WINOL Week 6 and The American election

This week WINOL produced a regular news bulletin but also, for the first time, we covered the American election. This required a lot of planning as we needed to fill a live 2 hour morning show after the election. For this we had pre recorded packages about the election, links to the newsroom for updates, a link to America studio guests and packages recorded the night before at the American embassy in London. I think the entire show went very well; there were a few mistakes along the way but it is amazing that we managed to fill to constant hours of coverage without many mistakes at all. To then go and film a regular news bulletin straight after made the experience even more amazing. The broadacast made it to to story on www.journalism.co.uk, and in the same month I think it is worth noticing the hard work of each member of the WINOL team who have helped to produce the BJTC awards, the HPPC debate and now a 2 hour live election coverage.


My role in the American election coverage was to go to London alongside Tom Morgan, Kirsty Phillips and Sam Sheard. I felt that everyone in the London team did a fantastic job and worked so hard the entire night. I am full of praise for all of them. Our day started at 12.00pm on Tuesday where we were let into the embassy and then had our equipment checked and shown around the embassy. After this we spent 9 hours in London researching and keeping up to date with election information. Then at 9.00pm we arrived at the embassy where we began filming, tweeting from the embassy and interviewing several guests including Andrew Marr, Rob Carolina, Charlie Wolf and Sir Menzies Campbell. We recorded over 35 separate videos which were instantly sent back to WINOL for them to be edited into a couple of minutes the next morning.

The team worked extremely hard after a long day and evening; not leaving the embassy until 4.00am when everyone was asked to leave on Wednesday morning. The interviews were under stressful and very packed conditions and therefore the quality and sharpness of the camera work is very good. The live tweeting continued all night as well as photographs sent back to give a visual feel to the tweets as well for anyone who wanted to keep up to date with our twitter updates. We all helped to find interviewees, frame and record interviews, tweet and research information on the elction for PTC throughout the night. I think that our coverage gave the live 2 hour broadcast an up to date and current feel because unfortunately not all of our material had been planned, as we felt that the winner would not have been announced by the time we went on air.

Our cameras were next to film crews and journalists at the US embassy from around the world and therefore I feel that is something that the four of us who went to London can be very proud of. And as an entire product all of us can be proud of how the 2 hour live broadcast turned out. As well as the broadcast I am planning to make a video of the entire clips filmed at the embassy.

So after the hectic few days of preparing for the election coverage it was over to the news, sport and production teams to create a bulletin which I feel they did very well. In my opinion this was our best bulletin so far however I was not there on the day so I don't know from first hand how it went. We did seem a little short on real news stories however, but I can imagine that the hectic few days of preparing WINOL caused this. Sport also looked very good, as did Sportsweek. I think that everyone is improving week by week.

Wednesday was also the launch of the Here and Now online magazine which I felt looked very good with all of the slides together. Overall we had 10 slides up on Wednesday including a competition which is what we had planned for at the start of term. I think the competition looked amazing and the winners have received their prizes. As well as this we have the additional fashion section which is slowly coming together and should be looking as good as the front page by December, which is already being planned despite not having much time to oversee how it is going this week as I was very busy in London!

I think that the updating of slides and stories on the site throughout the week and on the weekend had proved to be a fantastic idea. The site looks a lot better now than it has ever done before; mainly because it is being updated every day and therefore it looks like a live website.