Winol Week 2, Criticle Review Notes

-There’s a lot more I could write about the team and the help I’ve had this week, but you all know my views from my debrief. This is basically a blog where i write up all my notes on what I have done throughout the week for my critical review (after talking to Chris in tutorials we have decided this is the best way to strengthen it, and will be beneficial for the team to know what I do). These are basic notes i type up on a Wednesday night.

Monday:

Monday was spent mostly in meetings. Angus lead the de brief and gave feedback on technical problems and screen shots.

Angus and I sat down and talked about my role; he advised me not to be so involved with each individual process, and to trust my editors to deliver rather than chasing up their team. I’ve tried really hard this week to take a step back, which I think has helped immensely. It’s really hard not to get involved with the individual processes, but the team have shown they’re more than capable to produce an amazing bulletin, so hopefully I can focus on my specific job roles.

In the news meeting I was really impressed with the reporters motivation; they had all researched stories, set up interviews and some had even filmed parts of their packages.

Sports this week is the best I've seen since I've worked on Winol. The Potted History package is of an amazingly high standard and the team produced around 10 packages. Michael’s Hockey profile was also really impressive.

Sam moved to production and now has the responsibility of the layout of the website, something that I am very hot on. She has learnt the house style and was given instructions as to how we want it to look. This should take a lot of pressure of myself and Cara. We are planning to give more Joomla master classes next week.

I am hoping to install an extension to the site called flexi content, which will make it easier to manage the site, layout and picture content as we will no longer need to use Joomla. I will also be looking into slide show extensions for features.

Tuesday

The production team opened the gallery and got the equipment set up and ready for Wednesday, and I made sure everything was working so we don't have last minute technical problems which can be avoided. The production team where happy with everything in the gallery in general, and I think after last week they had learnt a lot –from next week I feel we can start being a bit more adventurous as its becoming clear we have the makings of a confident and capable production team!

I decided to film Sportweek, which the team were not too happy about, but editorially it makes sense as it takes some pressure off Wednesdays.

I talked to the sub editors and made sure they knew about photos, layout and copyright issues, and answered questions they had after their sub training earlier in the day.

I published all the features what had been submitted onto Joomla on Monday and general tidied the website up ready for Wednesdays uploads, and did the last bit of promotion for the articles before they were replaced.

I looked over news packages and the what’s on program and gave editorial advice on them along with Julie the news editor.

I also emailed Alistair about a possible Italian trip.

Me and Chris decided we would have a ‘Lock in’ 15:00

I decided to give 30 seconds more time for Sports this week in the bulletin as they had really good content and news was light on content.

More focus on audience is needed, and this area is one me and Karen will try to focus on. We are also going to focus more on our female audience next week as the site is very masculine at the moment –lighter ‘fluff’ peices are also needs for news and some spiked material is needed so we don’t need to do OB’s from the news room and arrange practically a new package at short notice.

Tapes/earpieces will be ordered next week so Winol has a stock.

Talk back was set up in the newsroom so people don’t need to keep running to the gallery, and made us able to OB. This will now be set up by Drew every week.

Me and Chris created a barker for Sports week and he trained me how to use Fireworks. Next week I hope to start producing Barkers on my own, which will take some practise but I’m optimistic!

Audience this week:

As i’m trying to focus more on audience figures i will create a chart on my editors wall showing the team the audience fugures for our competitors. This week we have been:

Neck and neck with the Hampshire Chronicle

Have over double the amount the Echo are getting

About a quarter of the Basingstoke Gazette audience.

And about 100 individual views off the Winchester Iniversity Website.

Currently the most viewed articles are:

Sports- Mikey- Branching Halt

and

News - Winchester students in fee's demo, Julie.

The team needs be aware of their Interview backgrounds.

Wednesday

I changed the headline from ‘rural crime hits Hampshire countryside’ to ‘crime wave hits rural Hampshire’ as rural means countryside.

We have made Good contacts at UnisonPCS and many other South East Union Representatives.

Twitter had even more feedback and we gained contacts with a Southampton journalist through it.

I had to make sure our sources were protected as the script had stated what union they're from and mentions 'he's' rather than 'they've'.

8 mins too late statement from union, so we couldn’t have it in the bulletin but will strengthen our news story.

I also changed the scripting to include earlier today, today between 1 and 2 etc to make it current.

Planning on advertising our email address more for reader response, stories and pictures.

Next week I will work more on reader response, audience appreciation and furthering my knowledge of fireworks to create barkers.

A lot of forward planning was made for features, such as the flog it special, A week in the life of and a special feature what will be revealed soon (ohh-ahh!)