30th Nov - All day Strikes Coverage

Next Wednesday 30th November, WINOL is broadcasting live coverage on the strikes which are to be carried out due to changes to public sector pension schemes. Unite, Unison, NUT - National Union of Teachers are a few of those who will be striking.

In preparation for this day, we have cancelled WINOL this week, giving the reporters time to prepare their packages etc.

On the Day:
- 4 presenters - Hannah, Jake, Cara and Aimee
- Live OBs - London, Southampton, Winchester and Basingstoke

- In studio guests
- Team of production - in studio, producing the all day coverage

Within our latest meeting it was advised that we have a standard format for the show and to produce it in 15 minutes slots. By doing this we will all begin to understand the format and in times of stress this will be one less aspect to worry about. Every 15 minutes we will be showing adverts due to the equipments we use to broadcasting live.

Throughout the programme will we have presenters each alternating every hour or so, giving constant updates about the day; packages pre-recorded and edited to play throughout; live OBs from the 4 areas, using skype; and in-studio guests. We are aiming to be on air from 12-6pm (later if anything continues).

I will be in the studio all day on the Wednesday, helping to produce the show. As discussed n preparation for the show, Claire and I will be creating a new opening sequence, which will be played on the hour every hour; a shorter version of the opening sequence to be played after the adverts; and a 60 second countdown which can be used in the events of technical issues so the audience know the programme will be broadcast again in 60 seconds.

Aspects of this may still change.

Features - Comment Column

Diary of a Winchester Lady is our very strong aspect of our written content on WINOL. Poppy Murray is the columnist for this, and has provided all the content for this comment column. Once the column was up and running and articles were being produced on a regular basis, I thought it would be a lot better to have all these columns on one page of the site. This is not only better layout for the website, but also our audience will see all the articles written for this column. Through this, Poppy will begin to build her own audience who know to come to the site for her content. This will also be enforced now that we have a cartoon image of her specifically for the site. I was able to get this through a contact from Winchester Fashion Week. This was produced free of charge, on the basis that we accredit them.

Poppy’s articles are very strong and all have a clear angle. Each week she emails me her draft copies of articles and I give her feedback on ways to improve each piece. Poppy has fully understood the key aspects of a column piece and has been demonstrating that through her written pieces.

This week Poppy has written an article entitled: ‘Would you Rather’. This piece explores the values and viewpoints of young people and what they would rather do given two choices. She ends with bulletin points of advice from her own point of view, as a young person, which are amusing and will appeal to our audience. The only issue I had with the piece was a spelling error of Baz Luhrmann, singer of ‘Wear Sunscreen’. If this hadn’t of been noticed this would have been a fatal error, and just goes to prove the importance of editing, and checking your facts.

Coming up Poppy is to continue with her comment column as well as producing two fashion articles. One will take on the research of transgender modelling, and the other the explore current trends within the UK and looking into the views of International students on these trends. This is all in preparation for Maria Milano coming in, and will also give Poppy an area to cover, which she hasn’t looked into yet.

This weekend, also, Poppy attended the Ideal Home Show Christmas Exhibition, of which she has taken the angle of hypothetically having £1000 to spend to make-over her student room.

Poppy has produced a lot of content for the site so far, and it is all of good quality. The only thing I would like is for Poppy to produce 2/3 articles a week, increasing content with her article and general articles for features also.

Features

Above is a plan for the next 4 weeks so you all know exactly what is coming up.
We only have a couple of weeks left for features this semester. Features are to continue running alongside 30th Nov.

Coming up we will have:

- Games Review - Ewan
- Restaurant Review - Zoe and Becky
- Behind the Scenes of WINOL - Cara & Jake
- Men's fashion - Cara
- Fashion (TBC) - Becky
- Fashion (TBC) - Zoe
- Restaurant Review & Christmas Fair - Angle TBC - Becky and Zoe
- Diary of a Winchester Lady, aiming to produce at least 2 each week - Poppy
- Fashion written piece - Poppy

What's On is not being produced this week, having discussed with Cara the lack of events this week, she will focus on the Behind the Scenes of WINOL and her men's fashion package.

This week I made the decision to postpone WINOL Life to this week due to lack of packages produced. I was not willing to produce a show with features already shown, so this Tuesday we are due to film WINOL Life with the features Editor from the Daily Echo.

Tuesday 29th Nov, we are due to have Maria Milano - Editor of InStyle website - coming in and featuring on the show. This show is going to be a fashion special, to which Becky, Zoe and Cara are all producing video fashion features, and Poppy is doing a written article for the site also.

