This year, as my first ever term on WINOL, I finally had a taste of what it is like to be a reporter. In general, I think that the quality of WINOL this term was good, however could be improved with hard work and more forward planning.
It has been, in my opinion, difficult for everyone to truly establish WINOL’s main target audience as it constantly seems to be floating somewhere towards the professional “Yuppie” type audience, and students. Most of our stories are professional news stories with a local angle, for example with Spence’s PCC packages, Nadine’s Rowenna Davis interview, and local government and care home stories. Although these are top class packages for students to be producing, personally I think that students would be less interested in these stories, and more interested in what is going on around campus, Winchester-only based news and “fluffier” stories.
The difficulty with this issue is that there isn’t really much we cover campus wide due to past problems with filming on campus. However I do think its important that all of the reporters fit their stories to a similar kind of structure (using clear language, strong pictures, and finding stories which they themselves would find interesting) and this could lead to a more student-based audience and a clearer aim for all of the reporters.
Access Winchester, however, offers a lighter fluffier alternative for WINOL, so it is important to define a clear distinction between WINOL and Winchester Access.
I think that generally this term was more focused on getting top interviews and really good access using our contacts than it perhaps was just finding good solid interesting news stories with good pictures. With this term being the final term for WINOL for the third years, it to me felt they were using this term to use WINOL to build up their portfolio in regards to their interests and future career as opposed to what our audience would be interested in.
Despite this, I definitely think the third years have demonstrated that practice makes perfect. This term of WINOL has led to some brilliant packages being put together, for example, Liam’s Scrap Metal package, which was near perfect in terms of sequences, sound, cutaways, quality of picture, clear language and a flowing storyline.
Overall this term, according to my notes from each weeks Guest Editors, the presenting was very professional and clearly read. Despite problems in the studio and the occasional frantic rush, those who presented this term seemed to fill the role well by keeping a cool head and injecting the right amount of personality into their delivery.
Another positive from this term of WINOL according to Guest Editors was our use of contacts; more than a few of the reporters kept a regular check with their contacts and even pursued follow-up stories. We also seemed had a good mixture of stories most weeks. And finally our pictures were mainly clear, white-balanced, and focused.
However, there were more negatives than positives this term (possibly down to second years learning the ropes). To pick a select few of the things we need to work on as a team, our main issues were with sound problems. Although our sound has been improving week after week there are still occasions of which the sound is just not good enough. We also need to remember how natural sound can really add to a piece.
Each reporter should get a large range of shots (different angles of same footage along with different shots) as well as remembering to film sequences. I will go into things which need improving later.
My role on WINOL this term was community correspondent. I feel as though a lot of people assumed I had the easier role because I had a larger range of stories – but I actually found finding stories the hardest part. I’m not entirely sure whether or not this is because I’m being too picky about what I can imagine would end up with good pictures (which is one of the main things I think about when searching for a story) or whether I just found it hard to grasp what my role really was.
I knew going into this term that a community correspondent was someone who would do stories about what is going on around us, charities and also light-hearted stories. But when it came down to it, most of the stories I produced were “And finally’s”. Although I thoroughly enjoyed the stories I saw through and had a personal interest in them, there were a few things I realised I needed to work on.
I feel as though my camera skills and sound skills were good. After a disastrous first week on WINOL, and spending some time helping third year Ellen Millard film, I felt I quite quickly learned the tricks of filming. I’m positive that each of my interviews were framed correctly in rule of thirds, and also that my sound was good and clear each and every week.
My downfalls in filming were issues with white balance and exposure. Although most of my VT’s were clear, there were times when my lighting was a bit off and over the term I feel I have now learnt how to get the lighting right. At the time I avoided this becoming a problem by editing the light afterwards and also by going out and re-filming things again (which I did for two stories).
My other downfall in filming was my lack of variation of shots. Despite having a good range of shots of different actions, at times I forgot to get tight shots: lots of my shots were mid shots (for example in my Women Bishop’s package). At the time I thought the shot worked great and I think I was shocked that the reverend agreed to perform a sermon for me in full dress and at the time I felt it would be cheeky to ask him to repeat it while I got closer shots. This is merely a confidence problem and I just have to ensure it doesn’t happen again and that as Brian pointed out, the interviewee expects you to make them look good so they should be cooperative.
