News
A few of the latest news stories flying around the Internet at the moment:
- Apple’s new invention – The iPad: It’s the day that all of the Apple fans were waiting for. The revelation
of Apple’s newest gadget. The iPad has received a bunch of good and bad news. It has been highly criticised purely because there seems to be no room in the current market for it. There’s the Macbook, the iPhone and now this somewhere-in-between product. Admittedly, it does look amazing and if I had a spare £500 knocking about, I would undoubtedly be buying one. - John Terry: Yes, we’ve all been talking about him for the past week. And not for good reasons. Should John Terry remain England captain? Some have said that his private life has nothing to do with his career. But he is representing our country, so we need someone responsible, no? Anyway, Fabio Capello has no plans to get rid of him. Should he stay or should he go…?
- Peter Andre reduced to tears on live TV: Andre fought back tears as he was asked questions about his children live on Sky News afternoon show. I don’t know who I felt more sorry for – Peter Andre or Kay Burley. Journalists have to push the boundaries in order to get the necessary information, but Burley pushed it a little too far. She did try to quickly change the subject, but Andre was having none of it. Watch it here.
- Prosecution over expenses: Three MP’s are facing charges over their expenses claims. They will be prosecuted under the Theft Act. It’s about time they were taught a lesson. Find out what happens here.
Time to resurrect the good old blog!
I haven’t updated this blog for such a long time, it’s definitely about time I got it up and running again!
The ‘Advanced Web’ module has started, so my posts will be based on the latest news stories.
Enjoy!
Multimedia, the net and Journalism
The Internet is constantly changing Journalism. It is changing from traditional forms, to more modern forms. For example, a lot of people get their news from web sources as opposed to the more traditional newspaper. I like to get my news from the Internet because it is regularly updated. Also, websites such as Twitter are changing Journalism because you can follow groups like ‘Sky News’ and get the very latest news. It is thanks to the Internet that there are a range of jobs available in the online aspect. Beforehand, a Journalist would be someone who writes for newspapers or reports on TV, whereas now the role of a Journalist is more open and widespread.
Famous bloggers like Perez Hilton can now be looked at as Journalists, because he ie delievering the latest celebrity news. But, is it now too easy to become a Journalist? We have to be careful not to let just anyone become a Journalist. In some ways, they have to earn the right to call themselves a Journalist.
Multimedia Journalism does exist, but it is still in its early form. I don’t think it is ready to take-over the traditional Journalism platforms just yet. However, who is to say that in a few decades newspapers will fall to a rate where only a few people are buying them, but the majority of the population are getting their news online. How will it work? Will online news companies start to charge people for reading their news?
Personally, the forms of Journalism that work the best online are blogs and Twitter. People can get a different type of news from blogs. As well as getting the news, readers will also get the opinion of the Journalist writing that particular piece. Twitter works well because there are short updates on the latest news. It almost works as a ‘bridge’ between one online platform to another. If someone reads a few lines about some breaking news, they are going to want to read on and find out more, therefore visiting the news website to read the full story. So if you read something on Twitter from Sky News, you are then likely to log onto Sky News’ website and read the rest of the story.
Online overload
Starting this part of the module with not much experience in online journalism, I didn’t really know what to expect. I had never blogged and never used Twitter, so I was excited to find out what it was all about.
I liked how each lesson had a good structure to it and every lesson was always fast-paced and fun. The idea of having a blog with regular updates of what we would be doing in class made it easy to follow and keep up with what was happening. So if we missed something in class, we could just log onto the the blog and read up on it.
The highlight of the class was blogging. I loved starting my own blog and updating it regularly with my own thoughts and opinions. Beforehand I didn’t read blogs and now I am a keen follower of many blogs. I do wonder how I lived without Perez Hilton’s blog! I enjoyed blogging so much that I decided to produce a blog for another module on the course. It has helped me to develop my writing skills and shown me a possible route that I might want to follow in the future.
I particularly found Twitter and RSS Feeds useful. Twitter is a fun way of keeping updated with the news as I have previously logged onto Twitter and found news that I didn’t know before. I am a little bit addicted to Twitter now and can now add it to my list of social networking sites that I regularly follow. RSS Feeds came in handy when I was blogging. Most websites have RSS Feeds so I could easily add them to my blog, allowing readers to access one web page and see what is happening on various websites.
I really enjoyed this part of the course and am keen to learn a lot more about online journalism, hence why I have chosen to do Advanced Web Journalism next year.
Audio log
We were told that we had to create a audio piece that was newsworthy. We could do anything we wanted as long as it had a news element to it. Choosing what to base my audio piece on was the hardest part and I think we should have been given a better brief. If we were given a particular topic to stick to, it would’ve made the decision part a lot quicker and easier.
