Here's what I did in the last news week on WINOL. Next week will focus on features to co-inside in In-Style's Maria Milano visit.
Monday
- Over the weekend, Chris worked hard to make the site look better and he has done a very good job. In all his excitement, he made a few spelling mistakes with the front page banner and other text he inserted. Like a good Chief Sub, I was on it in a flash!
- General clean up of the site. Got rid of old material, changed a few headlines for practical and editorial purposes.
- A bit of code forced Joomla to mangle the whole features page. Had to sort that!
Tuesday
- Chased up a picture for Stu's story: was going on the front page so particularly important.
- Found a poll module on good old Joomla extensions. Once it was downloaded, I put it on 'Extension manager' so I could add the poll about gay marriage onto the site.
- Spoke to our Picture Editor Jase Curtis about pictures(!) I found another fancy Joomla extension that could showcase his images. Maybe too late in the term for him to bother?!
- Another scan over the published articles. Checking the usual stuff: headlines, house style, legals, spelling etc.
Wednesday
- Subbed a lot of the Journalism Now! pieces from the first years and MA students. Didn't realise it wasn't really my job, but did them anyway!
- Then Output Editor of the BBC's Politics Show Tim Burke came in and we had some great discussions. We debated about the line between gay marriage and civil partnerships and whether the poll I put up was misleading as a result.
- He then went through the stories on the front page and made some advanced points about writing style and telling it properly. I learned a lot from spending the afternoon with him.
Notes from Laura Barton and Brian's debriefs.
- We actually hit all our deadlines!
- Great presenting from Cara (news) and Will (sport). Handover banter was good too.
- Fantastic student report about the fee demos, but voice over could've been a bit more measured to let the pictures speak for themselves.
- Particularly good shots in sport this week; especially getting the Winchester City manager covering his face after conceding a goal.
- Despite technical issues (including the handback to news), the bulletin was quite bulky and had a lot of substance.
- The features programme was also good, had a One Show feel, and was another string to our bow this week.
Monday
The documentary about the tuition fee protests was on the front page, but had been replaced with our latest bulletin, so I took the YouTube embed code and put it on the sidebar of features.
The video was joined by Stu's feature interview with Chris Huhne. We're starting to get big names on the site, which is really encouraging.
Also, I generally updated the content, including news and sport articles submitted over the weekend.
Picture problems: Jase had copyrighted his (excellent) pictures, so the embed code for one of Stu's articles was not available.
Tuesday
I have been putting a lot of video content up this week. Catherine's behind the scenes video at the Echo is very good, so I put that on the front page. Veronica/Maddie etc's fee demo documentary is now on the features page as it had to be taken off the front page for the latest bulletin.
Hobbs has been securing some big names in the comment department, including Steve Brine and the Bishop of Winchester. The bishop piece had two parts to it, so me and Chris decided to keep one half back for next week. We also jazzed up his picture to more of a close up, feature style image.
Me and Jon decided it is best all-round for the site to have one column. Two columns cause far too many Joomla problems whilst one column looks good anyway. There are still drawbacks with one column, including the need to write long headlines to fill the excess space. So we went through and sorted that problem.
Wednesday
Sportsweek was getting a bit old on the front page and there wasn't a new one this week due to postponements.
Somehow the sidebars on the site started to look bare, especially on the news and sport pages. Grant put Mikey's new feature 'Hit the WINOL woodwork' onto YouTube so I could put that on sport along with links to popular and latest articles. Andy's bible bashers VT was looking old on the news sidebar, so I replaced that with two of Stu's latest pieces on the tuition fees and council housing.
Latest: Chris has been busy over the weekend to make the site look better, check it out at WINOL.
Monday
Me and Chris only really had time to talk about the fancy slideshow we want for the site. Besides, Jon has taken over the visual side of things to leave me to the boring legal, spelling, grammar stuff etc.
A large chunk of this day was taken up by news meetings. News conference then features conference then editorial conference. They seem to get longer every week, which isn't good.
