Sunday

Our Last WINOL...



This week see's our last WINOL production for us third years, it will be a slightly sad week for some of us, as we will miss the demands of WINOL and the invaluable experience that it has given us.

We on the sports desk, are hoping to go out with a bang and will be doing our best to put together some decent and technically perfect packages. The weather hopefully won't play its part unlike the past two weeks, and we can look forward to finishing the term strongly.

However, don't get me wrong, i will be looking forward to the Innocence Project! I will update this post come wednesday evening when our last WINOL has been on air.

Tuesday

Law Blog's

Check out my law blogging @ http://lawandjournalismwinchester.blogspot.com/

Monday

WINOL's Filming Of Student Protests




After WINOL's visit to London to film the Student protests over the rise in tuition fees, here are a few tips on hostile environments that all journalists should abide by:

1) Always have an exit strategy

2) If you are going live from wherever you are filming i.e interview in a potential place of violence, the rule is to have a friend called a "fixer" looking out for you and advising you at all times. (Example : in a foreign country have someone who knows the area and language)

3) If you get lost or in a violent situation, act completely non threatening, if you are asked for your camera hand it over peacefully. Camera's are covered by insurance, hand them over to either protestor or policeman or face jail/ possible death

The footage was strong and had good interviews and captured some great scenes and was WINOL's first proper piece of Journalism that we expect will get 20,000 + views due to its public importance.

To see the footage visit www.winol.co.uk or at YouTube : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SWZyt80QQkQ.

Sunday

WINOL

Another week of WINOL is nearly upon us, and this weekend i went to the Eastleigh FC vs Boreham Wood FC game at the Silverlake Stadium on Saturday with Will and got some good footage and wrote a match report. The game ended 3-0 to Eastleigh and was highly entertaining, check this weeks bulletin ( at www.winol.co.uk )for highlights and the site for extended highlights.

Sport should yet again be pretty solid this week, i think as a team we can be proud of what we are doing, as we are meeting our deadlines with no trouble and providing accurate and up to date coverage of all of our local teams.

Next week's bulletin will spring a few surprises as we are filming one or two new sports this week, which means next week's bulletin is a can't miss!!

Till then.....

Human Rights Act

Having covered the Human Rights Act in our law lectures recently, it made me want to know a little bit more about it, and i found a couple of useful descriptions/websites people may want to have a look at if they can't make head nor tail of each article of the act itself.

Just copy and paste the addresses into your web browser....

This BBC one is pretty breif and basic but worth a read : http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/946400.stm

This one is a bit better with more information : http://www.jisclegal.ac.uk/LegalAreas/HumanRights/HumanRightsOverview.aspx

And finally here is a link to download a detailed explanation of each article, i downloaded it and printed it off, but if you don't want to do that then just have a quick peep through it. www.justice.gov.uk/guidance/docs/act-studyguide.pdf

Hope it helps someone!

Monday

Law Lectures

So, three weeks have gone by now and the law lectures on a thursday have actually been very good in my opinion. When i first joined the university the Journalism course syllabus indicated a heavy presence of law and learning to write print journalism as it turns out its transformed into a BBC news type production each week in the form of WINOL, so the introduction of more Law based lectures has been met kindly by myself.

Learning about the courts, defamation libel is essential for us as journalists to learn the rules in regards to media coverage of court cases and any stories in the public interest. However, there are thin lines, that must not be crossed when reporting, and this is proven by the constant changing of the law, in my first year as a student i had McNae's 19th edition and now i've had to go and purchase the 20th edition as the law changes so frequently and it is essential to stay up to date and be aware of the laws in relation to journalism and reporting legally.

In Chapter one of the new McNae's Essential Law For Journalists, the book covers freedom of expression, human rights and public interest.

WINOL Week 2

Okay, so last week did NOT go to plan, the bulletin over ran and in general was a bit of a mess with stories falling through and no thorough or proper organisation, but i can personally say this wasn't the sports desk fault (thats not a bitchy comment just fact) as i respect the work production do as its very technical and complex.

