Critical Reflection - Year 2 Semester 2

This semester I moved from being a member of the production team to the political reporter. I was a little bit apprehensive at first and missed my spot behind the vision mixer, but the following few weeks quickly changed my mind.

This semester our Alexa ranking increased massively going from 15,260 (figure from Alexa.com and correct on 06/02/13 at 13.08) to 12,025 (correct on 27/03/13 at 11.16) and peaking even higher throughout the semester. WINOL has a better Alexa ranking than any other student publication in the country, with the exception of TAB. TAB however is the work of several universities so they are not realistically comparable to the work we do on WINOL. Last semester our main student competitor was East London Lines from Goldsmiths University in London, however this semester their Alexa ranking was not even comparable to WINOL. For example on 13/03/13 at 11.19 their Alexa ranking stood at 43,367 whereas WINOL.com was much further ahead at 9,258.

 I believe the main reason behind this increase is down to social networking. Every member of the WINOL team plugs their work on both the official WINOL Twitter and Facebook accounts, and on their private and/or work accounts. We also keep our feeds active on the days leading up to the bulletin by tweeting about what we are doing for our packages, whether its uploading a picture of us filming on location, or just tweeting about an interview taking place. Nearly all of our guest editors mentioned just how important social networking is to news. Former student Paul Wood gave us advice on how to properly market WINOL, and Fleet Street Fox, Susie Boniface, advised us on how to utilise the internet using her own highly successful blog as an example. Simple things such as posting your tweets at a certain time can have an astounding effect on how many people will see it.

Having a Social Media Editor (Hannah Hayesmore) definitely helped promote WINOL as she was continually plugging all of our work and made sure WINOL could never be forgotten about. It was also helped by the fact that the features really took off this semester, with continually updated fashion, travel, music and arts websites. As features don’t particularly date, we can keep them on the front page to help our website appear active and current. This, alongside our “weekend news team” who updated the website with stories over the weekend, meant we could continually promote WINOL throughout the week and not lose our audience. This was a problem we had encountered last semester, we would have a surge of viewers on a Wednesday, but it would then die off for the rest of the week.

We were also very lucky to have the Eastleigh by-election unfold on our doorstep. This by-election was triggered by the huge scandal of MP Chris Huhne’s resignation after pleading guilty to perverting the course of justice. This captured the attention of the nation so naturally it helped increase our audience as we covered the by-election from its very beginning.

During the weeks leading up to the election the WINOL website became a hub of political news and exclusive interviews. As the political reporter for WINOL this was a perfect opportunity for me to get some of my best news stories and really get a grasp of the local political landscape. Within a week I went from being the definition of a political half-wit, to a near expert on all of the main parties campaigning in Eastleigh. 

During the by-election most of the reporters abandoned their usual posts so we could cover as many aspects of the election as possible. Faith Thomas, Ellen Millard, Ben Hatton and Simisola Adebosin  each followed the campaign trail of one of the main four parties in the election; Liberal Democrats, UKIP, Labour and Conservatives. This helped WINOL gain contacts so we could get interviews with each of the candidates and get behind the scenes of their campaigns.

WINOL got thrown in with the big dogs as famous faces from parliament paid a visit to Eastleigh. I went with our political editor Louis O’Brian to film the Deputy Prime minister, Nick Clegg, visiting a college in Eastleigh. This was my first experience of a media scrum and it was more intense than I had ever imagined, but I managed to elbow my way in and get all of the footage I would need. Although we were unable to get our question in, I still managed to film him responding to interview questions from other publications, and fortunately everyone wanted to know the same thing; “what have the Lib Dems got planned in response to the Chris Huhne scandal?” I chose to pair the Nick Clegg footage with interviews I had recorded earlier in the week, with UKIP leader Nigel Farage and UKIP candidate Diane James. I would consider this to be my best package on WINOL and I received very positive feedback from both Angus Scott and our guest editor Chris Ship (ITV NEWS Deputy Political Editor) who described it as “excellent coverage”. The first few seconds of the VT were the most mentioned as the few seconds of natural sound left at the beginning made it seem professional and led into my voiceover well.  The only tip that was mentioned, and it is something that on reflection I wish I had done, is that I should have made reference to the irony that Nick Clegg was being shown around an apprentice mechanics after Chris Huhne’s speeding scandal.

This package also highlighted that not everyone I will interview during my time as a journalist will have been media trained. Diane James proved difficult to interview as she wouldn’t stand still, she kept edging closer to me as I interviewed her so she would go out of shot. Fortunately she gave us another opportunity for an interview so on this occasion I decided to film it as a sit down interview. This ended up working in our favour as I then edited it into a separate package, as an extended interview with the UKIP candidate. We then made sure to do this with the rest of the main party candidates, which proved quite popular.

Labour leader Ed Milliband, Conservative Boris Johnson, and the Prime Minister also paid a visit to Eastleigh and WINOL managed to cover them all. The by-election increased our audience massively, with the WINOL interview with Boris Johnson reaching nearly three thousand views on its own.

The lead up to the by-election was very time consuming as you were constantly out filming, either for your own package, or helping out with someone else’s, but it was also very rewarding. The perfect example of this was the Boorley Green/Botley housing development. This was a controversial topic in the by-election so I was eager to cover it. Housing developments are usually a story we avoid as they can make for a very dull package, however I was quite lucky as the Conservative candidate Maria Hutchings was at the housing meeting and she was very opposed to the plans.