Tuesday
Tuesday was a lot more productive. Features was looking a bit bare, so I added a sidebar on the right to improve it visually. This had a knock-on effect on the stories, which had to be sorted ('read mores' etc)
Veronica worked on a picture slideshow for the features page. Flickr wouldn't host it on an external site (ours), so she had to re-do it on Final Cut Pro for YouTube.
Me and Jon decided to change the layout of news, sport and features. Joomla was too problematic with two columns, so we changed it to one column. The stories being under each other one after the other looks pretty good anyway.
Wednesday
HEADLINE: I may have saved next week's bulletin. No one spotted that 'league' was spelt wrong on the results graphic AGAIN, until I casually walked by and told them! Surely Horrie would have pulled the plug on next week if we made that mistake again!
More features work in the morning. I worked on filling up the new features sidebar. It now includes: behind the scenes video, two landscape photoessays, mine and Veronica's fly-on-the-wall election docs and the winter fashion thing, which apparently will be replaced soon.
There was a lot of football over last weekend and early in the week, so I put all of that up on the site with video. The code to wrap it around text is so difficult.
Millbank (Tory HQ) became a 'hostile environment' when we were covering it. Here's some tips for anybody who may be in this type of environment in the future...
1. Make sure you have an exit route.
2. Communication: Make sure the newsroom knows your location at all times.
3. Have a clear plan: Where will you be at certain times
4. Have a 'fixer' - somebody who can guide you around the dangerous area in question. For example, NUS were our fixers at Millbank.
5. If you do get in a sticky situation: immediately give in and give up your camera.
6. Don't try and fight back.
7. Don't resist if police go to arrest you.
TONY STOLLER, BBC/OFCOM
- Need to be careful of opinion.
- Sport too cliched.
- Believable bulletin.
- Production shaky.
BRIAN
- Talkback in newsroom with Lucy very useful.
- Presenters: Seb got over nervousness. Also, very good from Stu.
Hopefully production lessons learned.
Need talkback for Floor Manager and Prod Ed.
Moving to another program so that VTs run smoother...
Didn't do much on Monday because I was ill!
On Tuesday, we worked on putting a slideshow module on the front page to replace the bulletin that gets old over the weekend. Picture Editor Jason Curtis took some brilliant pictures of the Millbank riots, which would look really good on the front page.
I also added 'Sportsweek' to the side of the front page to flag up our sports page.
The ticker is very hard to monitor and keep up-to-date, so we unpublished that from the front page until Wednesday when we trail the bulletin.
Wednesday was used to iron out production issues such as handovers, vision mixing and scripting.
A lot of us had the chance to present. I read the sport in one of the run-throughs when Catherine read the news. We worked on making the handover more natural, which was fairly successful.
Sorry, nothing to tell! I was ill!
First thing on Monday, I updated the ticker with breaking news as well as saturday's football results/mid-week fixtures.
We also changed the layout of the site to a degree, adding modules to make the content more dense.
There was a Basingstoke game that evening, so I had to go back on the ticker at around half 9 to change it from a fixture to a score. I want to make the ticker as fresh as possible as it's a lot quicker than subbing stories.
On Tuesday, I cleaned up the news page to try and make headlines/stories line up. The only snag is: making these changes is to the detriment of the front page. As a result, we will unfortunately have to compromise the look of news to make the front page look clean.
No such problems with features as none crossover with the front page. I asked Dom and Cara to line everything up on features. All running orders got sorted too.
On Wednesday, the newsroom was pretty stressed out, so I temporarily took over as Managing Editor to pull everything together. Headline clips, VT clips and reporter presence were needed.
During the bulletin, I stayed in the newsroom to update the ticker and preview the bulletin. At this point, the Millbank riots were in full flow so there were plenty of breaking lines to keep me busy. We were also had an exclusive line from the riots thanks to Maddie who found out protestors had got onto roofs before anyone else.
On Thursday and Friday I updated the ticker again - putting up latest news from the tuition fee protests and taking off older news that had since developed. I also put up text stories from this week's bulletin - or at least all those without potential issues. One of the problems is pictures: COULD REPORTERS PLEASE PUT A FLICKR LINK TO THEIR PICTURE AT THE BOTTOM OF THE ARTICLE THEY SUBMIT!
