WINOL Critical Review 2013
Winchester News Online (WINOL) is a student run independent Journalism, which this term, was created by a mix of Second year and MA Journalism students. Throughout the past term, we as a team have worked together to make WINOL even more successful than previous years. Ratings and viewing figures are constantly on the rise with WINOL expanding across news, sport, fashion, travel, adventure, the arts and a variation of reviews.
WINOL as a whole has gone from strength to strength this semester, with the WINOL site - www.winol.co.uk being a prime example. Although a similar style has been kept from last term, a few new additions such as the slider have been added to the site. Adding the slider was an extremely good move in my opinion as it allows audiences to have a brief view of all the best features and news stories without having to change the page. Ultimately, the large image that is used is also highly beneficial, as audiences are automatically drawn to images rather than text. We, as a team, have been continuously keeping an eye on our Alexa Rankings, which state how high we are ranked as a website overall. The most recent Alexa Rankings from 27/03/13 state that we are placed 12,025 in the UK which is above the Hampshire Chronicle and the Basingstoke Gazette. With the help of Hannah Hayesmore, our Social Media Editor we have used the site, all of our Journalistic platforms such as news, sport and features and the use of social media to allow WINOL to become far more successful. Throughout the term we have had a variation of guest speakers come in and give our team advice; both constructive criticism and positive feedback. Suzie Boniface (commonly known as the Fleet Street Fox) gave a lot of advice relating to upping our viewing figures. We took on this advice and have attempted to take advantage of the Internet’s ‘rush hour‘ times, uploading the bulletin and other content onto the site at peak times to allow for maximum viewers.
Most of the team have carried on their previous roles in WINOL from last term, which I think has been a large reason why it has been so successful. Each team member has been confident with their role and have therefore excelled within each passing week. This year the News team have been excellent, producing triumphant bulletins each week and also putting together a variation of larger news productions which have been highly rewarding. An example of this is the Eastleigh ‘big live show‘ based on the Eastleigh by-elections. Throughout these few weeks of the Eastleigh by-election period, it showcased our skills as a team and produced some of the best packages, showcasing names such as Nick Clegg, David Cameron and Ed Miliband. Not only this but WINOL’s Chief Reporter, Spence Spencer managed to get a show-stopping interview with Boris Johnson which received over 4,100 views. The team’s efforts can be seen in the final viewing result of over 1500 individual views on WINOL’s online stream. I believe that the entire coverage of the by-election portrayed the team efforts of both the production team and reporters, all coinciding together to ensure a high standard of content was created.
Another triumph for WINOL this term was The Budget announcement. The various coverage from WINOL’s Economics Reporter, Faith Thomas was very successful in the past few months, with her pieces proving to be extremely informative and advantageous to our team with great interviews outside the Bank of England from MP’s such as Mike Thornton. Adding to this, the weeks bulletin used a studio guest who stated their own personal views on the economy. This added a polished element to the bulletin, portraying our skills and variety as trainee Journalists.
WINOL as a whole has gone from strength to strength this semester, with the WINOL site - www.winol.co.uk being a prime example. Although a similar style has been kept from last term, a few new additions such as the slider have been added to the site. Adding the slider was an extremely good move in my opinion as it allows audiences to have a brief view of all the best features and news stories without having to change the page. Ultimately, the large image that is used is also highly beneficial, as audiences are automatically drawn to images rather than text. We, as a team, have been continuously keeping an eye on our Alexa Rankings, which state how high we are ranked as a website overall. The most recent Alexa Rankings from 27/03/13 state that we are placed 12,025 in the UK which is above the Hampshire Chronicle and the Basingstoke Gazette. With the help of Hannah Hayesmore, our Social Media Editor we have used the site, all of our Journalistic platforms such as news, sport and features and the use of social media to allow WINOL to become far more successful. Throughout the term we have had a variation of guest speakers come in and give our team advice; both constructive criticism and positive feedback. Suzie Boniface (commonly known as the Fleet Street Fox) gave a lot of advice relating to upping our viewing figures. We took on this advice and have attempted to take advantage of the Internet’s ‘rush hour‘ times, uploading the bulletin and other content onto the site at peak times to allow for maximum viewers.
