Winchester News Online - week 1 critically reflected

Winchester News Online (WINOL) is a news website set up by Journalism students which aims to cover all the news and sport in Winchester and the surrounding areas.

The second and third years have been assigned jobs with the third years mainly taking the editorial roles and the second years taking the reporter roles.

For the first weeks I am assuming the role of Sub Editor/AV Editor on the Production team.

Rather than bore you with how I felt the production went as a whole, I am going to focus on my own role and reflect (as honestly as possible!) on how I think it went.

WINOL is split in to two parts, the first being the news website and the second is the live news broadcast aired on a Wednesday. Being a part of the production team, my role is concerned with editing and writing some of the online content and setting up the studio ready for the live production.

The Monday was somewhat a quiet day as there was no content to edit so I spent my time learning about the programme Joomla which we will be using for the WINOL website.

I could have maybe contributed more on this day and helped in other departments as I felt a lot of my time was wasted. Next time I hope to be more adequately trained on the Joomla setup in regards to submitting and editing stories so I am able to students in other areas.

Tuesday was a busier day as content started to arrive on the Joomla website so the other subs and I set about editing. Our production editor Rich drew up a table containing a list of the stories and who had edited what so we were clear on what needed to be done.

The Wednesday turned out to be the busiest day because the production team are integral in setting up the studio for the production as well as writing scripts and running orders.

As my job role originally stated that the main days I would be needed would be Monday and Tuesday, I decided to work Wednesday morning and get to the studio about 12.30pm.

Turns out this was to be a mistake!

A few other members of the production team were unavailable so when I arrived there was lots to be done oin preparation for the live news broadcast.

Much of the time on this day was spent chasing up reporters for their links to packages. We were even forced in some cases to write some of our own which proved to be difficult if we didn't know exactly what the story is!

However we did manage to finish the script and running orders on time as well as set up the studio for the broadcast. I also nominated myself to operate one of the cameras which was really just a matter of focusing and framing up one shot and listening to instructions given by the director, Leanne.

It was made clear at the end of the session this week that the reporters need to write links for their own packages which will make the sub editors' job a bit easier on the Wednesday.

This way we can focus on making the next broadcast better and more professional by concentrating on the script and the studio set up.