Notes on the debrief of our bulletin, which was probably our best to date.
Most hits: Win with WINOL and James Knight profile
Reminiscent of the industry - competitions and 'celebs' most popular
We had a comment on the bible story, which shows that people are starting to listen to and recognise us. As a result, we need to keep a relationship with our contacts and portray them in a good as well as bad light.
Still not using our best pictures in headlines.
Too many establishing shots - looks stupid to have 4/5 in a bullletin, becomes a bit of a cliche.
Blurred out reg plates - very professional
OB presenting was fairly slick
Huge success with Chesney Hawkes interview. Proper celebrity.
Background image on green screen much improved.
Talking over talking heads in headlines. Shows the need for rehearsals.
WINOL Radio...great - another string to our bow
ALSO: How to use the ticker
On Monday, I got News Editor Claire to ask for text stories straight after her news reporters finish their packages on Wednesday. Unfortunately, still only a few have done this. Apart from that, I looked over any outstanding stories that had been subbed.
On Tuedsday, me and Chris tidied/sexed up the site by writing some sharper tabloid headlines and top lines. I also gave Becky a mini-tutorial on writing summary style sport stories.
On Wednesday, me and Chris cleaned up the front page so that everything lined up and headlines didn't bust (i.e. - stayed on one line). We did the same for the sport front page.
Some of this involved changing the running order of stories, which is made very difficult by Joomla! If an article is at the top (number 1 on Joomla), it doesn't appear to give you the option to drop it down.
Then it was all about the bulletin from around 2.30! Just like last week, we replaced last week's streaming bulletin with a graphic promoting the new one.
Along with this, I updated the ticker previewing the top stories of the week. The ticker was previewing what was in the previous week's bulletin - equivalent to the day before in the industry.
The sport needed updating, so I spent two hours of thursday morning on their front page. It was very frustrating as it ignored the running order the changed it to, so it was very difficult not to mangle the whole page.
But on Friday, I finally beat Joomla! I thought there must have been a reason why Joomla kept ignoring the order I changed the articles to. In the menu item manager, it was set to custom or 'order' on news but 'default' on sport. All I had to was change the sport to 'order' on the drop down menu and this enabled me to move articles around to my heart's content.
Mixed reaction from last week's bulletin...
ITV Senior Political Correspondent Chris Ship
- We did well to pull it together at the last minute
- looked after guests: good habit to get into
- headlines should have been recorded
- should have used GBH victim in them as well
- Andrew Giddings' GBH story was very good. Chris said it wouldn't have been out of place on a local bulletin. Even the pauses in his voiceover were timed well.
- The job losses story was a typical example of making news out of other output on a slow news day. Joey's OB was very well done, but we did see too much of the newsroom ceiling while he was on.
- Stu's story about stress in the council was picture challenged, so he did very well to bash out a VT on it. Good pay off too.
- Aimee did well with her David Gower piece. He was framed nice and tightly and she included good actuality and a classic graduate hat shot.
- Handovers were smooth, but guest could have stayed just to the side to avoid WINOL musical chairs.
- In sport, the questions to Winchester City manager Guy Butters were good. For rehearsals, get production staff to act it out.
- Black holes in news and sport: need to leave packages long.
- And finally, Chris thought the halloween teaser was a bit short if anything.
General WINOL Expert(!) Brian Thornton
- In the gallery, we were too nervy and panicy. But it looked good in the end, so it was worth the stress.
- presenters should be praised on their calmness and general performance.
- good OB from Jake and Joey.
- fashion feature: was great for adding colour to the bulletin.
WINOL Founder(!) Chris Horrie
Safe to say he was disappointed...
- Andy's story was the only piece of real journalism
- we need more options in news, to raise the bar in terms of content
- lack of direction in features
- political discussion: unbalanced, shouldn't have been edited down
- got a complaint for it: good as it shows we have an audience but bad...because it's a complaint!
