Winchester News Online (WINOL) is a student run independent Journalism, created by a mix of Second and Third year Journalism students. As a team, we cover a variety of journalistic platforms such as news, production, sport and features. In the past term, WINOL has grown from strength to strength by changing the website style, creating a new fashion feature website and covering events such as the BJTC awards, Hampshire Police Debate and the American Elections.
This term WINOL has grown from strength to strength. The first few bulletins of the term were not very strong, however this was due to people finding their way with their new roles. In the first few weeks many packages were poorly edited and the variation of shots were also poor. Once again, the reason for this is the lack of practice and both of these issues began to improve as the weeks went by. I believe that with more of an introduction to WINOL in the First year, it may of allowed people to get to grips with each role so they were more prepared in the Second year. Consequently, as time passed, news packages became far more interesting and successful with a variation of news stories from not only Winchester, but also neighbouring cities such as Southampton, Portsmouth and Basingstoke. Overall, WINOL news has been highly successful this term. This is an accumulation of great reporters, a great production team behind the bulletin itself and also a well put together team who all collaborate together to create one brilliant bulletin each week.
In the last weeks of term I produced my final fashion feature which was a package of the Student Fashion Show which was held by Winchester University Students. This show was based on Stereotyping and Diversity and had models creating their own designs. Although editing of this package is not fully complete, I found this a difficult but rewarding experience. Preparing for this event proved slightly tough when trying to find people to help film. We had many problems on the night of the show due to lighting issues of the venue itself. Such issues has taught me a lot for future filming, as I would ensure in future that lighting would be perfect before, that we had enough cameras to film the event and enough time to edit before the end of term. Previous to this I managed to attain Two press passes to the Birmingham Clothes Show Live, which is a big fashion event held yearly. This was a great achievement for me as it took a lot of phone calling, emailing and pestering to get hold of the press passes. Unfortunately, funds were low and it would of cost a lot to get up to Birmingham. Not only this but the Student Fashion Show was held the same night, therefore I made the decision to film the Student Show as it would relate more to WINOL's target audience of students around Winchester. Despite this, I think getting hold of the press passes for The Clothes Show was a big achievement and I plan to film a similar large clothes show next year for WINOL.
I have also taken part in Sound Radio, the student run radio station which Journalism students have been doing every Tuesday. I was asked by Nadine and Kirsty who do an hour show on Tuesday morning from 10am-11am, to participate as Dr Fashion. My role was to come in to their show each week and talk about what I have been doing as Dr Fashion and Fashion Editor, also giving style and fashion tips of the week. As the weeks have gone by it has become easier to feel more comfortable to talk on the radio, yet has also given me a good variation of radio, written pieces and video packages that I have completed this term. By using my blog, it has allowed me to voice my achievements and problems that I have had in my role on WINOL this term. It has also given me another platform to showcase the work I have completed, which can be used in the future. As mentioned previously, WINOL has allowed me to portray my particular interests in fashion by producing a variation of journalistic products, giving me a good platform of work to build on in later life.
Throughout the past few months I have tried my hardest to produce a few main features, including updating the Fashion site with smaller articles every other week. I believe I have been quite successful in doing this and think that with more time and practice I can only get more confident and as a result, produce better features.
Our largest achievement this term has to be the WINOL site - www.winol.co.uk. We moved from Joomla to Wordpress earlier on in the term, allowing us to be slightly more limited, yet it gives the site a specific structure making it look extremely tidy and professional. The website is clearly laid out, having a sport section to the left, news in the middle and features to the right of the page. This allows viewers to clearly see the type of story they are looking for. Not only this but a new fashion features section named Absolute:ly has been created, which is shown in a tab at the top of the site. This in my opinion is a great triumph this term as it now allows for a broader audience, attracting females specifically. Another addition to the site is a new features section named New Winchester Review, covering the arts. Once again, this new features section, broadens our audience as they often come for the news but stay for features. We, as a team, have been keeping a close eye on our Alexa Rankings, which state how high we are ranked as a website. As time has gone on this term, our ranking has decreased greatly, with us now being placed in the top 500,000 globally and 10,424 in the UK (statistics from 10/12/12). We continuously compare our ranking with similar competitors such as other University courses, The Hampshire Chronicle and The Daily Echo. WINOL is ahead of any other University Journalism course site such as our competitors, East London Lines who are placed 24,950 in the UK. We are also ahead of the well known newspaper/website; The Hampshire Chronicle, both globally and in the UK statistics. These statistics can portray our success this term, and also how the mix of news, features and sport can all add together to create a triumph in student Journalism.