Most of the team have carried on their previous roles in WINOL from last term, which I think has been a large reason why it has been so successful. Each team member has been confident with their role and have therefore excelled within each passing week. This year the News team have been excellent, producing triumphant bulletins each week and also putting together a variation of larger news productions which have been highly rewarding. An example of this is the Eastleigh ‘big live show‘ based on the Eastleigh by-elections. Throughout these few weeks of the Eastleigh by-election period, it showcased our skills as a team and produced some of the best packages, showcasing names such as Nick Clegg, David Cameron and Ed Miliband. Not only this but WINOL’s Chief Reporter, Spence Spencer managed to get a show-stopping interview with Boris Johnson which received over 4,100 views. The team’s efforts can be seen in the final viewing result of over 1500 individual views on WINOL’s online stream. I believe that the entire coverage of the by-election portrayed the team efforts of both the production team and reporters, all coinciding together to ensure a high standard of content was created.
Another triumph for WINOL this term was The Budget announcement. The various coverage from WINOL’s Economics Reporter, Faith Thomas was very successful in the past few months, with her pieces proving to be extremely informative and advantageous to our team with great interviews outside the Bank of England from MP’s such as Mike Thornton. Adding to this, the weeks bulletin used a studio guest who stated their own personal views on the economy. This added a polished element to the bulletin, portraying our skills and variety as trainee Journalists.
This year WINOL covered a large spectrum of important stories and topics, producing them for all types of media platforms such as online features, radio and the news bulletin. Throughout the past few months, a few specific stories and reporters stood out to me. The first is Christina Michaels who’s role is Chief Court Reporter. Since starting the role in September, Christina has grown as a reporter, continually creating gripping packages that always portray the seriousness of the story itself but also use genuine facts and images to back it up.
Another reporter that stood out for me this term was Jack Webb’s story on the Hampshire teddy bear Derek who was blasted in to space. In contrast to Christina’s high impact, gripping crime reports, Jack’s ‘and finally‘ story which was placed at the end of the bulletin, was a brilliant and light hearted news story that people of all ages could enjoy.
Within WINOL, no team member is of a less status than another. Although particular reporters, feature writers or specific content can be praised, there is a lot of behind the scenes work done by our hard working and brilliant production team, not forgetting the web editors who re-create each section of WINOL online to make it look as professional and aesthetically pleasing as possible. This term, the Five different feature sections; New Winchester Review, Adventure and Travel, Music, Comment & Analysis and Absolute:ly all were re-designed in order to make each page engaging and professional. Jason French, our web-editor took advantage of his superior knowledge in web design, enabling him to create custom templates using Wordpress for each home page. The Adventure and travel section has a much more complicated design layout however I believe it is extremely effective. The main focal point of the homepage is the slideshow which takes up the whole of the homepage itself. Most images link straight to YouTube video’s by using plug ins. As a whole, I believe the Adventure and Travel magazine has become a great asset to WINOL this term as it entices a whole new target audience to our site.
Within WINOL, no team member is of a less status than another. Although particular reporters, feature writers or specific content can be praised, there is a lot of behind the scenes work done by our hard working and brilliant production team, not forgetting the web editors who re-create each section of WINOL online to make it look as professional and aesthetically pleasing as possible. This term, the Five different feature sections; New Winchester Review, Adventure and Travel, Music, Comment & Analysis and Absolute:ly all were re-designed in order to make each page engaging and professional. Jason French, our web-editor took advantage of his superior knowledge in web design, enabling him to create custom templates using Wordpress for each home page. The Adventure and travel section has a much more complicated design layout however I believe it is extremely effective. The main focal point of the homepage is the slideshow which takes up the whole of the homepage itself. Most images link straight to YouTube video’s by using plug ins. As a whole, I believe the Adventure and Travel magazine has become a great asset to WINOL this term as it entices a whole new target audience to our site.
For my second term on WINOL, I continued my role as Fashion Features Editor of Absolute:ly, our online magazine. The reason I decided to carry on with my previous role was because I felt that by the end of last term the site had just got up and running and I believed that with more work I could bring the site up to an even higher quality than before. The major change to the site this term was the layout. With the help of Jason, who is WINOL’s web editor, we updated the Absolute:ly site making it sleek and modern. In my opinion this made the website look far more superior than any other student fashion website out there. Absolute:ly looks far more technical and professional than ever before and in my opinion, the content simply enhances this.