Working on my own was not much fun and I had no one to bounce my ideas off of. I think it would’ve been a good idea to work in groups because we had to go out and get an interview with someone and doing this by yourself can be quite daunting. Whilst we have to get to grips with doing things like that, I do feel like we were thrown in the deep-end, by ourselves with a relatively unstructed brief and these unusual voice-recorders.
I decided to do my podcast on child obesity and what is being done to erradicate it. I interviewed someone from MEND (a health programme for obese children) about who they are and what they were doing to help children lose weight. It was fairly easy to do the interview with the MEND co-ordinator, but I experienced some problems when I wanted to get some vox-pops with the children. The parents were not happy with me recording their children, so I settled on getting a voice recording of the group as a whole.
Another difficult part of the podcast was putting pictures into it. I feel that this didn’t work very well because it was hard to find enough pictures that were suitable for my recordings. Being able to focus solely on the audio side of the podcast, would’ve enabled me to spend more time getting a better recording.
I feel as though there wasn’t enough time to complete our podcast. Not only did we have equipment that we were unfamiliar with, but there were also programmes such as ‘Audacity’ and ‘Garageband’ that we weren’t shown how to use. If we had more time, we could have spent more lessons learning about how to cut our pieces in a professional way.
Overall, I think my topic was good as it was easy to access and it is a topic that is constantly in the news. I felt the pictures didn’t work that well, particularly because I didn’t have enough pictures, but also because I feel a podcast works better with audio alone.
Video log
Working in a group of two, Lynne and I decided to base our vodcast on Smoke Radio’s 26-hour broadcast. As the broadcast was to raise awareness for Comic Relief, each radio show done a special 1-hour show and it was our job to find out what some people were doing for their ‘special’ show. So armed with a load of camera equipment and knowing full well that we had to stay awake for the foreseeable future, off we went.
Myself and Lynne both wanted to use the video camera to record the interviews, so we took it in turn to interview three people about their shows. This had it pros and cons. Not having access to a tripod meant that in certain places our video was a bit shaky and the camera angle was slightly off. This is obviously something we would take into account next time and change. For that same reason, it was difficult to zoom into individual people, so we just set focus on one place. However, I feel that we worked well as a group to get our material and got the best possible results from the video we had.
Without a doubt, the best part of our vodcast was the portrayal of how much fun the 26-hour broadcast was. We recorded various clips of people doing funny things and put them together to show the audience that it was a lot of fun. The music we chose worked well, because it was the official Comic Relief song, so people could listen to it and immediately know what our vodcast would be about.
I think we could have improved on the opening shot of the video, where Lynne and I talk about what we done. We should’ve filmed that shot in the radio studios with the equipment behind us, so that the audience would immediately know what our vodcast was about.
I feel that myself and Lynne worked very well together and it was fun being able to work with a friend because we could bounce ideas off of one another and tell each other if we didn’t think a particular idea was very good. I also feel that the chosen topic was a good one, as it was relevant at the time of filming and it would be of an interest to students (our target audience).
Critical evaluation of Word on the Street
Friday the 13th March saw group blog Word on the Street go live…
The idea behind the blog was to bring breaking news to the attention of students and find out what they thought about various topics. Originally, we decided to have ‘What Westminster Says’ at the end of each post, whereby we went out onto ‘The Street’ to talk to students. Each blogger would then finish their posts with what Westminster thought about that particular topic, in the form of a video, audio piece, picture or quote. Doing this would enable us to interact with our target audience (students) in a friendly, informal manner.
Working with 3 of my close friends meant that setting up the blog was fairly easy, but it was not without it’s difficulties (and arguments!). We came up with the idea to update the blog on a daily basis and set out the plan that Lee (TV) and Lynne (Music) would post on Mondays, Wednesdays & Fridays, whilst Myself (Fashion) and Tom (News) would post on Tuesdays, Thursdays & Saturdays. This plan worked well but I did experience some problems with my topic because there wasn’t really any ‘breaking’ fashion news, so I focused on topic’s that would be of an interest to students. E.g. ‘From Catwalk to High Street.’
I truly think that our blog worked well on the whole, as we met the majority of our aims. The name worked particularly well because we took Harrow Campuses most well-known place (The Street) and added our idea to it, to form ‘Word on the Street.’ We also changed the header to a picture of ‘The Street’ to enable students to instantly recognise what our blog was about. As our blog was live for a short period of time, we chose not to change the layout because we wanted our viewers to be able to familarise themselves with one layout and not confuse them by repeatedly changing things around.