My role this term was as Fashion Features Editor. For me, it was the perfect role as it's the exact type of Journalism I want to be involved in when I finish University. To begin with, as the fashions site had only just been created, it was very hard to get it off the ground. For the first few weeks, the layout of the site kept changing, therefore it made it slightly difficult to know what dimensions pictures needed to be. However, after a few rocky weeks the site began to take shape. Absolute:ly has a main scroller which is for main images and features to be broadcasted clearly on the site. Similar to many other fashion magazines and websites, it has 7 mini sections; Hair, Clothes, Shopping, Gossip, Competitions, Caught on Camera and Make-Up/Beauty. For most of this term I have not only had the title of Fashion Features Editor, but also Dr Fashion. I create a monthly Gonzo style feature where I find students around Winchester who don't dress or look up to their full potential and make them over. One part which I think I could of improved on this term, is doing a few more Dr Fashion features, as I believe they would of been equally as successful as the first. I hope to stay on features next term and carry on my role as Dr Fashion, as well as creating many other features. As I have been in charge of Absolute:ly, I took on the role of writing for the Gossip and Fashion sections of the site. The reason for this was because this is the type of style I enjoy writing, as well as the fact that not many people on feature were willing to be a full part of the fashion team. I hope next term, that with a new group of features writers, more people will be interested in this job, as once this happens Absolute:ly, can only get better as it has been doing. Another obstacle which I have dealt with this term is getting to grips with Fireworks, a similar programme to Photoshop. I had to use Fireworks to create the images used in most of my feature articles. Similar to most things in life, the more I used it and the more practice I had the easier it was to use. By using Fireworks, it allowed me to create images which are in the style of what you see in fashion magazines such as Cosmopolitan, Elle and Heat, which is ultimately the standard we are trying to achieve.
In the last weeks of term I produced my final fashion feature which was a package of the Student Fashion Show which was held by Winchester University Students. This show was based on Stereotyping and Diversity and had models creating their own designs. Although editing of this package is not fully complete, I found this a difficult but rewarding experience. Preparing for this event proved slightly tough when trying to find people to help film. We had many problems on the night of the show due to lighting issues of the venue itself. Such issues has taught me a lot for future filming, as I would ensure in future that lighting would be perfect before, that we had enough cameras to film the event and enough time to edit before the end of term. Previous to this I managed to attain Two press passes to the Birmingham Clothes Show Live, which is a big fashion event held yearly. This was a great achievement for me as it took a lot of phone calling, emailing and pestering to get hold of the press passes. Unfortunately, funds were low and it would of cost a lot to get up to Birmingham. Not only this but the Student Fashion Show was held the same night, therefore I made the decision to film the Student Show as it would relate more to WINOL's target audience of students around Winchester. Despite this, I think getting hold of the press passes for The Clothes Show was a big achievement and I plan to film a similar large clothes show next year for WINOL.
I have also taken part in Sound Radio, the student run radio station which Journalism students have been doing every Tuesday. I was asked by Nadine and Kirsty who do an hour show on Tuesday morning from 10am-11am, to participate as Dr Fashion. My role was to come in to their show each week and talk about what I have been doing as Dr Fashion and Fashion Editor, also giving style and fashion tips of the week. As the weeks have gone by it has become easier to feel more comfortable to talk on the radio, yet has also given me a good variation of radio, written pieces and video packages that I have completed this term. By using my blog, it has allowed me to voice my achievements and problems that I have had in my role on WINOL this term. It has also given me another platform to showcase the work I have completed, which can be used in the future. As mentioned previously, WINOL has allowed me to portray my particular interests in fashion by producing a variation of journalistic products, giving me a good platform of work to build on in later life.
Throughout the past few months I have tried my hardest to produce a few main features, including updating the Fashion site with smaller articles every other week. I believe I have been quite successful in doing this and think that with more time and practice I can only get more confident and as a result, produce better features.
No comments:
Post a Comment