Maria Hutchings by this point was notoriously hard to get hold of and all of the media were asking “where’s Maria?” We approached her before the meeting and her PR assistant stated she would not be available for interview until after the housing meeting once the decision had been made. This seemed reasonable so myself and Ellen Millard set up our camera to get our shots from within the meeting. Little did we know that it would drag on until 1am. Once the decision had been passed and the plans were approved, we approached Maria Hutchings for our interview, and after a lot of persuading and innocent looking faces, her PR assistant agreed. He was clearly not one hundred percent comfortable with the interview as he strongly warned us to only ask about the housing development. This was fantastic as WINOL hadn’t managed to interview her yet and she held a very strong view against the development which made for good sound bites. However this also provided one of my biggest regrets on WINOL. Hutchings was all over the news after a controversial statement about public schools not being good enough for her son, I knew I needed to question her on this. The question was in my head but annoyingly so was the PR man so I chickened out, and kept my questions strictly to the development. If I could go back to any moment in WINOL and change something, that would be it.

On the night of the by-election WINOL produced an election special, “The South Decides”, starting at 10pm and continuing until the result. This was a huge task for the production team as there were so many elements to consider. The time was split up between three presenters as it was going to be a long night so they needed to ensure everyone was at the top of their game. They also organised a variety of in studio guests, special packages, live news updates from the news room and an OB live from the count in Eastleigh. My role on the night was to report live from the count. We had practised and conducted run throughs with all of the equipment we would be using on the night and it was working flawlessly. However things did not run quite so smoothly on the night.

We were the first media to arrive at the count and we immediately took to setting up and testing our equipment. It all went downhill very quickly from there. As we don’t have an OB truck we had to report via Skype using a gun mic connected to the laptop and a HD webcam, this was a simple solution that had worked extremely well in rehearsals. But when it came to the night the laptop wouldn’t register the sound, and then failed to register the webcam. After hours of trying every solution possible the only one we could make work was Skype via an iPhone. This was the last thing we wanted to do but it was better to have something than nothing. We made the best of a bad situation and so did the production team back in the studio. I can only imagine how stressful it must have been for them but Nicole Collas made sure to keep us informed and the whole team helped our OB’s run as smoothly as possible.

Whilst at the count I was also interviewed by Sky News. I expected them to ask me about WINOL or our journalism course but instead they questioned me on the election and the party’s policies. Fortunately I had been following the by-election religiously so I could answer their questions, but it was still unbelievable terrifying.

Although it wasn’t perfect, the fact we even attempted to cover the whole election and have OB’s live from the count is a massive credit to the whole WINOL team, that as a student publication we could still be so ambitious.

 It may have felt like it, but the world didn’t stop turning for the by-election, and a lot of fantastic non-political news was reported by WINOL this semester. Christina Michaels gave us weekly court updates and a very harrowing report on the Jade Clark hit and run story. The heart breaking footage of her family’s appeal was very carefully handled and reported in a very dignified manner.

One of my most popular stories this semester ended up being one of my few stories completely unrelated to politics, the New Forest dog toxin. A mystery toxin in the New Forest had killed eight dogs over three months. After they got lesions on their legs and paws, they would then go into kidney failure and die. The source of the toxin is unknown, and since I reported on it, has gone on to kill several more dogs. I did a lot of research into this package as I wanted to get a grasp of just how serious the situation was and how much of a concern it was for dog owners.  I interviewed a vet investigating the toxin, who had treated a couple of the affected dogs. Unfortunately this interview came out grainy as the camera was on Lolux (night vision), however I still chose to use it as I felt it was necessary for the story. I then interviewed a dog owner walking in the New Forest and got some lovely cut aways of her dog playing.

I posted my package on Twitter and Facebook, the same way I would every week, and it was then shared by some local dog owners who knew people that walked their pets in the New Forest. I think the main reason this story was so popular is because it’s a local story with a big shock factor, people are mad about their pets so the minute they think they may be in danger they want to know about it.

Another big story for WINOL was the Budget which was announced on a Wednesday, so we turned that week’s WINOL into a “budget special”. On Wednesday morning I went to Westminster to report on the political side of the budget and Faith Thomas went to the Bank of England to cover the economic side. This was a very high pressured day as we had to get to London early in the morning to film our piece to cameras and conduct our interviews. I interviewed Liberal Democrat MP Mike Thornton, which worked out well as this meant we also could record a separate interview with him as a catch up since his victory in the Eastleigh by-election. We then had to rush back to Winchester, edit as much as we could on the train, and then finish our editing in the news room in time for it to go in the bulletin. By this point we were all very used to working under high pressure, but even then it was still a very stressful day for all those involved. I was very pleased with this package, despite its rushed edit, as I felt it looked very professional, set up in front of parliament discussing predictions with an MP.

Alongside my political role on WINOL I also maintained my role as radio news editor. My main focus this semester was to help train the first years to write news for radio. They would each come in for a day, write a few news stories, then produce and record a bulletin. Working on WINOL gets you used to a very high standard from your peers, and to no fault of the first years, sometimes my patience was tested as I wasn’t used to people not knowing exactly what they need to do. Unfortunately on several occasions I had to leave due to filming commitments so I would delegate to another member of the radio team. Radio was fairly restricted this semester as I really couldn’t dedicate as much time to it as I would have liked, and also the radio society were gearing up to make changes which we were not made aware of. Ideally I think WINOL needs its own separate radio streamer, or at least a better relationship with the society. Radio could be a fantastic asset to WINOL it just needs to be given a lot of time and effort for it to thrive in the same way that features did.

So much happened this semester it is impossible to mention it all, but the main highlight is how well everyone on WINOL worked as a team. Everyone has shared footage, spared their days helping others film, and playing chauffer to those who don’t have cars. I really enjoyed my role as political reporter and I felt my confidence grow as my work improved week by week. I think I have learnt more in this role than any other I have taken on during my time in WINOL and I am intrigued to see where it will go next.