Winol Week 1, Critical Review Notes

All in all I think last week was a success. I have given my feedback and de-briefs through the week, so these blogs will be mainly for myself so I can track what I have done week to week for my critical review.

Monday:

I asked my Managing Editor Karen to get everyone’s contact details (and job roles) and to put them on the Editors board.

The decision was also made that members of the Winol team will be attending as many community events and launches. This will give us a better audience relationship and will make getting interviews for the news team much easier. -Because we will be doing this we are also getting business cards printed.

We also had a big push on advertising using twitter, Facebook and putting up posters over the University. Winol really want more reader response this semester, which we received through re-tweets and the public approaching our team to ask questions.

I also created a new time table which included pushing forward the team meetings on a Monday to allow the teams to work throughout the day. Mondays and Wednesdays now have a tighter structure which should help with deadlines and the production process.

Tuesday

Tuesday was spent arranging features for the next few weeks. Me and the features Editor concluded that we would have a weekly what's on program, music review, film review, week in history, competition and a main feature. We both decided that features would focus more on articles this semester, what are quicker to turn out. This way the website is updated throughout the week, which will keep audience figures up, and will create a broader content. We will a have weekly video feature (what's on) and various other video features throughout the semester.

I also had a meeting with the Radio Editor (George Berridge) and sorted out getting the software and licensing.

Wednesday

Change of script after a breaking news story from Andy. Had to re print the script three times. Skeleton script done on Tuesday, then wrote on Wednesday morning with the news stories. Andy had breaking news so I briefed the team that there would be a script change and an in the studio interview with Andy. The team coped very well with this, as I know last semester when late script changes happened during the London demo's there was a lot of confusion and panic.

A lot of technical problems occurred. Some could have been avoided, such as the problem with the green screen lighting. This could have been set up before, but when I entered the gallery just before the bulletin the Greenscreen wasn't working correctly and I wasn't happy with the quality. This therefore made us miss our 3:00 deadline. Justina the Director rescheduled for 15 minutes later and made sure problems were solved as much as they could be.

Another problem which could have been avoided was the fact that there was no headline music, which should have been sorted on Tuesday and not moments before the bulletin aired.

Unavoidable problems included the headline snot recording and the bulletin not uploading.

I then worked on individual feedback with Chris and discussed the news stories and layout.

Thursday

Me, Justina, Domonique and Cara sorted out the website. Domonique and Justina uploaded the bulletin, Cara subbed articles and I worked on the look of the website (such as pictures) and made sure there wasn’t any legal problems. We made our 1pm deadline with the front page layout looking good –although pictures where weak.
My biggest weakness this week was being too involved in the gallery; but it’s my first week like everyone else and I have to learn to!

Here’s to a better bulletin next week!