In terms of the style of the blog, I thought that Lynne and I done a good job of writing in an informal, chatty way, whilst Tom and Lee wrote in a slightly more formal style. This had it’s pro’s and con’s. I felt that at times some posts could be a little less formal and possibly more light-hearted, but it is understandable that some news needs to and can only be delievered in a formal way. That said, I think we had a good mix of formal and informal writing, because if the whole of the blog was informal, it could of made the blog sound like a bit of a joke.
One of our aims that we found hard to meet was ‘What Westminster Says.’ As the fashion blogger, I found it easy to get pictures and quotes from students because fashion is clearly an important aspect of any students lifestyle (As is music). However, the majority of posts were one’s where it was near impossible to get opinions from students. Nonetheless, I do think that some people could’ve tried a bit harder to gather students thoughts, but as a whole we didn’t make the most of being able to interact with students.
All of our posts were related to recent news, particularly Tom’s posts as he researched the latest news and put his own ‘spin’ onto it. Lee and Lynne’s posts were based around recent music releases and what was coming up on TV that week. However, there was not much breaking fashion news so I decided to write about things that were happening in university, like the 70′s night in Area 51, where I wrote about 70′s fashion. We worked very well as a group to research the latest events and were able to put ideas to one another, before actually posting them. Out of the group, it was Lynne who made the most of multimedia as she constantly updated her posts with videos she had found from the internet, or ones that she had actually filmed herself. But, it goes without saying that if it wasn’t for Lee, we would not have the amazing videos that were posted. He edited every video in a professional manner and always had the videos ready on time, regardless of what else he was doing. So, a big well-done to Lee!
When Music Journalist Ben Gilbert came into speak to us about his experience, we decided to film his talk and post it on our blog, keeping in line with our good use of video. We also asked Ben to listen to a few bands and tell us what he thought of them. Lynne then arranged an interview with Alex Lipinski, who was Ben’s favourite artist out of the three he listened to. It was a tad stressful, but overall a very successful day. Again, I think we worked very well as a group as two of us took the responsiblity to film Ben’s talk, whilst the other two took notes.
My role on the blog was to be head of design and layout. I was responsible for adding the header and choosing the design. Every post was run by me so that I could check the layout. However, our group worked so well together, that this was not neccessary. In ways, we filled the available roles together, working as a team to make the executive decisions.
We publicised our blog very well, setting up a Facebook group and Twitter which both brought in a lot of members. By sending out constant messages, we caught the eye of someone from Smoke Radio who now wants our blog on their website.
Tom’s post about Jade Goody was without doubt the most controversial one. We had many comments which both Tom and Myself replied to. It was fun to be able to get other people’s opinions of the different topics we blogged about and interesting to see how argumentative some got over certain posts.
Overall, I loved working in a group and it was a lot of fun to be able to go out there and find various things to blog about. As a team, I think we all feel that it would be a real shame to stop posting on the blog, so when we sort out a new schedule and revise some ideas, we will continue to post.
Rationale for group blog – Word on the Street
Sitting in the newsroom, four journo-babies created Word on the Street…
The idea behind Word on the Street is to gather the latest info on Fashion, Television, Music and News, in order to attract a student audience. We have decided to make the blog as interactive as possible, planning to allow students to comment on posts and vote on various polls. Our main goal is to involve students in every aspect of the blog creating ‘What Westminster Says’, where we gather voxpops from students, interviews from people doing interesting things around the uni and pictures that link to our posts.
We delegated roles to each ‘blogger’. They were:
Me (Carly) – Fashion/Head of Design & Layout
Lynne – Music/Head Content
Lee – Television/Head of Visuals
Tom – News/Editor
Word on the Street will run live for 2 weeks and each blogger will post three times a week. Lee & Lynne will post on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays, whilst Myself and Tom will post on Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays. We chose these days to ensure our blog is updated regularly.
As our blog was due to go live on Red Nose Day, we thought it would make sense to write about the happenings of the day. We all decided to cover it in our category. Check it out…
Being head of Design, I was in charge of choosing the layout for the blog and adding our statement picture in, The Street. It is also up to me to take a look at the posts and check that the posts were laid out to a good standard. E.g. That the pictures were in appropriate places.
You can follow us on Twitter and Facebook! Don’t forget to check out WordontheStreet for daily updates…Comment, comment, comment!
Check out the new posts
Group blog, WordOnTheStreet has loads of posts that have been published in the last week. Whether it’s TV, Music, Fashion or News…we have it!
Take a look at Lee’s (pre) review of The Apprentice (which starts next Weds), or Lynne’s belated St Paddy’s Day music review. Maybe Tom’s post about new university fee’s is your thing, or my post about 70′s fashion!
So keep on clicking and checking out the latest in TV, Music, Fashion & News!
Neglect…
So, I have been neglecting my blog for a little while but, not to fear…I am back!
Truth is, I have been very busy on my group blog ‘WordOnTheStreet.’
Check it out:
