A lot has changed in the last two weeks WINOL wise for me. I have got a lot more involved in my role and undertaken in a lot more work. The first change was to change 'Lucky Dates' to 'Date with Fate', we did this for many reasons, lucky dates has more than one meaning, and date with fate is more BBC, so we thought this would be a more appropriate competition name. We also made the competition real in this week in the sense that the competition could actually be won. Chris Horrie kindly bought three bop (student night out) tickets as a prize for 'Date with Fate'. The competition was a great success and we decided to make it into a video for next week to include an interview with this week's winner. The next change was instead of just having reader response social networking websites called 'Winchester Speaks', the features team and I thought it would be better to have a general 'Winchester News Online' twitter account and facebook group. I feel this works a lot better as 'Winchester Speaks' didn't really indicate it was at all related with WINOL and using these social networking platforms we will be able to publicise WINOL content as well as get reader responses. Needless to say I used the facebook group and twitter account to promote the first live bulletin as much as I could so that we would get a lot of viewers watching it.
So, here is the first live WINOL bulletin, week 1,(or week 3 if you count the two dummy editions) - 18/11/2009
We were lucky enough to have Kay Oliver of GMTV, Sky and ITV as a guest editor for the WINOL live launch and her knowledge and expertise brought a lot to the WINOL news team and I think we all took a lot away from meeting with her. Here are her comments about WINOL and journalism at the University of Winchester:
Week 4 was a very big week for me. I had the massive job of pressing the record button on the tape deck to record the live bulletin! But in all seriousness, it was quite a big week for me as the features team and I decided to run 'Date with Fate' as a video competition, revealing the winning date and featuring an interview with last week's winner. It was my first TV (internet?) appearance so cut me some slack. I think the thing I found most hard was to smile while talking and animate my voice more so I wasn't talking in monotone. We decided to make it a bit silly because we want it to be funny, and we included some cheesy gameshow music, anyway here I am:
Also in week 4 I created a twitterfeed for the WINOL website so every story that was published to the WINOL website is then published to the WINOL twitter page and I set up different feeds for news, sport and features so each story is categorised aswell. I think this is a good way to get the content on the WINOL website read because a lot of focus is put on to the bulletin and not so much on to the stories on the website.
So, here is week 2 WINOL bulletin (or week 4 if you count the two dummy editions) - 25/11/2009, this is where I had the very important and complicated job of pressing record on the tape deck to record the bulletin otherwise there would be no bulletin.
I think this bulletin was our best yet and we are improving more and more week after week. We also had Andy Steggall of ITV and Sky, as the guest editor for this week and I think that the guest editors are fantastic for feedback from people who work on bulletins like WINOL in the real world. The expertise and responses that they give the WINOL team are invaluable and it's always a great experience and great feeling when they praise the work that you are doing.
Sunday, 29 November 2009
Thursday, 26 November 2009
Bring Me The Horizon review published @ Winchester News Online
Bring Me The Horizon entertained a sell out crowd at the Portsmouth Pyramid Centre on Thursday the 19 November.
Support came from two great American bands: August Burns Red and A Day To Remember. August Burns Red greeted an excitable crowd with a tight set of metalcore songs. A Day To Remember’s fans were out in force and the band did not disappoint. Despite a short set, ADTR pretty much stole the show and a lot of people left the show after ADTR’s set.
Bring Me The Horizon took to the stage with an illuminated backdrop displaying the massive letters ‘BMTH’. They kicked off their set with the popular single Chelsea Smile, which really got the crowd going. Despite the transition from deathcore to metalcore from the first album to the second album, the set still flowed incredibly well with a range of material from both albums.
BMTH lead singer, Oli Sykes, demanded extremely big mosh pits for songs such as Pray For Plagues, Medusa and Diamonds Aren’t Forever. The band have recently released 'Suicide Season: Cut Up’ which features remixes of songs from their latest studio album. They cleverly use clips from this as intros and outros to certain songs.
Bring Me The Horizon sent their fans home happy by ending the show with a party on stage for their last song Football Season Is Over with the anthemic chanting of “Party ‘til you pass out / Drink ‘til you’re dead / Dance all night ‘til you can’t feel you legs”.
Support came from two great American bands: August Burns Red and A Day To Remember. August Burns Red greeted an excitable crowd with a tight set of metalcore songs. A Day To Remember’s fans were out in force and the band did not disappoint. Despite a short set, ADTR pretty much stole the show and a lot of people left the show after ADTR’s set.
Bring Me The Horizon took to the stage with an illuminated backdrop displaying the massive letters ‘BMTH’. They kicked off their set with the popular single Chelsea Smile, which really got the crowd going. Despite the transition from deathcore to metalcore from the first album to the second album, the set still flowed incredibly well with a range of material from both albums.
BMTH lead singer, Oli Sykes, demanded extremely big mosh pits for songs such as Pray For Plagues, Medusa and Diamonds Aren’t Forever. The band have recently released 'Suicide Season: Cut Up’ which features remixes of songs from their latest studio album. They cleverly use clips from this as intros and outros to certain songs.
Bring Me The Horizon sent their fans home happy by ending the show with a party on stage for their last song Football Season Is Over with the anthemic chanting of “Party ‘til you pass out / Drink ‘til you’re dead / Dance all night ‘til you can’t feel you legs”.
http://winchesterjournalism.co.uk/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=345:bring-me-the-horizon-at-portsmouth-pyramids-191109&catid=43:previewsreviews&Itemid=68 - Link to the review on the WINOL website also featuring pictures courtesy of Benji Walker at Live and Loud Photography.
Wednesday, 18 November 2009
WINOL LIVE AT 5
The first ever WINOL news bulletin is LIVE at 5 today! Tune in for all the latest news and sport from the Winchester area:
www.winol.co.uk
www.winol.co.uk
Friday, 13 November 2009
Winchester News Online Diary (Weeks 1 & 2)
Winchester News Online (or WINOL) is an online newspaper and weekly bulletin produced by my university which I am a part of. My job title is "Commissioning Editor for Reader Response/UGC Editor" which basically means I am in charge of getting feedback from the viewers of the bulletin and visitors of the website.
I started this role by starting up a Facebook group and Twitter account, both titled 'Winchester Speaks' as two easy ways for the people of Winchester to contact Winchester News Online. To publicise the site I plan to run some competitions over the nest few months.
The first competition is called 'Lucky Dates'. For this competition I developed lucky dates 'tickets' which said: "It could be your lucky day with lucky dates. All you have to do is check here: www.wincesterjournalism.co.uk. Your lucky date is..." and then put a certain year on each ticket. The corresponding piece on the website (which hasn't been uploaded yet, otherwise I would just post a link to it) says: "Is it your lucky day? Check if your lucky date is a winner here! This week’s lucky date is based on the now cult series of films: Star Wars. But when was the first ever Star Wars film originally released?" I then included a picture of the Star Wars logo, which is free from copyright because the 'image, or text depicted in it, only consists of simple geometric shapes and text. They do not meet the threshold of originality needed for copyright protection, and are therefore public domain'. I then reveal the answer: "The first film: ‘Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope’ originally just titled ‘Star Wars’ was first released in 1977. If your ticket has the year 1977 on it then you are a winner! Email winchesterspeaks@hotmail.com for details of your prize." However this competition cannot be won as I never printed a ticket with the winning date on it, cunning, eh?
The second competition that I am running is a basic 'how many sweets in the jar' competition (pictured right). However, this competition can actually be won and the prize is the jar with the sweets in which I paid for out of my own pocket, all for for the promotion of Winchester News Online! I also sat and counted the sweets out which took an awful long time! The corresponding piece for the competition of the website reads: "How many sweets in the jar? Guess correctly or guess the closest to the actual amount and this large jar of sweets could be yours just in time for Christmas. Email your guesses to winolonline@googlemail.com. Competition closes Friday 18th December 2009, winner will be announced later that day and informed by email. If there is more than once correct guess, the winner will be picked out of a hat." I then provided a little background as to why I am running these competitions: "The competitions that we run here on Winchester News Online are our way of promoting our website in the hope of creating a bigger awareness of it and making it the most popular source of news for Winchester and the surrounding community." When this competition is posted on the website I will post a link to it on here so you can all be in with a chance of winning the jar of sweets!
As for the weekly bulletin's that Winchester News Online puts out, I don't really have much to do with them because I am part of the features department. However I help out where I can and pay a lot of attention to the process of making the bulletin as I know I will have a more news based job next term. I would have liked more of a pro-active role because I tend to feel a bit redundant when it comes to bulletin day. However it is amazing just watching all the elements of the bulletin come together.
We did our first dummy bulletin on Wednesday 4th October and it was a complete shambles to be honest. Two of the packages that were in the running order were not finished in time and therefore could not go in the bulletin so the bulletin was significantly under time. Everything was just a bit too last minute, I don't think anyone knew what to expect or how much work the bulletin would entail. We also did not include headlines in this bulletin. Unfortunately (or maybe fortunately) this bulletin was not recorded, however I think we still all learnt a lot from the many flaws in the bulletin and it did show a lot of potential. The presenting was very good despite the presenters having no practice run-throughs and of the packages that did make it into the bulletin, some of the camera work was very good.
As for this past week's bulletin it was a lot better, the entire team was a lot more prepared and set earlier deadlines for all packages so extra time was available for technical difficulties etc. The only problems we had this week were a few timing issues where certain packages were not the length they said they would be or were labeled wrong, this meant that we have two black holes in the bulletin. We were also lucky enough to have Ian Anderson, the former deputy head of BBC News and editor of the BBC 10'O Clock news, as a guest editor for our bulletin. This a great help for us, with an industry professional giving us feedback on out second ever news bulletin.