- 'How to live on £20'
- good idea, but needs re-editing
- it would be good to for Hobbs to commission comment pieces from MPs, SU people etc
- sport is pretty good as always
- audience is down, need to put that right
We had a big push on features this week, partly because of the WINOL magazine that is coming next week.
On Monday, only me and Cara were in so we worked to get everything up to speed. Veronica gave me 13 features to be done by Wednesday (27th).
Chris then joined us and we looked through some stories/features with legal problems. We also worked out what HTML was needed to embed the YouTube videos so they wrap around text.
On Tuesday, we had another massive onslaught on the features and did a 'first sub' on all the outstanding news and sport.
On Wednesday, Paul took over as director, which meant I could focus on the site more - and trailing the bulletin.
Chris showed me how to use the ticker (scrolling thing on the site). We put what was coming up in the bulletin with sensationalised tabloid headlines.
Brian also gave me a masterclass on how to write top lines and the like. It'd be useful if he gave the same advice to the reporters, would be very constructive.
Then we had a debrief from ITV's Senior Political Correspondent Chris Ship.
Winchester News Online Editor Catherine Hayes
General point: We still need to get in control of the script and the processes that will coe with it
1. Homeless people (Jack)
- good use of actuality
- juxtaposition libel? Was the busker actually homeless?
- weird interview
- funny jump cut
2. Spending cut chat: pretty well done
3. Court (Giddings)
- identification of reg. plate, potential danger
- excellent pull focus
- PTC slightly over-exposed
- very good scripting
4. Train fares (Julie)
- first shot quite long
- vary GVs more
- tense problems: used "this morning" when it was not possible in time
5. Last-min piece (Stu)
- Awesome to turn it around in a day
- PTC a bit close up
- Allotment thing slight overlooked in my opinion...was very good for pictures
6. Bishop (Mike)
- interview needs to be eye-level
- GVs: lack of relevance
SPORT...
- champagne thing a bit weirdly done, but great idea
- basketball: funny lighting and interview a bit echoey
BBC South Editor Lee Desty
General points: Good to get rehearsals in, gallery plugged away well, changes to stories worth the stress!
- Didn't grab our audience enough in first 30 seconds. Very important point for South Today.
- Maybe four headlines: two news, two sport?
- No actuality in headlines and we need to make sure we use our very best shots (e.g. - busker?)
1. Homeless people (Jack)
- interview a long shot. Get tighter!
2. Spending cut chat
- someone said "it's bad for us", understand the pressure of the situation, but need to remain impartial
- good initiative though
3. Court (Giddings)
- questions over paedo stories in bulletins at all, due to the family aspect...kids watching
- needed a mug shot
- good command of facts
4. Train fares (Julie)
- vox pops weak
- PTC well framed
- v/o needed more energy
5. Last-min piece (Stu)
- he really liked it!
- PTC a bit long but tried to get a lot of facts in
6. Bishop (Mike)
- Not great for an 'and finally'
- cutaway to a hedge???
SPORT...
- A big divider for a family watching, so three mins out of ten perhaps too long
- South Today has five minutes in 30
- Winchester City highlights needed a bit more colour and stats to add to the action we can see anyway
- Good graphic, lucky we can use proper logo for the league.
- Interview with Basketball coach: Basketball on desk...why?! Quite funny though.
I attended the Monday conference this week to ask all reporters for text stories. Not every reporter has met their deadline though.
Apart from that, we caught up with everything that was already on Joomla for subbing. I'm perfectly aware that certain people don't think that we're doing enough, but there are so many problems with the articles in the first place that we find ourselves doing half the reporters' job before even checking for errors.
Obviously this isn't always the case, some stories have been really good, but some people aren't following simple grammatical rules and then subs don't follow the house style. We need a meeting!
On Tuesday, had a bit of a masterclass from Horrie regarding Stu's brilliant investigative report. The story was about councillor's allowances and how an anti-tax group was against the level of them. One problem was the credibility of the source IsItFair, leading to a lack of balance. The other reason why there was a lack of balance was the fact that the councillor at the heart of the story didn't comment. Stu did try several times but it was a bit dodgy, which I should have realised.
