Converged Journalism - Production Analysis Blog

The merits and pitfalls of convergence in practice?

         

One major pitfall of converged journalism is how dependant you sometimes become on other teams which can be stressful with different teams working to different deadlines. You could either feel one team was demanding too much, too soon, or another not providing what you hoped they would. Overall however most of these pitfalls were over come in the practice weeks and could be tackled with the help of a lot of communication and good convergence coordinators who, if working effectively, proved invaluable. Merits included the sheer amount of ground and stories you could cover by utilizing such a big team. It also really enabled the multi-media aspect to be effective as with a lot of the buzz posts for example, you were able to liaise with the other teams and often incorporate and audio or video add-on. This made the coverage seem more complete and professional.

The only draw-back in this respect was that a lot of the material gathered was geared specifically towards the team who had acquired it. Whether it be in terms of angle, duration etc. This often acted as a bit of a barrier in using everything available. It also raised unanswered questions such as who should edit together the online version of an audio clip. One would assume it would be someone from the online team but in practice there often wasn’t room for a member of the online team to go to the radio room to do this. Practical complications like this did sometimes get in the way.

On the whole though the merits did out-weigh any difficulties and we not only produced a high standard of news but were able to gain an insight into how a real organization might operate.

Which roles were most successful for you?

I felt I was able to fulfill the role as reporter successfully. I enjoy as working as part of a team, take direction well and getting out into the ‘real world’ to hunt for stories on the day. I enjoyed the process of finding, writing, and publishing a story, whether it be on line or broadcast, all on the same day and feel I was able to do so successfully. This built my confidence in what I previously considered a daunting process. It gave me good practice in writing to a deadline and of a high standard.  

I was also pleasantly surprised at my success as a presenter which was a role I had never experienced but ended up enjoying. I was able to put my voice training into practice and read from the auto cue successfully, interacting with a co-host in the afternoon bulletins. Our last bulletin of the unit proved a challenge when the auto cue failed and we had to resort to our written scripts but felt we were able to do so calmly and professionally, limiting impact to the final piece.

Your personal strengths and weaknesses?

I think my personal weakness’ actually came through as things began to go wrong! Learning that it doesn’t always go to plan is a valuable lesson I have learnt on this course and this unit has shown the importance of how you deal with these problems. The realization that a deadline is still looming even if you do find yourself in the town centre with no willing interviewees and a camera that doesn’t work, is a difficult one. Finding myself in this situation however I was able to re-focus the angle of the story and put together a package of audio and stills from the camera and flash mic I happened to have in my bag.

I also felt my strength in looking for news stories developed during the unit. I was proud of the churchyard-needles story which I was able to develop by speaking to a councilor and the Salvation Army. It was something I came across purely from speaking to some grounds-men at the church and will definitely encourage me to be more inquisitive in the future.

What you learned from your experiences?

Be prepared! Be prepared for your equipment to fail, don’t rely on a camera to work when your editor who is trying to do everything at once hands it to you – check it yourself. Always have a camera with you just in case. Be prepared for the story you have been working on all morning is dropped because a more interesting story breaks ten minutes before deadline. Be prepared for the autocue to freeze half-way through your assessed bulletin. I learnt as long as your prepared for all of this (and more) then hopefully you will still be able to salvage something at the end of it.

I also learnt how effective such a big team can be in terms of news gathering and the importance of assessing what each team had and adapting it to make it relevant to your own needs as a team.

What you might have done differently?

Some days, especially on the radio side where deadlines seem to come around quickly, I wasn’t able to get as much copy broadcast as I would have liked. Whilst this was not through lack of effort, a change in my tactics could have been more effective in making sure I chose stories I knew I would be able to obtain audio for etc. Perhaps I wasted too much time on the phone trying to get quotes which never materialized, however I realize sometimes this is the nature of the industry.

I would have also liked to have been more adventurous with the roles I took on and perhaps tried out a sub-editors role to give myself a bit more of a challenge.

