WINOL week 3

Week 3 of WINOL, began as usual with the previous week's bulletin debrief; which gave everyone ideas on how to improve for the next week. My first idea for a story this week was to look at Student's finances; using students at The University of Winchester as case studies, while asking the university what was available to help students. However, after presenting my idea in the news meeting on Monday I was advised that this was more of a feature and therefore it would be better to go with a story about the changing bin times.

On Monday evening I managed to secure myself an interview with the chair of TACT; a local residents association who was prepared to give me an interview regarding the residents opinion on the change to bin times. I have so far found it hard to secure myself an interview and was extremely pleased to have one which I felt would give me a package good enough to make it into the bulletin on Wednesday.

However when I went to the interview on Tuesday morning the response I got from the chair of TACT, was not one of disappointment but of excitement towards the change and therefore after viewing the interview with my news editor, it was decided that the angle to the story would now be more towards the council’s saving to be made from changing bin days.

This provided me a new challenge as I would now have to get information out of the council on how the saving was made. This proved very difficult and in the end I managed to speak to the union that represents some of the workers who told me he was concerned that members of the workforce would lose their jobs; however nothing had been confirmed to whether jobs would be at risk.

After finally completing the package I was told it may be better to create an OOV on the bin changes; a short series of clips which the presenter speaks over, summarising the events in 10-15 seconds. I created this and I was happy that this made it into the bulletin. I have felt disheartened that so far I have not had a package in the bulletin, despite all my stories making it onto the website; I felt that  needed to improve my poor quality packages to contribute to the bulletin.

On Wednesday morning breaking news about unemployment meant that I was asked to create another OOV to be used in the bulletin. Finishing my work the night before gave me time to help the news team who were busy, and go get the video images that were needed to create a further story for the bulletin. I was happy with my clips, but when I started editing I found that unfortunately it had not come out properly; it had blurred on one side due to a fault either with the tape or camera. Therefore with help from the Editor, I managed to move the clips over to avoid the blur. This made my clips selections limited and therefore the OOV contained many similar pictures. However it still went into the bulletin and I was very happy with two pieces of my work making it in.
I thought the production team did extremely well on Wednesday afternoon and the whole production of the programme went very well. In the debrief there was a much happier feel about the news room, with a successful bulletin finally produced and put onto the WINOL website. I felt that I learnt a lot from the debrief that I can use in my own packages to ensure that they are used in next week's program.

Looking ahead to next week I will ensure that I have an interview that is sure to produce some news worthy sound bites and hopefully my package will make it into the bulletin.