On Wednesday, there was a sport story that I had to sub before Chris kicked me out into the studio to direct the bulletin.
Amazingly, we were pretty much on time to rehearse but that soon changed when we put in two stories in place of two weaker ones. It involved changing the running order, headlines, the script etc and it was worth the effort. But frankly, it wasn't executed well enough.
As director, I hold my hands up for not dealing with the changes; I feel disappointed with fulfilling that role, but when you are still trying to direct a bulletin with a old script, it's not going to help.
After complete carnage in the studio, we managed to get the bulletin out on time and to a decent standard, which is what it's all about.
But it didn't stop there, Chris was onto me to update the content on the front page straight after the bulletin. I also had stories to approve for publishing.
Then I subbed a sports story myself after all of that. Let's just say it took me until 9pm to finish, but enough said about one for now!
Debrief for our second bulletin of the term.
Jack's piece about international students ID problems probably shouldn't have been top story, but had a lot of potential. It started with a 'drop intro', which is usually synonymous with stories just before the sport or an 'and finally', so that is almost proof that is should have been dropped lower. Plus, we only saw Jack in vision for a millisecond during his PTC, which looked slightly odd.
Julie's tuition fee story started with an excellent pull focus. Content wise, the quote didn't qualify the fact that they were supposedly "demonstrating" against the fees. We needed to find somebody who was directly effected, so we could get quotes strong enough.
Gareth's housing story (OOV) had a good opening shot. Also, the sound was disappointing on the councillor - be careful!
Aimee's OOV about the Queen Elizabeth naming ceremony was very well done and just helped to fill the bulletin, which is obviously the name of the game. We don't keep enough natural sound in, but Aimee did well to add colour to the piece in this way.
And in sport, the spelling errors! I won't say anything else because this is such a serious/needless issue that others fade into obscurity.
The BJTC thing was also good and the presenters did very well when ad-libbing about it...but we could drive this even more...
Notes on what I got up to on our first proper week of WINOL.
On Monday, I went to Southampton with Showbiz Reporter(?!) Aimee to cover the naming ceremony of the Queen's new cruise ship.
We couldn't get near her at Dock Gate 4, so had to make do with filming her on a big screen! But we managed to get the shots we needed (e.g. "I name this ship..."). News Editor Kayleigh decided to make it a NIB, but it was a good piece to fill 30 seconds of the bulletin.
Meanwhile, my sub-editing team were stressing out in the newsroom over articles being published inexplicably. Hopefully this won't happen again as we are tracking it all on the whiteboard now!
On Tuesday, we spent the day pushing for pictures so that we could publish stories that had already been looked over.
On Wednesday, I turned up to find out that the bulletin was scheduled for the earlier time of 2pm. Not everybody knew that the time had been changed, which unsurprisingly hindered our prepartion for the bulletin.
We got there in the end, but had to keep delaying the start, which is the last thing we want to do.
I thought that my directing was better than last week. We have only been in our new roles for a few weeks, so communication in the gallery is poor, but I tried my best to pull things together as well as keep Presenters Tom and Claire in the loop.
Here is my debrief for our dummy bulletin, the first of the year.
Let's get me out of the way: I was directing. Angus said I did well in the end, but I need to be unafraid of being bossy to get things done.
Joey's piece on the Tory Party Conference was excellent, one of the best ever on WINOL. Execution of the story from conference to submission was brilliant. PTC was very confident. Could've started piece with Brine, but that's about the only criticism.
Stu's piece on the St. Paul's by-election was good, but not one of his best. The "walking billboard" was a bit of a stitch-up! And contrary to Brian's comments, I loved the tie!
Julie's piece on student finance was very well scripted (that Glenn helped her with it...whoever he is!). Great range of shots and exemplary vox pops. Needed a stronger angle though, too descriptive.
Non-rape alley by Andrew. Voice over was clear, but lack of angle in story/scripting. Needed camera right then camera left for vox pops. Oh well, talented man - just an off day!