My choice of stories could of been better. I think how I can improve this next term is by searching earlier and keeping a closer relationship with my contacts by emailing them each week to see if there are any further stories. I think I avoided this being a problem by identifying what I was good at producing and working with that. I found that the more interesting I found a story, the better the final outcome.
Things I think I did well and learnt a lot about was actually how to get people to trust you. One of my interviews for my Women Bishop package was on an extremely controversial subject, and concerned a priest sharing his (deeply unpopular) view, which was against women being ordained as Bishops. In the interview he talks about how Jesus was created in the image of a man and essentially suggests that he feels men are superior to women. This could potentially ruin his reputation, and yet I managed to get him to agree to the interview and share his opinions on camera and I’m actually very proud of my ability to do this.
I also feel as though my voice overs were fairly consistent, and although occasionally I wrote my voice over to the pictures (during my Zebra and Hedgehog stories), there were times when I didn’t (Women Bishops story) and this was probably due to not fully understanding the story at the time of writing the voice over, and having to record my voiceover before the final edit (as the radio studio was fully booked), it didn’t quite match up. However I felt that as the term went on my voice was clear, pronounced and well-paced.
I think I did really well at making a story from nothing most weeks but also felt that it left me with a weaker story and therefore left me in the “and finally” spot more than a couple of times. However, I produced a story every single week except one where I had an oov, and I also made the bulletin every single week except for one which was when my “and finally” was replaced by Liam’s story on wolves (chosen by the news editor). This is something I’m very proud of, as although my overall quality could have been better, I still made the bulletin each week and produced every week, even sometimes last minute.
Overall, I think I have learnt loads this term. I know what I need to improve on and I also know where my strengths lie.
I think that as a whole on WINOL everybody progressed massively over a couple of months. But in terms of improvements to be made there are a few things that stand out to me. First is the quality of sound and pictures. Sound more so than pictures, as on occasions the sound was so poor that packages had to be cut – this should not be happening. Reporters should always have a gun mic and if they’re doing a PTC or interview in a slightly noisier place, radio mics, checking the sound using headphones at all times. In terms of pictures, we should ensure we tick off a checklist – check zebra, exposure, iris, white balance, zoom and focus.
One of the things I picked up on as important which was mentioned by Guest Editors a lot of times was the lack of communication between presenters, production, reporters and the news editor. Although as a team we pull through and get on well, it is evident from the amount of times a presenter has read a link identical to a line in a package, that our communication is not quite there. This could be improved by a system where the presenter asks each reporter to write down: general idea of story (how you would explain to a friend), the line you have used to explain the story in your package (so they know not to phrase it like that), names of people/company/animal concerned or interviewed and also any funny or extra interesting detail they can add in. So you could remember it as G.E.N.D, (General idea, Explanation used already, Names, Detail). This might seem trivial but it could work.
Another thing to work on is our planning. Before running with a story we should draw out a basic structure for our packages including things such as: Interesting intro ideas (best pictures and natural sound), Voiceover ideas, ideas for GV’s, list of potential interviewees, ideas for sequences (set up shots) and ideas for PTC. This way reporters will have a clear idea of what they have to do.
Not forgetting our website and written news stories, we need to ensure each story has a good relevant photo, and that reporters are SEO checking. The quality of the written stories has improved this term -although some of us still need to remember the news writing basics.
In comparison to other student journalism sites, WINOL has gone up in our online Global Ranking (now 773,133) and have also been getting a lot of page views for WINOL as a whole. However in terms of the UK ranking, we have gone down slightly compared to last term (now 30, 063). This could be down to SEO checking and lack of a social media fan base. We haven’t gained many new Twitter followers this semester: reporters should tweet every day. Social media is key to this industry!
With a few improvements WINOL could be even better, but I also think that WINOL as a whole worked well as everyone worked as a team, helping each other out and reaching outside our comfort zones.
Lucy Florence Wilson, BA Journalism
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