WINOL Reflection - Week Three

This week hasn't been as bad as the last, even though I've had to stumble through the same number of hurdles.

The previous Friday, I went to the Crown Court for the first time since last year. It was a great experience; all of the staff were really pleasant and helpful, which I suppose makes sense when one of the primary purposes of a journalist is to help the public see that justice is being done. The clerk directed me to Court 8, where a string of sentences were going to be processed.

I sat there and wrote down as much as I could about each case, including names and ages, but critically I missed where each person was from. No matter what else I had, above all, I needed as much identification as I could find or the story could not go ahead; the name, age and occupation of a person was not enough to prevent accidental libel. After trying to contact various magistrates courts and being denied a request for more information, I had to accept the fact that we could not run the story. At least I know what I need for next time.

Most of Tuesday was spent chasing a breaking story about record youth unemployment figures which were to be released the next morning; I spent all day trying to track down and speak to relevant members of youth groups and job centres but nobody was available to speak to me, and the job centre flat out refused to be interviewed about it.

I was a bit stuck at this point. Eventually I was given a story about an Antarctic expedition to cover - I rang up the centre in Southampton and attempted to speak to them on Tuesday afternoon, but the interview had to be on the Wednesday morning.

Karen kindly drove me there bright and early for 8.30 and we managed to get the footage and be back in the newsroom for 11. I had under two hours to turn that around in to a package which I just about managed, but it wasn't that great. I again left my interviewees to tell the story and committed the sin of using them to tell the viewer facts, which should be my job - my scripting should contain the facts, the interviews should contain comment. The framing was poor and I needed the shots to be a little bit tighter on the face. I also used a cut away of one interviewee demonstrating something else while he was speaking about another thing - this made it look as if it were out of sync.

Angus and Rachel also mentioned that I should have 'rounded off' my package - there's an interview, then it abruptly stops and I gave my SOC. This sounds a bit strange and I should avoid that in the future.

I still feel much more positive about this week than I have done about the others, and that feeling seemed to be echoed throughout the whole newsroom. Hopefully next week will be just as good.