Critical review

                                                             

I thought that this term WINOL was very successful as an editorial product. The first few bulletins were not very strong as a result of people trying to understand their new roles and many of the news team had not even filmed or edited a package before because they were on production last term. Many of the first few packages had poorly framed or bleached out shots, interviews without quotes or stories that weren’t told fully, However It soon became the case, that as everyone became familiar with their roles and started to produce more and more packages, the filming and editing of the news team became better as a result of gaining experience of how to create a good package technically and soon the filming and editing of packages improved week on week resulting in an almost perfect final bulletin of the term.  The stories themselves this term were much stronger than last year in my opinion, partly due to the ambition to get stories from neighbouring cities such as Southampton, London and Weymouth and not just sticking to where we feel comfortable in Winchester. This allowed us to produce more interesting stories and also attempt to increase the number of viewers that watch WINOL, this also allowed for some of the best interviews and stories we have had whilst doing WINOL; such as Steve Brine,  Harry Redknapp’s court case and best of all; leader of the opposition, Ed Miliband. However we only got these stories due to the hard work and effort to go get them by leaving leaving Winchester.

Unfortunately the number of viewers was not as large as last term, this could be due to the fact that the first few bulletins were not uploaded onto the site by the 5PM deadline due to issues with production and a few late stories put into the bulletin in post production. This meant that when people viewed the site and the bulletin was not there, they did not come back again to WINOL to watch other bulletins; therefore we lost a large percent of our audience.  This could also have been due to a large amount of time spent trying to make a new opening sequence that would look more professional, which in the end was abandoned. I felt that it was better to stick to our original opening sequence as although our rival Universities may have more money to spend on production, our content is much better and that is what really counts, therefore we should have spent more time in the opening weeks focusing on this aspect rather than an opening sequence.  WINOL’s Alexa ranking is currently 196,900 and around 300-400 regular users, compared to WNOL, a rival programme chosen at random, which has an Alexa ranking of 3,824,248. This shows the popularity and quality of WINOL and its content despite possibly not having the budget of bigger Universities.

However, not many of our written articles have over 150 views. I think this could possibly be down to the fact that written articles are always left to the last minute and do not have as a great an effort put into them as the VT’s created, they are also often late and therefore once the viewer has watched WINOL and seen the story they are less likely to read the written article. I think next term more effort needs to be made with written articles. We also do not have the ability to SEO our articles or columns and therefore despite looking good on the site have very few views.  Anyone searching for comment on the issues our columns raise will be easier found on bigger more successful, national websites. I do think the columns should be kept as they do look very professional.

I think the style of the site this year was much improved and Jenny as the Website editor did a very good job subbing all the articles, mostly on her own and keeping the site up to date. The use of up to date, time, weather and job search are all good features for the better looking , new style site which is easier to navigate than previous years and is in the style of other successful websites such as BBC News and The Daily Mail website.

 I felt that Tom, the News Editor, did very well this year chasing up stories and making sure he had enough material on the spike to ensure that we had big enough bulletins with enough quality. We always seemed to have enough material, with some of the first bulletins lasting over 15 minutes. More importantly this gave Tom the ability to pick and choose the best running order and best stories to put in the bulletin as only stories worthy of the bulletin should go in. There were a few occasions where the spike was empty, but this was mainly a result of few reporters. I felt that the news team also did well without news gathering, as a lot of times during the year we found stories on the day, such as the Ed Miliband story. I felt the calmness of how we approached and produced this particular story was very impressive and showed our progression as journalists. At the start of the course we wouldn’t have got this story, and if we had, we all would have panicked about getting it done in time, which on this occasion we managed to do in plenty of time and to a high quality.

I thought Tom also did well not to always have a news belt consisting of 3 oov’s every week as it can sometimes be misused. I think that last term we often used the news belt as a way of putting stories into the bulletin that we hadn’t been bothered to fully produce, however that didn’t happen this term and any oov’s in the bulletin were there for a reason and to tell the story. It was also used better this term as a way of looking back at a previous story we had told in previous bulletins, such as the Hobbit pub story and the Shmallenberg virus.

At the begging of the term our ability to get quotes was quite poor and often resulted in interviews framed in front of brick walls with the interviewee telling the story, however as the year progressed it was good to see that interviews were framed in interesting and relevant places, with the rule of thirds with some very good quotes which are there to emote add to the story rather than being factual such as, ‘It’s a dream come true’. We also began to avoid using signs and GV’S of buildings which is something over used at the beginning of term due to a lack of shots. We started filming in sequences and shot close ups of people’s faces. In court stories the attempt to get mug shots and reconstruct stories was very good as previously to this court stories had been very boring as just a piece to camera is not good enough for TV.