We as a sports team seem to be performing well and getting our packages edited and in on time, which is a good sign this early on in the year. For example we had 3 football packages, a basketball feature and a University Varsity package all done and edited for last week but decided to drop one of the football packages in order to not be to "samey" and also the basketball feature as it wasn't current and we can use it this week if we are short which may be the case due to the postponement of two of the weekends games.

Week 2 should be another strong week for the sports, or so i hope, il keep this post updated when theres more to tell!

Sunday

WINOL WEEK 1 - Live

11th October - the beginning of the week and the first live edition of WINOL for the academic year 2010/11.

Being the sports planner for WINOL , i have been in touch with my reporters and Grant , my sports editor, and already arranged two interviews for tomorrow evening with the Winchester Knights Basketball team's new coach, and the 1st team captain, to do a piece on the forthcoming season, its more of a feature than news, but none the less should attract some good traffic to the site. I have arranged for Rebecca Gray to come and help me record the interviews with a view to editing them on Tuesday morning and having the package in the can by afternoon at the latest. We are this year blessed with a good number of reporters for sport, so obtaining footage/highlights of games is easier than last year when it was just Grant, Jason and myself.

I will update this post as the week progresses.

Monday

4th October - Dummy Winol Week

The term has now started and we start this week of WINOL with new team members with the addition of around 25 2nd year students. It will be good to have all these new faces to help out with the tasks that WINOL demands especially on the sports side as it means we will be able to delegate sports reporters to all new sports all over Winchester and improve the sports side of WINOL no end! I will update this post later, when i have more news on what our side of the bulletin is going to contain!

WINOL's Election Coverage Show


On the 6th May, the team at WINOL hosted their very own Election Coverage show which went live from 10pm until 6 am the following day. The show, in a word, was a success.

The team put in a tremendous amount of work making packages for the show in the weeks prior to the election date in order to give the show more substance. All the packages centred around politics and many were interviews with electorate hopefuls although a few were more economical pieces on topics such as fair trade, recycling, the carbon foot print etc.

Josh, Joey and I headed to Romsey to create a package about the constituency and managed to get a few vox pops from the public about the upcoming election as well as an interview with the Liberal Democrat electorate hopeful, Sandra Gidley.

Unfortunately for us, the day started poorly, because when we got to Romsey, we discovered the ever tremendous loan counter had failed to put the camera we had hired out on charge, and the battery was flat. So being the opportunists us students are, we headed straight to the pub..... but with a legitimate reason of using the pubs electricity socket to charge the camera in exchange for a nice cold pint of coke.

Once the camera was charged, we headed out into the town getting as many general views, and vox pops as we could but the people of Romsey weren't too keen on appearing in front of the camera so we had to work had to get our footage. We then struck lucky, when we went to the town hall and we were told that the Liberal Democrat candidate for Romsey was just arriving in town, so we rushed down to the address we were given and Sandra Gidley herself kindly gave an interview for us. We were initially worried about the sound, as it was a particularly windy day and the sound levels were through the roof as the wind attacked the gun mic!

Fortunately for us, when editing, we managed to drop the sound level completely and the interview was saved. We cut the package to a minute and a half and submitted it to the editors. Next stop, Election Night!

Having been preparing all day, by increasing our knowledge on the political parties we would be covering, in my case, The Liberals, we headed into the studio dressed smartly at approximately 8pm. We prepared up to date scripts for the top of each hour giving our audience a round up of how each political party was fairing, paying particular attention to the regions close to us in Winchester. The newsroom was hectic and people were rushing about in order to get everything to run smoothly, but overall everyone enjoyed it, and the highlight of the night was when at 5:30am the majority of the team had gathered into the studio for the final result coming in from Winchester, and we all celebrated at the end of the show when we learnt that Steve Brine the local conservative MP had been elected.

During the debrief, although we were tired, there was a sense of pride and satisfaction amongst us all, as we knew we had put on a great show. Our traffic was through the roof compared to our average bulletins and we had even managed to break some results to our audience before the BBC with thanks to your reporters out in the field at various constituencies across the UK.

Overall, the Election Coverage Show was extremely successful, the quality of the show was outstanding for student work, and given the current state of our government, one would not rule out another election sooner rather than later, and if that happens the WINOL team will be ready and waiting to put on another show!