Critical Reflection

WINOL

Winchester News Online is a student led broadcasting site that has a weekly news bulletin every Wednesday. We are split into teams of Features and News Reporters and work professionally to a planning board which we arrange weekly in our meetings. It has all been a great success this semester and has really come along in the last few weeks to build up its regular viewers by 70%. The fact that we cover local news is what makes us compete with other local news sources such as the Daily Echo. According to the Alexa Ranking we are a better news source than ‘The Hampshire Chronicle’ as we update our written stories regularly so that people come to our website for their news.This is evident by our Alexa ranking that stands in the top 10,424 (11/12/12) of the country which is the best we have ever been as we started at 1.9 million in September. We had a competitor university ‘East London Lines’ who were ahead of us but we made slight changes to the design of our website and have overtaken them and left them behind at around 24,950 (11/12/12) in the UK and 594582 globally compared to us at 484726 globally.

We have more regular viewers than any other journalism course in the country which considering we cover such a small area compared to other universities is incredible. We even received a complaint from Nottingham Trent asking for their Alex ranking to be taken down from our league table.  According to statistics our main viewers are women aged 18-24 which I feel we cater for with our news as we cover all the local important news as well as Marwell Zoo, Court and any political plans that may affect the local people. 

I think the increase of the female audience may be due to the new fashion magazine that the features team have produced as it is aimed towards women. The features team do a great job of promoting their work on Facebook, Twitter and other sites which I think the news team should improve on to encourage people to look at their work. I also think visually the feature articles look inviting by the images they use. This could be something else that the news team focus on to engage people into their story and want to read them. I was interviewed on Sound Radio the morning of my photo shoot to promote my work and make people aware of it so they can go to the website to see it. Sound Radio is successful and should be used to promote our work and get people to go onto our website.

In terms of audience diversity WINOL covers almost everyone’s interests. The Radio, Sport, Fashion, Features that are interesting for almost anyone, and the new and upcoming Arts Magazine which is more upmarket and can compete with an international audience as it covers classic arts such as books, music and theatre. We even managed to produce a daily bulletin for a week that no other journalism course has achieved before called ‘99 second news’ that was very successful.

Overall I think WINOL is very professional and will continue being so as long as the teams all work hard to keep the site updated with new interesting things that will intrigue the audience. In regards to news packages I think we need to make sure that we use the news agenda to look at what is coming up in the news and be prepared to go straight out to cover any breaking stories that emerge. We nearly didn’t cover the ‘Ford closure’ story which was ‘breaking news’ for the South and we should be prepared to go and cover these stories as and when they happen.

I also think we should include a ‘fun’ story at least once a semester such as the ‘2 year old musician’ or the ‘dog that drove a car’ similar to BBC South as I think this will interest a lot of people and gain us more views. At the moment the bulletin contains a lot of political stories and councillor interviews that the public will want to know about but may not necessarily enjoy or listen to.

As for features I think we need to make sure that we have features planned and organised in advance so we always have something to slot into our categories each week. We also need to make sure we come to meetings with things we have done rather than ‘ideas’ which we have to dismiss because they can’t be completed. I think people on the Fashion Magazine producing smaller articles should also do at least one large feature such as a confessional interview or gonzo style piece as these are interesting to everyone.

My Features

Interview with Olympic gold medallist:

My first feature that I produced was an interview with the Olympic gold medallist Dani King. The fact that she is local made it a relevant and an interesting interview where she spoke about her emotions at the Olympics as well as how winning a gold medal has changed her life.  

I prepared a set of questions in advance that would get quotations I wanted and sent them to her over mail. This piece of work is incredible as I managed to get similar quotes and images that national newspapers were using but having to pay an extortionate amount of money for. It is a shame that I could only produce a written piece for this interview as a video would have also been good. However with Dani being in Manchester and travelling to Australia I took the opportunity I had to produce a strong written feature for the site. I gained permission from a professional photographer who was at the Olympics to use one of his images of Dani competing. I also had permission from Dani to use images from her Twitter account that make the interview look professional and relevant.

My Fashion Article- This season’s hair colour

This hair article for the fashion magazine wasn’t my strongest piece of work but it was something I produced whilst working on my big photo-shoot. I chose to write about the ‘new blonde’ for the Autumn/Winter season. 

