graham Dunlop.

http://www.winol.co.uk/winolarts/tom-clancy-a-life-in-literature/

This week saw the death of best-selling author, Tom Clancy. I saw a news-peg here and created a feature on the life of the author for the New Winchester Review.

Critical Evaluation - WINOL (Semester 2)

This semester saw the quality of WINOL continue to improve across the board. Not only were the stories on our weekly bulletin improving both on a content level and technically, other areas of the website such as the Absolute:ly fashion section and the artsy New Winchester Review started to take shape and grow.

Undoubtedly the biggest story for WINOL this semester was the Eastleigh by-election, the result of a long running saga that saw Chris Huhne step down as the town's MP. This national story broke on WINOL's doorstep giving us the opportunity to film some of the biggest names in world and UK politics including the Prime Minister, David Cameron, and Mayor of London, Boris Johnson, who gave us what we thought was an exclusive quote when he branded the Lib Dems as 'quivering jellies.' WINOL's reporters even followed Boris down the street, asking him if he was thinking of running for Prime Minister in the next election. This story lead to a special edition of WINOL called 'The South Decides.' This was an example of the best student reporting in the country.

It wasn't just the Eastleigh by-election that held WINOL up, the quality of stories improved across the board, with a visit from Prince Edward to the University also proving to be a highlight. A 16-year-old girl was killed in a hit and run incident and WINOL got the emotional shots of her parents' appeal for people with any information to come forward. It wasn't all about the shade on WINOL, we also covered the lighter side of life with stories about teddy bears being shot off in to space and a beer bus in Lyndhurst.

One noticeable change to WINOL this semester was aesthetic - the use of a new opening sequence which changed twice. The original sequence was old, bland and uninteresting so it was replaced with a spinning world with shots of Winchester and past stories whooshing around it. This was replaced again, the new one has a 'Sky News' feel to it and looks more professional.

WINOL Sport underwent a dramatic change this semester due to the low viewing figures for Sportsweek. We decided to not show any football highlights in the news bulletin so that fans of non-league football teams would be directed straight to Sportsweek. We replaced them with sports news stories which included news on Hampshire County Cricket and Southampton F.C. We also included gonzo style features.

The New Winchester Review is aimed at the Arts market and arguably a much older target audience than what most student journalists try to reach out to. It has reviews of museum trips, art exhibitions and even a competition to win a week on a writing course on France.

Absolute:ly is a fashion website aimed at the younger generation and is in a similar style to gossip magazines. There are features on summer styles, festival clothing and up and coming trends.

As far as WINOL's Alexa ranking is concerned, this semester has seen a steady improvement. In January it had a global rank of around 460,000, almost 200,000 places higher than the nearest competitor, East London Lines. By the end of the month WINOL was the second biggest online news service in Hampshire behind the Southern Daily Echo which has a much larger news patch. The only serious competition WINOL has had in the past five months came from The TAB, a collection of 12 universities working together. Although their Alexa rank was much higher, it has to be noted that it took 12 institutions to have enough force to overtake WINOL.

As I mentioned earlier, Sportsweek was suffering from low viewing figures, an issue that desperately needed to be addressed. The week that saw the biggest viewing figures was when we had an interview with Sky Sports' Spanish football expert, Guillem Balague, an interview that was arranged by another website I write for. I saw the opportunity to question him on Mauricio Pochettino, the newly-appointed manager of Southampton F.C. and former manager of Spanish side, Espanyol, who Guillem supports. I posted the link to this Sportsweek on different fan forums which drew a lot more traffic. It has the highest viewing figures of the semester.

Sportsweek's viewing figures also benefited from the lack of highlights in the main WINOL bulletin, this change proved vital as it helped double the viewing figures from the first semester.

Posting on fan forums was another tactic we used to create more traffic for Sportsweek, along with sports teams' social networking pages. We also got Retweets from notable sporting figures with large followings. This was something that wasn't happening enough before - the viewing figures have improved since we started doing it every week.