Tuesday 6th December will be the last deadline for features this semester, so you all need to work towards this date for your last packages.

On Monday we will discuss everything for the next few weeks, and discuss all angles for all features due to be produced.

Freedom of Information Act 2000 - Media Law

The Freedom on Information Act 2000 allows citizens to request public authorities to disclose information, which would not otherwise be published. This Act is very useful to journalists, as it gives them the power to uncover information about the way in which we are governed and communicate this information to the public. In some cases, that public authority won’t hold the information being requested, or the request exceeds the maximum cost limits for free information.

‘Information’ is defined under the Act as ‘information recorded in any form’. Once information has been requested, the public authority has 20 days to respond to the request either giving the information requested or stating why they are unable to obtain it.

The information should be disclosed free of charge, unless obtaining the information costs most than £600 – national government departments – or £450 – local councils and others.

A current example which we broadcast on WINOL was Julie's FOI story uncovering the truth about the number of local police officers to have had convictions themselves.

Under the Act, a public authority is known as:

- National government departments and ministries,
- House of Commons and House of Lords,

- The Armed forces

- The National Health Service

- Universities, schools and colleges.

The UK’s security and intelligence agencies – MI5, MI6 and GCHQ are exempt from the Act, meaning they are not required to respond to FOI requests. The Courts and Tribunals are also exempt.

These are a few examples, which, under the Act are not considered public authorities:

- Housing Associations

- Charities

- Private Prisons

- Members of Parliament.

There are a number of factors all to do with the public interest, and which all should encourage public authorities to disclose information:

• Furthering the understanding and participation in the public debate of issues of the day.
  
  – Promoting accountability and transparency in the spending of public money.
  
  – Promoting accountability and transparency by the public authorities for decisions taken by them.
  
  – Allowing individuals and companies to understand decisions made by public authorities affecting their lives.
  
  – Bring to light information affecting public health and safety.

In some situations, the public authority may withhold the information requested on the grounds of public interest. This is known as Qualified Exemptions. If withholding information has a greater public interest than releasing it to the public then the public authority can withhold the information.

Sources in relation to journalists are very important. Journalists have a moral obligation to protect confidential sources and information. This was stated in the Press Compaints Commission - Code of Practice.

Features

After six weeks of this semester, I am very pleased with the progress features has made. We have at least six regular features giving us constant new and updates features, which is exactly how a publication should be run. Having a regular Tuesday deadline means that we always have new features on the site ready for when the weekly bulletin and news stories are on the site. This is essential for a publication, because, if someone visits the site, in which the content has not been updated then it is very unlikely that they will return.

We are now in the middle of creating a number of restaurant reviews as well as game reviews. To my knowledge we have never had continual reviews before so this is a bringing WINOL to a new level within features especially as we have two different reviews each relating to separate aspects of our audience.

Having a regular comment piece is also a very strong aspect of our features page. Although I would prefer ‘A Diary of a Winchester Lady’ to have it’s own page with all of Poppy’s articles on it. This would be much more effective as we have a cartoon image of her specifically because the comment pieces are all produced by Poppy under the same title. It makes sense from a production point of view to have all of these articles on one page, as it is more direct for our audience when they visit the website.

WINOL Life is really starting to become a valuable asset to WINOL features. Not only does it gives us another production, but it also allows to invite outside guests who are specific to features, in to be on the show. This is a very good opportunity for all the feature writers to gain feedback as well as making WINOL more popular to editors in the area. We have two more episodes of WINOL Life to produce before the end of this semester. For our final episode, we have Maria Milano, Editor of InStyle website, coming in again who will appear on the show. For this show I would like to make it a fashion special due to the background of our guest. It will be very good for the feature writers to stem out and produce a different type of feature than the ones, which are regularly being produced.

In previous years, features have taken a while to ‘take-off’ this year however, the feature writers were all aware of the deadlines they had to meet and have all been very dedicated to producing content each week. Although we do have regular features each week such as, restaurant and games reviews, What’s On and our comment column, this does not mean that features are boring. It means our audience will be aware of the content we produce and will be inclined to visit the website again to see any continual features – such as the reviews.

Media Law - Confidentiality & Privacy

People have the right to keep secrets, so long as the secret is not against the public interest. People also have the right to pass on these secrets to others with the expectation that they will not pass them on to others.