I included the brands of hair dye that women can use to do their own hair from home at a cheaper price to cater for everyone. I also mentioned celebrities that currently have this hair colour as it has been proved that celebrities and their appearance are what girls/women take an interest in. I then related to makeup such as lipstick colour that can be worn to bring out this specific hair colour effectively. My main image on the site is a montage of close-ups of girls to focus on their hair that I produced on fireworks. This looks affective and follows the style of current magazines on the market such as Elle.

 Although all of the images are my own I could have used the studio to get clearer photographs however for such a small article I didn’t think this was necessary. I found writing about a hair colour quite difficult as there wasn’t much I could really say. In the future I think I should try and find a topic that I can write more about or include other aspects such as clothing to wear with this hair colour. 

Screen tests:

I re-created Andy Warhole’s famous screen tests for the fashion magazine. I arranged a makeup artist to do the makeup differently on both models and used a plain wall to re create the background. I modernised them by having the video in colour but also put one into black and white to re-create his style. 

There was an issue with finding somewhere to set this up as I tried outside against a sheet but this didn’t appear to be very successful as the sheet was blowing and it was cold. However once I edited them, this was the one that I put into black and white and was my favourite as it looked effective against the sheet rather than a plain flat background. I learnt from this to never decide against a piece of work until it’s edited as it may actually be the strongest one you have.

My main feature: Olympic photo-shoot:

This photo-shoot was my main feature of the semester as I began planning and working on this at the beginning of October. My idea was to link the shoot to the Olympics whilst encouraging people to continue on ‘legacy’ after the event had ended. I sent numerous emails and made many phone calls to different sport brands such as Nike, Reebok, Adidas, Puma, Reebok and a few others to try and borrow some clothing.

 Eventually I proudly ended up with a big box of new Adidas clothing, accessories and shoes to be worn in my shoot. This surprised not only myself but many colleagues that I had managed to get such expensive top of the range clothing sent to me for free! I bought and borrowed the stuff that Adidas couldn’t provide such as a swimming costume and cycling bike to make my shoot more versatile for the sports that I had planned to be modelled.

I also arranged for top of the range hair stylists to come in and recreate the models hair on the day. This was an issue as it was arranged that a company called ‘Rush’ were going to do the hair for me. However a few weeks before the shoot they cancelled leaving me with trainee hairdressers. Luckily I was organised and managed to get two hair stylists from Winchester’s Toni& Guy to come in and do the models hair. Although I still managed to get Toni& Guy salon well in advance from the shoot I think next time a backup salon would be a good idea in case it happens again. 

What really impressed me was that the owner and manager of the Toni& Guy in Winchester came along with one of his stylists to do the hair himself! They did a very good job on the models as they tried to style each individuals hair glamorously but to the sport that they were modelling. 

I also had a makeup artist who works at 'Chapneys Salon' in Portsmouth to give the models some stage makeup that would make them look good on the camera. I did try to find a big makeup artist from a large company however I found this difficult and will be something I look more into for the next shoot.

The hardest part of organising this shoot was to try and find a date and time when the models were all free. Most of my models were representing the sport they were good at which I have produced profiles for to go alongside their images. The images were taken by a photographer on my course and are very strong. However the infinity background wasn’t big enough for all nine of my models which made it difficult for me to edit on fireworks. This is something that would benefit me and I will look into for any more group shoots I have in the future.

I also managed to set up the lighting and the background with minimal help which was an achievement for me as I have little experience with production. I  directed the shoot which was a hard task at first but once I had warmed up the models and made them comfortable with one another the pictures looked a lot better as people were enjoying themselves.

Overall this shoot was a great success for me and will look really good once all of the images are edited and up on the site. It has impressed all my lecturers as well as my peers and has been referred to as the ‘best student fashion photography’. I am very proud of this work and look forward to planning a shoot for April which at the moment is going to follow the theme of farmers and spring animals.

Alongside being a feature writer, I helped out with the Hampshire Crime Commissioner debate held at the University of Winchester. My role was to welcome and check in guests at the door and make sure there were enough seats for the incredible turn out that we received. I learnt a lot about local politics from the candidates giving their speeches and talking to local councillors who came to the event.