This semester we trialled extended match highlights, using the Conference South Play-Off Semi-Final between Eastleigh and Dover. We positioned one camera in the stand, one behind each goal and one in line with the edge of the penalty boxes. The end result is staggering and looks highly professional. I created graphics inspired by Sky Sports to show the team line-ups, the score in the top corner and a main scoreboard to show after every goal. The transitions work well, making it look like a non-league version of The Football League Show. It's a result of a real team effort.

Like WINOL, Sportsweek has also had a makeover in the form of new title credits which I made. Using HD footage from the previous semester, new music and scrolling text I made on Adobe After Effects, Sportsweek was brought into a new era, replacing the titles that had been used for years before. There is an issue in that they miss a few stings, but I aim to create new one's for next semester over the summer. We also tried to create a new background studio image but our attempts weren't up to scratch.

I continued my role as a sports reporter from the first semester, building on the contacts I had gathered and the techniques I had already learned. I feel that this semester was much more successful than the first one for me as I put contacts that only I had in to use to bring in some exclusives.

The first of these exclusives was a gonzo feature on the growing Paralympic sport, Wheelchair Rugby. I made Aaron Phipps a contact last semester and through him I learned that there was a Wheelchair Rugby team starting in Southampton. He invited me to one of their training sessions to film it and take part. I used this opportunity to take Mike Bushell's advice from his WINOL visit and took a GoPro camera with me. Aaron, a Team GB athlete, agreed to wear the camera during the training session. This got some fantastic shots that I used to full effect in the final VT. Once I got in the chair I proved how useless I am at the sport and did a PTC whilst taking part in the session. The BBC's David Hayward said that this VT was good enough to run on any local news network.

I later made a follow up to this story, a report on their official launch. The BBC attended the event but I feel that my story was far better. Technically their's was poor, deciding to use sound from the GoPro camera and interviewing uninteresting people. My VT used archive GoPro footage, had a good PTC shot from a height and showed a lot of the action.

Another exclusive story is one I mentioned earlier, the interview with Guillem Balague. Although I filmed this for another website, only WINOL got the information about Southampton F.C. There were technical issues with this story as the lighting was quite poor throughout, but this could not be helped because I couldn't carry any more equipment on the train than I already had. Another issue was that there was a woman behind him who kept standing up and sitting down.

I put my gonzo hat back on for a third exclusive story to WINOL on Touch Rugby when I was invited down to Trojans Rugby Club in Eastleigh. I took a GoPro with me again and got more great shots using it. I feel that the point of view images it gives the viewer helps to immerse them in the action, something that a lot of sports reports lack. I took part in this training session too but the defining feature of this report was arguably the final PTC where I suggested that there was something missing from Touch Rugby before taking a full on rugby tackle to end the package.

The two rugby variants weren't the only gonzo stories that I chased this semester, other attempts weren't so successful. I arranged to try dog sledge racing on a cold January morning, but the weather got the better of this attempt - the torrential rain stopped me when I was half-way there as I did not want to ruin the equipment. Another story that I chased and chased (and am still chasing) was on Sledge Hockey, another Paralympic sport. Sadly, I had issues gaining MOD clearance to film current soldiers as they would not get back to me, no matter how much I tried, so that put this story on ice.

The quality of my football highlights packages also improved this semester, the best undoubtedly being my pre-match build up and highlights of Basingstoke vs. Dorchester. Basingstoke are leaving their current ground, the Camrose Stadium, very soon, so I focussed the package around this. The Stoke were also in relegation danger at the time, so I suggested that their league standing could be going the same way as their home. Their manager, Jason Bristow, insisted otherwise during the interviews.

I had one major technical issue when I realised that I had no sound for an entire half of an A.F.C. Totton game. To resolve this I gathered sound from the Basingstoke game's rushes and overlaid it on to the Totton highlights. You couldn't tell the difference so I got away with that one but it taught me a lesson to always check that the equipment is working for the entire game.

When it came to presenting I was less lucky - my first attempt at presenting was in the Stripe Lecture Theatre as the Production team could not get use of the studio. After spending hours in there perfecting the links without an auto-cue we decided that we could not use any of the footage because the sound was echoey and terrible. Another issue we had was that I had to have an in-studio discussion with Jack Griffiths who is a lot taller than me. This posed an issue because you couldn't get both of us in shot with the portable green screen at the same time, leading to him having to kneel uncomfortably on an upside down bin.