Here is this past week's bulletin (11/11/2009). As noted by Chris Horrie this bulletin uses the old title sequence (we are hoping to get even newer titles for this coming week's bulletin) and the first few minutes of the bulletin were lost because the tape was corrupted. Nonetheless here it is:
Next week we go live at five for real. Dummy bulletins are over. There is no room for error now. I will post a link to the bulletin on Wednesday so you can all watch it, we're trying to get as big of an audience as possible for the first bulletin so the pressure is really on!
I started this role by starting up a Facebook group and Twitter account, both titled 'Winchester Speaks' as two easy ways for the people of Winchester to contact Winchester News Online. To publicise the site I plan to run some competitions over the nest few months.
The first competition is called 'Lucky Dates'. For this competition I developed lucky dates 'tickets' which said: "It could be your lucky day with lucky dates. All you have to do is check here: www.wincesterjournalism.co.uk. Your lucky date is..." and then put a certain year on each ticket. The corresponding piece on the website (which hasn't been uploaded yet, otherwise I would just post a link to it) says: "Is it your lucky day? Check if your lucky date is a winner here! This week’s lucky date is based on the now cult series of films: Star Wars. But when was the first ever Star Wars film originally released?" I then included a picture of the Star Wars logo, which is free from copyright because the 'image, or text depicted in it, only consists of simple geometric shapes and text. They do not meet the threshold of originality needed for copyright protection, and are therefore public domain'. I then reveal the answer: "The first film: ‘Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope’ originally just titled ‘Star Wars’ was first released in 1977. If your ticket has the year 1977 on it then you are a winner! Email winchesterspeaks@hotmail.com for details of your prize." However this competition cannot be won as I never printed a ticket with the winning date on it, cunning, eh?
The second competition that I am running is a basic 'how many sweets in the jar' competition (pictured right). However, this competition can actually be won and the prize is the jar with the sweets in which I paid for out of my own pocket, all for for the promotion of Winchester News Online! I also sat and counted the sweets out which took an awful long time! The corresponding piece for the competition of the website reads: "How many sweets in the jar? Guess correctly or guess the closest to the actual amount and this large jar of sweets could be yours just in time for Christmas. Email your guesses to winolonline@googlemail.com. Competition closes Friday 18th December 2009, winner will be announced later that day and informed by email. If there is more than once correct guess, the winner will be picked out of a hat." I then provided a little background as to why I am running these competitions: "The competitions that we run here on Winchester News Online are our way of promoting our website in the hope of creating a bigger awareness of it and making it the most popular source of news for Winchester and the surrounding community." When this competition is posted on the website I will post a link to it on here so you can all be in with a chance of winning the jar of sweets!As for the weekly bulletin's that Winchester News Online puts out, I don't really have much to do with them because I am part of the features department. However I help out where I can and pay a lot of attention to the process of making the bulletin as I know I will have a more news based job next term. I would have liked more of a pro-active role because I tend to feel a bit redundant when it comes to bulletin day. However it is amazing just watching all the elements of the bulletin come together.
We did our first dummy bulletin on Wednesday 4th October and it was a complete shambles to be honest. Two of the packages that were in the running order were not finished in time and therefore could not go in the bulletin so the bulletin was significantly under time. Everything was just a bit too last minute, I don't think anyone knew what to expect or how much work the bulletin would entail. We also did not include headlines in this bulletin. Unfortunately (or maybe fortunately) this bulletin was not recorded, however I think we still all learnt a lot from the many flaws in the bulletin and it did show a lot of potential. The presenting was very good despite the presenters having no practice run-throughs and of the packages that did make it into the bulletin, some of the camera work was very good.
As for this past week's bulletin it was a lot better, the entire team was a lot more prepared and set earlier deadlines for all packages so extra time was available for technical difficulties etc. The only problems we had this week were a few timing issues where certain packages were not the length they said they would be or were labeled wrong, this meant that we have two black holes in the bulletin. We were also lucky enough to have Ian Anderson, the former deputy head of BBC News and editor of the BBC 10'O Clock news, as a guest editor for our bulletin. This a great help for us, with an industry professional giving us feedback on out second ever news bulletin.
Here is this past week's bulletin (11/11/2009). As noted by Chris Horrie this bulletin uses the old title sequence (we are hoping to get even newer titles for this coming week's bulletin) and the first few minutes of the bulletin were lost because the tape was corrupted. Nonetheless here it is:
Next week we go live at five for real. Dummy bulletins are over. There is no room for error now. I will post a link to the bulletin on Wednesday so you can all watch it, we're trying to get as big of an audience as possible for the first bulletin so the pressure is really on!
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