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.
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