WINOL Week 2 Critical Reflection

We had the second (and final) dummy run of WINOL this week and I think, overall, it was a much better production.

I feel that as a group of editors we ran our editorial conferences and production meetings much better. We didn't discuss the stories at length in the editorial conferences, just let the reporter sell his or her story and then we set deadlines and time limits etc which I found to be a much more efficient method.

As far as the sports side goes, I was fairly happy with what we put out but was disappointed to have only had football content. The reason for this was that our rugby story was cut due to the bulletin being too long, for next week, my team and I have arranged to cover a wider variety of sports. This is something I will look to continue to do when possible.

Another aspect I will work on with my team is sound quality of packages for the remaining productions as I want our bulletins to tick all the boxes in terms of production quality.

Once we had uploaded all of our sports content onto the hard drive I started to make myself available to help other members of the WINOL team, for example with editing packages that were getting close to deadlines.

We are in a fortunate position on Sports in the respect that the majority of our events are scheduled so filling our section of the bulletin should be easier than news. I have found in the first two weeks that it has been so this should allow us to work towards better quality packages for the rest of our WINOL bulletins.

We have also continued adding content to the Winchester Journalism website which can be found under the sports section.

This week's bulletin was much better as we managed to fill the 15 minutes and had full content, but there is still room for improvement which is something we will continue to work towards.

Points for improvement:

1) Sound quality of packages

2) Voice overs on highlights packages (so my reporters and I aren't just saying what we can see)

3) Cover a wider variety of sports

4) Improve the shots used for headlines

Paying for Online Content...

Image:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/adambowie/ / CC BY-NC-SA 2.0

I read in the Independent today that Rupert Murdoch let slip last week that he has been talking to other publishers about how to charge online readers for the content produced on newspaper websites.

The principle behind it is that many people are turning to websites for their primary source of news as opposed to buying newspapers. Newspapers are obviously losing money from this as many people will choose to use the Internet and get the news from newspaper websites for free, instead of buying the actual paper. The Internet has had a massive effect on traditional media, especially newspapers, and will continue to run them out of business as many media experts have predicted. This year has seen two of the newspapers in the above image already go bust, The London Paper and The London Lite (admittedly these were freesheets!)

I found this article from 2006 in Time which states "Newspapers on paper are on the way out. Whether newspaper companies are on the way out too depends. Some of them are going to find the answers. And some are going to fritter away the years quarreling about staff cuts." (http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1538652-2,00.html)

I think a key player in all of this is advertising. As it says in the article above, newspaper companies could survive if they can keep advertising revenue from the online content, even if the newspapers themselves go bust. Increasing the advertising could also be key as advertising really is the lucrative market here.

The main opposition will come from people not wanting to pay for the content, especially as they are paying for their Internet connection already. But I think that this is something that could easily be counteracted.

I think if newspapers were to become extinct I'd consider paying for news from a professional news source, written by a professional journalist, mainly because I think the credibility of that compared to a blog written by 'some acned 12-year-old in his parents' basement recycling rumors from the Internet echo chamber' as the above article humorously suggests, would clearly be much more reliable. Credible journalism costs money so I would have to say that it isn't fair for readers to expect this for free. I'd still prefer a paper though!

The Magic of The Cup!

The first proper round of the FA Cup kicked off this weekend and once again I caught Cup fever! I only managed to catch today's match between Northwich Victoria and Charlton. It was a typical FA Cup match with the underdogs overcoming the bigger side and producing a really fantastic performance.

Northwich put in a performance to be proud of and deserve their place in the second round. Teenage substitute, Wayne Riley scored the decisive goal and that will surely be a moment he'll remember for all of his career.

Another Cup upset was Staines Town beating League Two Shrewsbury, whilst local side to me Eastleigh, making their debut in this round of the competition, lost to an injury time goal against Barrow.

The Cup is something that brings all football fans together and the thought of more giant killings is something I look forward to, especially when the Premier League teams come in and Saints beat Arsenal 5-0 at the Emirates!!

Image: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:The_FA_Cup_Trophy.jpg