The features section was much improved this term with some of the best features I have seen, even with a smaller team and lack of direction from the Features Editor. It would have been nice however to see an attempt at a WINOL life programme but this did not happen. Production Editor Ewan also did very well and his calm approach in the gallery and helpfulness in post production was a key factor in the success of WINOL this term.

My personal role this year was Sports Editor which I feel I was successful at. Sport is something I am very interested in and therefore found this role easier than my previous news reporter role.  At the start of term I was told not to produce a WINOL Sportsweek programme due to the lack of a sports team; only 3 reporters. However I took up the challenge to continue the programme and ignore this advice as I believed that we could still manage it. I am glad that I decided to continue the programme as I think it was very successful. The effort that all the sports team put in to gather content was remarkable and meant that we produced Sportsweek to a high standard every week and was at least 7 minutes in duration. Many of the team were reporting on 2 matches every weekend and even helped out with second cameras to ensure that the footage we were recording looked even better. We were often praised by guest editors for the quality of our reports which were often compared to national news organisation in terms of video quality and structure despite not being able to film as important matches.

Some aspects that I think were especially successful in Sport this term were firstly the emphasis on Ice Hockey; Henry did a fantastic job with his reporting on this and we tried to push it to be a main focus this term rather than only having football, often putting it at the top of Sportsweek and the sports section of the bulletin, as a result the Ice Hockey videos have some of the most hits out of all our sports videos. Secondly I was very happy with my own effort to get the new Basingstoke Town manager Jason Bristow into the University for an in studio chat on Sportsweek about his new role as manager, less than 24 hours after his appointment. We were also the first news organisation to get an interview with him which I felt was a big achievement.  We also managed to get Basingstoke Bison player coach Steve Moria in for an in studio chat which I felt was a very successful interview. Thirdly I felt that ensuring that we always had enough content was a big success of mine despite having a much smaller team than previous years and having many games postponed due to bad weather. We had 3 weeks in a row where there was very little sporting action and no football at all due to ice and snow, but we created different features such as WINOL Wicket, WINOL Woodwork, studio discussions, previews, reviews and content sent from Leed’s Metropolitan University who I managed to build a relationship with over the year to make sure that we had enough quality content on weeks where there was little or no new sporting action.

Another good point this year was our decision to look further a field and increase our audience as far as Weymouth with a story about the Olympics rather than only reporting as far Basingstoke and football. I think this particular report was very successful and looks good because of the varied and interesting sailing shots we managed to get, however this particular story would have been much improved had we actually managed to get onto a boat and try sailing ourselves in a gonzo style story, something we had aimed to do from the beginning but had not managed once we got to Weymouth. Also recording Sportsweek from Weymouth and not just in the studio every week was a good idea as it is more interesting for the viewer to look at.  The Sports team’s success of reporting the Hampshire Senior Cup at St Mary’s Stadium was also good for us as we were reporting alongside some of the county’s biggest news organisations in a Premier League Stadium.

WINOL Sportsweek was not as successful in terms of viewers this year but I feel that this is a result of my conscious decision to put all the separate sports videos onto YouTube so that fans of each team could watch their side’s individual news story or highlights and not have to sit through minutes of action they are not interested in. It had been requested to be by many supporters of different teams to put up separate highlights and thought that it would help the number of viewers who watch all of our videos, despite taking many views away from Sportsweek itself. Previous years have seen views of Sportsweek at nearly 1,000 a week, and despite this year only receiving around 200-300 views a week, the total views on all our videos this year is almost 2,000 a week as a result of separating each video and uploading them separately. Therefore I think this decision was a success.

I think that my sports packages also improved as the term progressed, as I hadn’t previously been on the Sports desk before but all of the other Sports reporters had already been sports reporters last year, meaning that their packages were stronger than mine at first. However I think this is something I adapted to and quickly found my feet, resulting in some very strong reports at the end of the term. Updating twitter during football and Ice Hockey is something that the sports team improved on this year, giving the website an up to date feel, but also increasing the number of hits as people who can’t make certain games know that they can look on the WINOL website for updates on their team’s matches.

Overall I think I could have improve this year by introducing different sports to WINOL Sportsweek but we were restricted as a result of a smaller team, I think I also made a bigger push to ensure that written articles had better picture a, despite being on time, often had poor quality screen shots of action and not actual pictures from the game, introducing still images from each game may have made a nice section for the website. However I do think that overall sport was a success this term.