WINOL Dummy Edition

WINOL’s curtain raiser for the 2010/2011 academic year kicked off in admirable style as the combination of second and third years working together as a team started yet again for the second consecutive year. My role as Investigative Reporter for the semester suits my ambition and my interests. As I spent last year reporting, it is great for me to still have the opportunity to be able to this but with a different style. After spending the summer working hard towards my journalism goals, I know Freedom of Information holds the key to success this semester.

WINOL Bulletin Analysis:

Westminster Piece: Joey’s Tory Party Conference Piece showed desire, determination and individual skill. The Conservative gathering in Birmingham, a meeting to define a new Tory era possessed the potential for hundreds of news items, but finding that one particular one and relating it to Winchester remained the biggest problem.

Thankfully, Winchester’s MP Steve Brine obliged to offer his time for an interview, sequence shots and for Joey to take in the general character of the day, offering a local outlook on proceedings and on the much maligned coalitions impact on Winchester. Overall, it was a good package of which to start the ball rolling in the latter half of 2010 for WINOL.

St Pauls By-Election: The package itself was newsworthy because the fate of the by-election vote meant the Liberal Democrat run City Council could have lost their slender lead advantage over the Tory’s, resulting in a hung council. As it was, the Lib Dems held on, in a story I enjoyed filming in terms of sequences. It was not my best piece of work by any stretch but it allowed me to familiarize myself with reporting yet again.

Student Finance: Of course Chancellor’s George Osborne’s public spending review has sparked debate, intrigue and worry as to where the future of Great Britain’s economy lies. Indeed, Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg’s failure not to stick to his agreement of not raising tuition fees came firmly back to bite him. Financial correspondent for WINOL Julie Cordier covered the proposed hikes in her first package. For a first news report it was very good, with effort, enthusiasm and desire all evident. The only criticism is that the topic for the story was slightly too big and its impact on Winchester needed to come across with greater aplomb.

Rape Alley Story: Bizarre. The myth of the alley overall could be true but there were no interviews or anything of note to back up the hunch. The link to the council failing to control the weather was difficult to comprehend, but crime is difficult in Winchester and I expect Andy will produce quality material in the coming weeks.

Sport: WINOL’s exclusive rights for non league footage. First of all, fantastic on Sport Editor Grant’s part for working hard and using his contacts to gather the rights, but it was not completely sold right. A clearly scripted auto-cue and a bit of clarity in what WINOL did secure would have emphasized the success. Good debuts by WINOL’s respective second year sports reporters. More focus needed on women’s football, campus sport and student related sport to increase circulation.

A defining moment was said by one of our lecturers Angus Scott in the post debrief ,where he said the people who do have seniority and clout in their respective roles, need to be listened too (i.e. news reporters need to listen to their editor). Another example was the Director in the studio, having a say on what was comfortable for him and what needed to be put right before we went live.