I have also realised that in hindsight a lot of my online features and news stories would have benefitted from some original photographs which, while not always possible, is something I will bare in mind in the future.

How you hope to improve your work in future

I hope to make my work more original by becoming a more inquisitive and confident journalist. I felt that the best stories I worked on came from seemingly nothing but an inquisitive mind and asking lots of questions others wouldn’t think to ask. I also hope to improve on the sources I use in stories I write. The converged unit gave me a real insight, often through trial and error, of who were the best people to speak to on different issues.

I learnt that by allowing people to comment on your work or directing them to a poll, like a did on my Let’s hear it for the Girls feature, it gave the story another dimension and is something I will consider for further posts.

I also think that knowledge of your local competitors can really help you understand your audience and it’s needs so if given a similar task in the future I would immerse myself in local news more to give me a greater understanding of who we were trying to emulate and compete with and a lot more background knowledge of issues in the area. As I only live here half of the year I think this would be really beneficial for my understanding of local news.

Broadcast Journalism - Production Analysis Blog

Television Unit

3rd December 2009

Documentary

It was a common feeling among our group that for a documentary to be most engaging for audiences, it should centre around an interesting individual. We watched lots of Channel 4’s Three Minute Wonders to research potential ideas and angles.
We focused on Emma Hankins, a football coach who had recently applied for an American scholarship. We shot her interview in a park to show her in a realistic setting and used it as an opportunity to experiment with various angles and effects in a bid to bring some individuality to our documentary. Whilst I was satisfied her answers gave a real insight into her passion for the sport, there were issues with audio as a result of recording it in an outside space which on reflection would have been better recorded separately to improve the quality. We collected as much footage as possible and used fast jump cuts throughout to keep it as visually interesting as possible. I think if would could have collected even more however, it would have improved our piece further.

We were unable to use an interview we recorded with her coach as the audio did not record properly due with problems with the camera. This would have certainly added depth to the piece and it would have been good to have a second voice in the piece.

10th December 2009

Youth Programme.

We all felt that one of the reasons that young people tend not to watch the news is due to how they are represented in a fairly narrow stereotype. By presenting young people who were inspirational and were not the binge drinking norms we hoped to respond to a specific audience need and engage with them. We also responded to the high volume of students who would make up the audience demographic and with a money saving piece. This was kept light-hearted and entertaining by focusing on the topical Christmas angle.

Our selection of news stories were all identifiable with a younger audience and gave them news which would affect them such as the new Facebook privacy settings. Our presenter set up and conversational style was influenced by programs with a similar audience like Live at Studio Five.

We were keen to use familiar modern media to engage with a young audience so used Twitter as a source to present headlines. We made our own twitter account for our ‘News Now’ programme and used the Twitter page as our back-drop having selected various news tweets to ‘follow’. An improvement in this aspect could have been to directly reference the screen and take a specific story from the Twitter news feed to discuss to make the process more interactive. We also featured a YouTube clip to end the programme in response to the ever popular internet virals.

17th December 2009

Magazine Programme – Individual package

My TV package was about festive events taking place in Bournemouth. I decided on the theme as it would be due for broadcast ahead of the last weekend before Christmas, a time when families would be together and possibly looking for things to do as a family. It also fitted the audience profile for over 30s living locally who could have children. 
I was happy to secure an interview with an events coordinator at the Bournemouth International Centre but again, technical difficulties with the camera made a lot of the visual footage unusable. I decided at this point the best thing to do was re shoot the entire package the next day using a different camera and use the audio from the interview alongside. I wasn’t completely satisfied with the outcome but felt I made the most of what I had and feel I have learnt lessons from it for the future. 

In the production of the Magazine news programme which linked all of our packages together, we needed to establish the most appropriate running order for our audience. We screened the harder news towards the beginning of the show whilst being careful not to place too much ‘serious’ news together to keep in style with a ‘magazine’ news programme. As the most light hearted package mine was placed at the end of the bulletin which was effective on ending the programme on a light hearted and currently festive note. Our scripts differed from the Youth Show in language and presenting style to satisfy an older audience profile.