My second attempt didn't go an awful lot better as the auto-cue in the studio was broken this time so, again, I was faced with the prospect of rewriting the links and learning them. Jack and I had another in-studio discussion but the problem this time was not caused by my lack of height, instead it was the fact that we could not both sit round the desk in what looked like a natural position, we were either cooped up or Jack was forced to the corner. In the end we decided to run with Jack on the corner.

Overall, this semester on WINOL was far more successful than the first - as we were already used to using the equipment it took us less time to get up to speed which was lucky with the quality of stories breaking in our patch. On a personal level I feel that the semester gave me an opportunity to showcase what I'm best at after using the first one to find my feet. It made me realise just how passionate I am about sports journalism.

Totalitarianism

- The state controls EVERYTHING

- Everything is the state

- Destroy people's identity

- State Terror - Control people through fear and oppression. Show them what happens when people disobey the state - mass executions, torture, threaten their families

- Ideology - State ideas that are used to run the state and forced on the population

     - Justification of actions for authority/state

     - Frees you of common sense and reality

     - Breakdown of human world knocks down barriers of possibility and morality, paving the way for things like concentration camps

- Not comparable to tyranny as tyranny has no law

- Examples include Nazi Germany which used the law of nature and Darwin's evolutionary theories and developed them to suit their own needs.

- Another example is Soviet Russia which structured their ideology on Marx's Communist Stage Theory. This was teleological meaning that it had an absolute ending - Communism

- Banality of Evil

    - You don't have to be inherently evil to do things, just following orders

    - Eichmann trial - put on trial because he provided transport to get Jews to concentration camps, his defence was that he was just doing his job and didn't actually kill any Jews.

Kierkegaard

- The first Existentialist

- The Sickness Unto Death - Similar to Schopenheaur, rejects rationalism and objectivity of the scientific movement (Shcop - World as Will and Representation)

       - Christianity - Either Or - Despite being a devout Christian, Kierkegaard rejects religion, "To be a Christian you must reject Christianity." If everyone was a Christian it would be impossible to be a Christian.

       - Christ - Likes the loneliness and eternal suffering, refers to this as the human condition. Starting point of knowledge is despair, an existential fear or angst, unknowing.

       -Despair is the Sickness Unto Death. You'll never be cured of it, it is an ontological fact, it is the phenomena of being. Life is despair. Similar to Shcopenhaeur's  "Life is suffering"

       - Starting point of wisdom is looking up to despair and trying to transcend it. Can only do this by having passionate commitment from one moment to the next. K's commitment is to Christ, needs an irrational surrender to Christ.

       - Despair is not an objective fact, it is subjective, it is exclusively contained within yourself. Each has to deal, individually, with the sense of despair.

       - Angst - Unease / Unhappiness in relation to life

       - Despair is caused by not knowing the purpose of your existence

       - Alienation is separation from god, trying to get back in to the garden of Eden. Despair is the sense of this.

       - Despair is not a defect in the human condition, it IS the human condition. To remove despair would be to remove humanity.

       - Dismisses systems of good and morality in favour of inexplainable and irrational subjectivity.

The New Journalism - Seminar

Nietzsche: boredom destroys even the gods

Phonetic dialectic - accents, vocalised punctuation, etc

From objectivity to not objective - go from facts, no comment, no subjectivity, no colour, to comment, subjectivity and colour.

Science is objective

Chic - word's meaning no longer relevant to the use

Gonzo style - no 5 w's

Journalism is becoming more gonzoised

Old journalism used to be new journalism, used to be dickens and propaganda

Factual entertainment - Top Gear

George Plimpton - God of gonzo sports journalism

Emile Zola - Gonzo

Clean up quotes

The New Journalism

American Journalism

- Penny papers - controlled and funded by political parties / businessmen.

- Mid 19th Century - Objectivity became an issue, Associated Press (AP) needed objectivity to be profitable.

