Winchester News Online - week 4 critical reflection

The second proper week of WINOL finished yesterday in the culmination of the live bulletin. We continued the trend of improving with every week and yesterday was a lot tighter and professional and from a production side, it was definitely the strongest broadcast to date.

We had a lighting masterclass with Dave which helped us improve the lighting and dressing of the set. Although it was a blow to lose our regular Director Leanne, Cara stepped in and did a good job leading the production. Liban and I took control of managing the output and attempting to resolve any last minute problems that arose with the script or running order etc.

I was again in charge of writing the script and running order which I am starting to really enjoy doing. I found the job of compiling the links quite difficult this week as overall the quality was pretty poor and many of them had to be rewritten. The links were being delivered to me more like headlines with a lot of them needed another line inserted into them to make them more suitable.

Guest Editor Andy Steggall was very helpful when it came to going through the script and running order with me. He made some good suggestions when it came down to writing links that acted as teasers for the story. He also seemed to be impressed that the reporters were actually writing their own links, which in his experience doesn't happen very often!

One production issue that was raised this week was in regards to the submission of stories on the website. Many of the editors and reporters are unhappy because their stories aren't being edited and placed on the site fast enough. It is difficult as the production team focus on editing and submitting these stories on a Monday and Tuesday but the Wednesday is focused entirely on the bulletin.

Therefore, if a reporter submits a story on a Wednesday or Thursday, by the time it comes round to being edited it is out of date. This is an issue that I feel needs to be resolved soon in order to make the website more contemporaneous which is sure to attract more visitors.