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.