- First New Journalism - THE YELLOW PRESS - Late 19th Century

     - Make newspapers less stuffy, more interesting
     - SENSATIONALISATION -  Huge, emotive headlines with big striking pictures, The Sun
     - William Randolph Hearst - NEW YORK JOURNAL
     - Joseph Pulitzer - NEW YORK WORLD
     - Sin, Sex and Violence

- America 60s and 70s - Similar to Hearst. political and social upheaval - fighting foreign wars, military threats coming from abroad.

- The Five W's, News Pyramid etc. Letting language from the events bleed into the copy.

Political and Cultural Scene

- 1960s - JFK embodied the American Dream then got assassinated in 1963, catastrophic war in Vietnam, controversy of the draft (get people in the army), Muhammad Ali refused "I ain't got no quarrel with them Viet Cong"

- Demographic reasons - baby booms (spike in populations) hitting teenage life, spurred youth culture, massive generational clash between young people protesting government actions.

- Sexual revolution - the pill, sexual freedom, Reichian free love (Reich - Freud had it wrong, you should let it all hang out and not be depressed, way to happiness is through orgasms)

- The student movement - worldwide protests in 1968

- Civil rights - Black Power

- LSD introduced by the CIA to access the altered thinking of counterculture

- Music - Music of the 60s was attack on the norms, drug fuelled (Doors) and anti-esablisment (Dylan) - political lyrics

- The Revolution Will Not be Televised - Gil Scott Heron (The revolution will be live - the revolution will put you in the driving seat)

- Real world is happening outside not on TV.

Influence of Existentialism

- Heidegger's Authenticity, Satre's Bad Faith - No god, you don't come into a world with meaning, there's great expanses to fill with meaning for yourself, no religious superstructure keeping account of you. Create meaning through your choices and through your actions. If you had an existentialist machine you can put yourself through as a scanner, you wouldn't see yourself or past or future, you'll only see the choices you've made. Most interesting choice you have to make is the next one. Freedom of choice.

- Fanon - Act of violence is an extreme expression of choice. Have to push and use violence to get to the point of freedom quicker. Super-charged choice.

- Malcolm X - Anti-establismen feeling - "there is a policeman in your head - he must be destroyed" - leaked into journalism.

- Journos question whether press releases, official statements and press conferences was really objective and a true reflection of events (Bad Faith)

- Let's try to reflect what's happening in an accurate way - how can you trust organisations? Began focussing on setting, plot, sounds, feelings, quotes and images, while being as true as before.

- Alternative journalism was personal - unconventional, disagreeable, disruptive

Shift in form of narration from DIEGETIC TO MIMETIC

- Telling to seeing

- Marshall McLuhan - Hot Media - Echo, tells the story, no room for interpretation - Cool Media - Interpret yourself

- New Journalism - 'Authority's message' (objectivity) is chucked aside in favour of a subjective experience.

Features

1 - Scene by scene - cinematically, telling story in scenes and not in historical narrative. Need to witness the events

2 - Reflect the realistic dialogue, defines character more quickly and effectively than any other single device.

3 - Third person view - giving the reader the feeling of being inside the character's mind - need to interview them about thoughts and emotions.

4 - recording everyday gestures, habits, manners, customs, styles of furniture, modes of behaviour, towards children, superiors, inferiors and other symbolic details that might exist within a scene. Symbolic of people's status life.

The Origins of Totalitarianism: Chapter XIII

"Totalitarian lawfulness, defying legality and pretending to establish direct reign of justice on earth, executes the law of History or of Nature without translating it into standards of right and wrong for individual behaviour." - What the ruler says goes, whether it's right or not.

Totalitarian governments break the link between civilised world and themselves due to monstrous crimes, but it is not ruthlessness for the sake of being ruthless, it's because someone broke the laws in their country.

People can be judged as criminals when they break the consensus irius - When they break the laws by which they are governed.

Darwin's laws of nature and survival of the fittest are being swept into history as they develop through time. They can be seen as racist to the extent that Marx's survival of the fittest class can also be seen as racist.