Last term Absolute:ly had 7 mini sections, however this year we have decreased this down to 6, also changing a few of the names. We now have; Hair, Fashion, Gossip, Competitions, Beauty and Relationships. I believe by introducing the relationship section, it has enabled us to reach out to our target audience of Women from the ages of 16 - 30, who would be interested in the features involved. Not only this, but our competitions section has gone from strength to strength this term with Shona Race creating a variation of competitions where contestants can win a mix of beauty/fashion freebies. I believe such aspects as freebies, competitions and new sections of our magazine have made Absolute:ly even more successful than last term.
Throughout my second term of WINOL I have produced various features for Absolute:ly that ranged from style wars, make up must haves and beauty reviews. All of which I believe have shown not only my potential but proved to myself what I can produce when I put my mind to it. My favourite feature of this term was The Hampshire Style Wars which I produced with Shona Race. This fashion feature was based upon Winchester VS Southampton student style wars, where we put 3 girls from each City head to head to see who had the best style. I believe this feature was the most successful as the graphics used made the feature look visually pleasing, yet it aimed at not only Winchester students, but Southampton students too, bringing in even more traffic for the site.
Another feature I enjoyed producing this term was ‘Dr Fashions Eastleigh Emergency’. This is where my role of Dr Fashion from last term comes into play and in simple terms, I critised all of the Eastleigh Election Candidates on their style. Although I thoroughly enjoyed this feature, it is one I think I could of improved on this term. In my opinion I held back too much when critisising the candidates and think that my feature would of been far more successful and enjoyable for my audience if I didn’t restrain as much on my description.
I have come on in leaps and bounds this term, with creating a variation of successful fashion features and also putting a lot of input into other features happening throughout WINOL. Unlike last term, Absolute:ly has had a steady team who each have pulled their weight equally. Last semester, Absolute:ly struggled to get off the ground with website layout changes being an issue, as well as lack of content with only Myself and Sophie Webb creating features on a regular basis. However, this year, with a steady team of Five of us, producing multiple fashion and beauty features, it can be stated that Absolute:ly has become a triumph in student fashion Journalism.
Due to serious illness for a month of this semester, it took out valuable time that would of enabled me to create one more large feature. Fortunately, the rest of the team on Absolute:ly carried the site through, creating a variation of successful and professional features that kept the site up to date. This point portrays the idea of team work throughout WINOL. Although specific packages and features are done separately, everything is a team effort, from putting the bulletin together to uploading features and getting the site up and running.
With the evidence given in this review, as well as viewing www.winol.co.uk, it is hard to deny the professional standard and success of WINOL as a whole. Throughout this semester I have attempted to make an impact, using Absolute:ly as my way of producing great features through my love of fashion and the magazine industry. I believe not only me, but the whole team for Absolute:ly have been successful in raising the site to it’s best potential. All in all, the whole team of WINOL this semester have done an outstanding job, with advanced production, professional reporting and engaging feature’s, it is unmistakeable that WINOL is by far the best student run Journalism in the country.
Due to serious illness for a month of this semester, it took out valuable time that would of enabled me to create one more large feature. Fortunately, the rest of the team on Absolute:ly carried the site through, creating a variation of successful and professional features that kept the site up to date. This point portrays the idea of team work throughout WINOL. Although specific packages and features are done separately, everything is a team effort, from putting the bulletin together to uploading features and getting the site up and running.
With the evidence given in this review, as well as viewing www.winol.co.uk, it is hard to deny the professional standard and success of WINOL as a whole. Throughout this semester I have attempted to make an impact, using Absolute:ly as my way of producing great features through my love of fashion and the magazine industry. I believe not only me, but the whole team for Absolute:ly have been successful in raising the site to it’s best potential. All in all, the whole team of WINOL this semester have done an outstanding job, with advanced production, professional reporting and engaging feature’s, it is unmistakeable that WINOL is by far the best student run Journalism in the country.
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