Reflecting on the Broadcast unit as a whole it was one of the hardest units of the term in terms of time spent researching and perfecting piece of material, but also the most rewarding. I felt my technical knowledge was my main weakness and was responsible for hindering a few of my packages but I have also been able to learn a lot so will feel more confident in the future.

Broadcast Journalism - Production Analysis Blog

 

Radio Unit

13th October 2009

 Practice - South Coast Radio News

The most important objective was establishing an understanding of our target audience which at a 45+ age range, we were not necessarily able to identify with. We ensured out story selection passed a number of requirements in being relatable to the audience and feedback helped us to establish their best running order for the second bulletin of the day.


20th October 2009 

Practice - Talbot FM

As on our first news day as we had prioritized audience understanding and story selection, we had chosen positions in the news team we felt comfortable in. For our final practice run I suggested we all experiment by choosing a role we were less familiar with. In doing so we were able to test our skills in other areas and ensure we had a good understanding of the whole process.  This lead to some positive results and in trying the production role I would feel more confident doing so in the future.

 

In a bid to make the assessed shows more individual to our group, we prepared our own sting beds for each station.

 

Assessed – South Coast Radio News – 16^th October 2009

We were able to use the previous weeks experience and feedback to choose roles in the team we felt worked best. I was pleased with our selection of stories and self generated material to accompany. We were able to pre record an interview to run with a sea monster story which as a final news piece gave far more character to the bulletin than straight forward copy.

In a bid to introduce some further self generated material for the afternoon bulletin I went to observe Bournemouth magistrates court to fulfill the court story requirement. Unfortunately on this occasion none of the cases I saw were usable for the afternoon show and as an important development in the Baby P case emerged that day, this was used instead. As well as giving me further experience in court reporting, it presented us with the dilemma of using a self generated local story, or an important national development. On this occasion we decided the latter would be of more interest to our listener.

 

Assessed – Talbot FM – 3^rd November 2009

We decided to have a reporter in town in the morning who would be able to collect voxpops on stories to be used in the afternoon show. Whilst this was a useful and worthwhile strategy, it did leave us one reporter short for the morning where we had to have the show ready for broadcast at 1200. On reflection this possibly left us a little rushed to produce a quality bulletin and meant some of the copy was a little flat as we were waiting for further material to arrive.

When we were able to use this in the afternoon it improved the bulletin a lot. We also worked on feedback to make each story relatable to our young, predominantly female audience and focused on presenting the most effective running order for a more successful bulletin with snappy presentation.

 

Radio Package – Dying for a tan? The effects of sun-bed use

I chose my subject matter after reading an article about a woman losing her sight following years of sun-bed use. I spoke to friends about the story to get an idea of how much interest it had in the type of audience I would be targeting for the Radio one style programme.

I was satisfied with the interviews I was able to secure for the package as it gave real depth to the report although due to audio quality and time restraints meant I was eventually only able to use the sun-bed user and Dermatologists interview. I was keen to present a balanced report and interviewed a Professor in the cancer field who had produced reports defending sun-bed use. I thought this was an interesting angle to present. In the interest of a balanced and responsible narrative structure, I finished the package advising against their use.

From a production aspect, I kept audio clips short and snappy and used a music bed throughput to present the piece in a modern and interesting way to appeal to a younger audience. I also recorded the sound of a coin operated sun-bed which added a sense of visualisation whilst neatly separating my piece into two halves where I could present the different arguments. I wanted the reality of sunbed use to be at the forefront of the listeners mind throughout so used Jordan’s real experience at the beginning of the package so that young girls could relate to the subject.

To illustrate the younger audience profile I was targeting in this piece I made sure language was kept modern and easy to understand when speaking to the experts. I listened to similar Radio One Newsbeat pieces and tried to emulate the style in my tone of voice and length of clips I used.