Doctors and lawyers are main examples of people who are under obligation to keep information private. This information will regard to their patients or clients, and has no right to be passed on to any third party.

If information is disclosed to a journalist from a third party, or a journalist comes into possession of confidential information, they may find themselves under a legal duty to respect the confidence of that matter.

A person who passes on information to a journalist may have received it confidentially. If the person who the confidence belongs to, discovers that information has been disclosed about them before a paper has been published or a programme has been broadcast, then that person can get a temporary injunction prohibiting publication of the confidential material.

Breach of Confidence:

A person is in breach of confidence if they pass on information which;

- Has the necessary quality of confidence – important information and

• Was provided in ‘circumstances imposing an obligation’ (Reasonable person would know to keep the matter secret); and
• There was no permission to pass on the information; and

It must be very damaging to the person of whom the information was released.

All 4 elements of this test must be proven.

Privacy:

Article 8 of the Human Right Acts states:

‘Everyone has the right to respect his/her private and family life, his home and his correspondence.’

There is an expectation that the general public is entitled to know about the private lives of celebrities/people in the public eye. Many people view sport people as role models, and therefore should behave in an appropriate way towards their fans etc. Just because someone is in the public eye does not mean, private information about them should be disclosed. Some matters are in the public interest, in which case it is viewed that the public should know about the current matter.

Just because someone has the ability to take a photograph on their camera, does not mean they have the right to disclose it in publications, allowing a large number of other people to view it as well. You need permission from that person to publish that image/information.

Consent is vital in journalism.

If there is no consent and no valuable public interest then do not publish the story.

Public Interest:

This is generally the welfare of the public. If something has been kept secret about someone in the public eye, and this matter will affect the way in which the public view or act towards this person then it can be said that the matter is in the public interest. If something will prevent the public from being misled by an action or statement of an individual or organisation, then the matter is in the public interest.

WINOL Life - 1st Nov

The second episode of WINOL Life was of a much better quality. We all had a clear idea of all the aspects of the show, and our treatment of the guest was much better also. We had time to speak to her, off cameras, and show her the packages in the newsroom without the stress of watching them for the first time and everyone watching her.

Including headline clips enhances the show considerably, giving an insight as to what is coming up.

Our guest was Elizabeth Barnett - Editor of Hampshire Life Magazine. Elizabeth was very helpful and gave very valuable advice. Even though her background is predominantly written, she made a clear effort to give feedback and criticism on our video features.
One point she suggested was that it may have been better for Zoe and Becky to have localised their Yoga Show feature to Winchester - coming from a local magazine she feels it is very important to keep your audience close in mind. I hadn't suggested this to them as I had it in mind that they were going to feature in the package, trying yoga themselves. This would have improved the feature as it is always much more interesting to watch presenters trying an event, rather than hearing about the event. If this was the case then localising it would not have been a key issue, as the focus would have been on both Becky and Zoe, and the angle of the piece would have been along the lines of, yoga for beginners e.g.
In the original plan for this week's WINOL Life, was to include the Giraffe restaurant review package. This had to be taken out due to problems noticed by Chris. I hadn't made these points key issues because I know that both Becky and Zoe are preparing to produce more restaurant reviews therefore it would not have seemed as though that restaurant was being advertised by them, as they would have been reviewing more than one restaurant. We have taken this down from the site now, and I have advised Becky and Zoe to re-edit this piece to include a voice over which includes prices and if any, criticisms - as this is what a review is meant to include. Once this has been re-edited and I have seen that it has all the key elements of a review, we will wait until we have at least two restaurant reviews and then publish both on the site at the same time.

Having over 1,000 views for WINOL Life for the first episode, we are aiming to achieve this every week.
Sportsweek bring in their own audience, however we are bringing in a different audience again, giving WINOL a much broader gender audience than we have had in previous years. In order to achieve this number on a fornightly basis, we all need to be posting the site on relevant Facebook pages, Twitter and relevant YouTube channels. This is a the only way to bring in our audience, they will not just fall in our laps.
With regard to reversioning, please all continue to reversion as I have been advising since week 1. This is a key skill for each of you, as well as giving the News Editor packages to use as backups. It is very good to have a tease of your package on the end of the bulletin. This should be an aim of everyone's.

Features are doing very well. In just 6 weeks we have a good selection of content on the site, offering a range of topics/categories, which brings in a wider audience than just one gender for example. Having a weekly deadline on a Tuesday I think is working very effectively and will continue to do so in the upcoming weeks.