And in Sport...
As Chris put it, to get exclusive rights to from the fifth tier of English football is a fantastic achievement...so why didn't we plug it more?! After the post-mortem, sounds like it was because Grant took on too much last week. It can be sorted for sure and we will look even better!
Karen's PTC at the start of her package was a great idea, perhaps could have been executed better and went on too long. And after all, when that Clem guy does it on The Football League Show, it's bound to look better because he has the best equipment...and he's at St. Mary's or Hillsborough!!! But great highlights for a first time shot!
Dave - voice very good.
Women's Football. We flagged it up a little bit, need to keep driving it now.
General points: Don't say what you see and only include your best bits (i.e. not chances that are barely half chances etc).
Overall, bulletin was too heavy...we need to focus on light and shade more and cater for our audience. Presenters were brilliant as usual, although we could work on banter between handovers like South Today do 'n' that!
First of many posts to come informing my (extremely) small audience of what I'm up to at WINOL.
On Monday morning, Chris refreshed us on how Joomla, the content management system for WINOL. If anybody wasn't there and needs to know how to use Joomla, click here for a tutorial.
Then, as I am WINOL's No. 1 taxi service, News Editor Kayleigh James asked me to take Jack into Winchester to cover the 'controversial' opening of Primark. They were weary of our presence there to say the least.
On my return, Production Editor Josh Duffy asked me to direct for the bulletin on Wednesday.
As Chief Sub Editor, I was eager to refine WINOL's house style. On Tuesday, Brian sent me a copy of the mammoth BBC Style Guide, which I looked through and adapted the site. Don't worry, our style guide won't be hundreds of pages, but I will put one up pretty soon for the subs.
Then I went into the studio to do my first ever bit of directing! Veronica interviewed Seb Miell and Jez Davis about student issues and I had three camera angles to work with, depending on who was talking. Veronica told me the shots she wanted, we sorted them and she seemed happy with the vision mixing and how it went generally.
On Wednesday, we hit our first subbing issues (i.e. - we had our first stories in!) so I went through that - mainly with Seb. One of the main problems with reporters subbing stories on Word is it creates an annoying white border when it is copied into Joomla.
Then I went into the studio to prepare for directing the bulletin. Not enough time to prepare to be fair, but hey, it's a dummy! I left Rob to vision mix, thank goodness for him!
More on that on the debrief post.
Debrief from Guest Editor Andy Steggall
- Slow news day: this is where you prove your mettle as a journalist. We had some big challenges, including cutting down packages minutes before 5 o'clock.
- Sound was bad for voiceovers, but only because we didn't have the sound booth. But there were sound levels in some packages that could have been controlled better.
- Half-hearted links and stings. The writing, particularly of the links didn't draw in the viewers enough. It lets down the hard work that goes into the packages as less people will watch on.
- Clear angles...they weren't stuck to very well this week.
Stories
1. Stu - Council/Housing
- Had potential to be a great (and very relevant) story for people of Winchester
- Great to get a story from a boring council meeting
- Made FOI request about housing changes, which would have opened up amny more avenues
2. Grant - Crime Down
- One-line link, doesn't sound great or give enough colour
- Link was a 'what's on link'
- ...but PTC did sell the story a lot better (needed to be in link)
- Library pictures: needed to say it was "last month" or have a caption saying 'Library pictures'
3. James - Walk to School
- One-line link. Bad!
- Had a really good shot of busy crowd going to school, was the best shot so use it first
Sport
- Maybe should have started with World Cup story
A. Jason - Athletics
- Started VT with gun shot, caught attention brilliantly
- But link didn't sell it
B. Josh - World Cup Review
- Great PTC
- Could've done with a little stat (e.g. - "English fans will drink 'x' million gallons in pubs during the World Cup")
4. Chanin - Art Gallery (And Finally)
- Another 'what's on' link, lack of angle. But was changed to a terrific link that made the viewer think
- VT started out of focus, really good camera work and drew audience in
- Framing: could've used visual backdrop even more, in order to avoid fire exit sign etc