Meaning of 'law' changed from expressing the framework of stability within people must act to become the expression of motion itself.

If the law of nature is for unfit species to die, then the law of history is for unfit classes to wither away, so if new classes did not form it would mean the end of humanity.

"In the body politic of totalitarian government, this place of positive laws is taken by total terror, which is designed to translate into reality the law of history or nature."

"Terror in totalitarian government has ceased to be a mere means for the suppression of opposition, though it is also used for such purposes."

"Terror becomes total when it becomes independent of all opposition; it rules supreme when nobody any longer stands in its way. If lawfulness is the essence of non-tyrannical government and lawlessness is the essence of tyranny, then terror is the essence of totalitarian domination."

Chief aim of terror is to make law of history and nature race through mankind.

Terror, when not used to execute law or to improve the welfare of mankind, eliminates individuals for the sake of the species, sacrifices the 'parts' for the sake of the 'whole.'

"By pressing man against each other, total terror destroys the space between them; insofar as it is still some kind of space, appears like a guarantee of freedom."

Total terror is not for or against men, it provides nature and history with things to accelerate their movement.

Ideologies combine scientific approach with philosophical relevance and pretend to be scientific philosophy. The word ideology implies that ideas can be the subject of science like animals are the subject of zoology.

The New Industrial Estate

Info from:

http://abridge.me.uk/doku.php?id=the_new_industrial_state

The Imperatives of Technology

It takes far longer to complete any task,

There is a large increase in the amount of capital required, beyond that needed for increased production — increased time means increased inventory, increased knowledge is required, more specialised equipment is used at each stage of manufacture,

The process becomes ever more inflexible, designs must be known long in advance and not changed,

Specialised manpower is required, with deep knowledge of a tightly limited area (not necessarily manpower with more aptitude or skill),

The need for organisation increases as a function of specialisation, and organisation becomes a specialised role in itself,

Planning becomes much more important as a consequence of the increased investment of time and money, the inflexibility of the commitment, the need for complex organisation and the intolerance of the market for defective products.

The General Theory of Motivation

1. Compulsion: the stick. Bad consequences if the individual does not pursue the organisation's goals,
2. Compensation: the carrot. The individual receives money for serving the organisation's purposes,
3. Identification: the individual is convinced that the organisation's goals and/or methods are superior to his own, that working for the organisation is a more effective means of achieving his ends than working alone, and
4. Adaptation: the individual sees working for the organisation as an effective means of altering the organisation's goals to more accurately reflect his own.

The Nature of Employment and Unemployment

Reduce blue-collar workers, replace with technology

Need for skilled and unskilled blue-collars dwindling, replaced by educated people in the technostructure

The Industrial System and Union

1. The shift in power from the entrepreneur to the technostructure, as previously mentioned, means that those deciding whether to accept wage demands are no longer those who will pay the bill. The urgency of undermining or destroying the union felt by the entrepreneur is not felt by the technostructure — the union poses a threat to planning through the risk of striking rather than a threat to pecuniary reward through seizing their profits. Thus it is in the interests of the technostructure to pursue more docile relations and assent to more generous wage agreements. Moreover, increased costs can be passed on to consumers, especially when wage agreements are industry-wide, signalling equal price increases for all firms simultaneously.
2. Technological advance reduces the number of workers within reach of the union, shifting employees in large number into white collar positions who tend to identify more with management than with unions.²⁶⁾
3. The regulation of markets and aggregate demand as well as comparative affluence have reduced the dependence of the worker on the union. Where previously the worker had been unable to find another job because of high level of unemployment, management of aggregate demand has made this much easier. Consequently, where the union was previously the only mechanism by which he could solicit for better working conditions, and the only organisation that could protect him from the extreme privation of unemployment, now he is less dependent. He is much more able to find another job if he is dissatisfied and thus the problem of recruitment motivates firms to voluntarily improve conditions.²⁷⁾
4. The imperatives of price and wage regulation place wage negotiation firmly within the remit of the state, and are ultimately likely to demand that wage increases progress in line with industry average improvements in productivity.