WINOL Week 7

This week on WINOL we only had one bulletin and didn't have a special program or any other special programs to think about and therefore we had time to put all our time and effort into making a quality produced bulletin. We will be able to do this for the next few weeks now as well as there are no plans for any more special versions of WINOL. These programs do look amazing, however they take a lot of time and effort and therefore it is hard to produce and WINOL bulletin and still prepare other packages and news; which is something we have done very well however.

Despite this we had a few members of the editorial team that were away this week with illness which caused the bulletin to be very unorganised on Wednesday. Sport was not finished and took some last minute interventions for everyone on sport to understand what was and what wasn't going into the bulletin and sportsweek and how long it would be. When people are away or ill someone else needs to take over and make sure everything is going well. Because this didn't happen, the Editor had so much to do on his own that everything was unorganised. The script was not ready until too late, sport was not ready and no one was taking control on production. Therefore if this happens again people need to step up and take the role of the person who is missing from the editorial team so that things are done on time and organised.

These issues meant that there was not enough time for a run through before the bulletin at 3pm and therefore there were obviously going to be mistakes with the presenting and the ordering and cutting of VT's because nobody knew what was coming up, or the tone and subject of each VT. However I felt that everyone did very well on production and presenting. However reporters need to take responsibility for their own links; too often we are writing poor links which we feel the presenter will just change anyway. Handing in a good link saves the presenter the time of having to take a link, change it and research the story because they only know the outline of the story.

We have to be able to change the running order of the bulletin as up to date or breaking news comes on; a lot of time we have the opportunity to change what we have but we are too reluctant because we are afraid to add something so late in the day.

The headlines this week were out of sync and didn't have any sound on sport. This could have been a mistake in the gallery but natural sound is needed as it adds to the pictures and aid the story, especially on sport; crowd noise add emotion to the pictures that we can see. I think that headlines need improving as they are probably the worst part of our bulletin.

In the gallery we did seem to have a few problems this week as well, there is a start of a VT that wasn't meant to be there and then quickly changes to another package, and the tape itself seems very shaking the whole way through the bulletin. As well as this the opening credits of the bulletin seem to be missing. We therefore need to take more time to ensure the bulletin is correct before it is uploaded onto WINOL, however this is hard as the bulletin has to be up by 5pm.

As for the news stories themselves The Ford story was good but we didn't hear from the workers, there was also a lot of weak cut-aways but I can understand that interesting cut-aways would have been hard to get. The tree disease story was good and there was a good use of natural sound with the chainsaw as well. These stories both needed a sequence and 2 shots at least for each cut away. There was poor framing in front of a window in one of the stories which has been banned for a long time. The HPCC story was good and it is good to go to London as it broadens the show, however the in studio discussion did not work. It is good to try these though because it breaks up and changes the structure of the show. The energy farm story was good and it looked good starting with a PTC despite advice not to on most occasions. The crime story was very good as it was a story without pictures and therefore not very good for TV news, however the reconstruction made it more visual and easier to tell the story. The and finally was okay but the pictures were not great and finally the polo feature was also very good as it was brilliant to have horses in the bulletin and was a well constructed feature.

Sport in the bulletin was good, however I think we need to change to handover to sport; originally it was meant to look like another studio with a different chair and in a different place so that it didn't just look like we had switched the background. However it now just looks as though the presenters have morphed into different people and is just confusing and strange and therefore needs to be changed. The change of a chair to a sliver stool would look better. For sport, if the editor is ill then someone needs to take over from sport and take this roll. The Bison highlights had good sound but the voice over needs more energy and excitement as it makes it seem boring if the reporter isn't even excited! Overall I think that it was a good bulletin and the standard of the packages is gradually increasing; however a lot of the time changes or improvements to packages is forced through lecturers or the editors. These changes should now start to be made by the reporter themselves. There are still a lot of improvements to make and next week it would be good to see very few errors in production and from the reporters so that we have one very strong bulletin.

As for features this week was spent preparing and organising features for December's edition of the Here and Now magazine. We have some very strong ideas and some very good interviews. Once they are on the site it will look very good and extremely  professional. The site design itself looks very good, it is easy to look at and very easy to navigate. Features is coming together nicely now and is looking very good, more updated features should start being made and being put onto the main slider very soon.

One feature that was put onto the site last week was the American Embassy in London's election highlights, which I was at the week before. I think the highlights look very good and emphasise that we often report in London about international events, and don't just stick to local events and local news. The London embassy highlights are on the right hand side of the page.