There's an excellent interview by Josh (year two) on the WINOL site playing on the community channel (you might have to wait for the climate change video produced by Hants county council to play through) which discusses all the changes that are taking place in journalism right now. Very useful and interesting for year one in particular re: The News Agenda; and Year Three, re: most employable skills. You can also view the interview on YouTube at this address: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S03o6QtbELI
Josh - please email the editor and ask him to have a look at the WINOL site if he has time. Y'all need this man to think that good things are happening on the Winchester University course so you can get good work attachments and maybe when the economy picks up starter jobs. And as he says, those starter jobs are going to be about putting stuff on the web (especially cheap, effective video on the web). But he also wants written stories on the web.
This is part of a big update of the site over the weekend with a new front page, a new way of displaying features and many other developments. These developments continue so keep checking back on the site which is now effectively updating daily, though the main re-make will still take place at 5pm on Wednesdays - Live at Five!
The next big push with WINOL will be to get the visual side of the magazine and features working, and we've made a start on that. We are lucky because Catherine is an accompmplished fashion photographer, and one or two others are showing a great visual sense through video work as well. We will work on that through the last couple of weeks of term, and then over the Xmas break so that the Third Years are ready for the final magazine and loonger-form documentary phase of the course.
WINOL's circulation has now overtaken both the Hampshire Chronicle and the Basingstoke Gazette and I bet that if you just looked at their circulation in Winchester we would be at least neck and neck with them.
Monday, 30 November 2009
Thursday, 26 November 2009
WINOL FEEBACK - from Ian Anderson
Ian Anderson (guest editor on the last pre-launch dummy) has been looking at WINOL online and gives this feedback on editions 1 and 2. Many thanks to him: Love the website front page with the masthead (looks familiar) and the 3 video boxes - and the
ticker is great.
A few thoughts on the last two bulletins:
Headlines and titles - I can see good signs that students are getting a sense of how important
it is to get these right - can't emphasise enough that this is the 'shop window. Still loads more
scope for being more imaginative with the shots - but this will come with more imaginative
camerawork.
Lead stories: Tuition fees felt like the right lead for the audience and the interview off the back in the
studio was editorially good - although framing could have been better. Framing matters because when it's wrong
the viewer's attention wanders.
Contrast with this week's lead (road smash) which felt wrong for the audience. Ask yourselves how
significant an event this was for students? Answer - not very.
Row over students 'taking over' Stanmore was a much better story. This has potential to be a big problem
for university bosses and for students. Good to be at the meeting but sadly no filming of rowdy late night
students, or student voices defending their right to live there.
Erasmus Park story was potentially brilliant for one reason - a shot of mushrooms growing in a
student kitchen! But it was much too fleeting - I assume because the camerawork wasn't good
enough. This should have been a headline shot. Lesson - when you recognise you have actual or
potential genuine news pictures for goodness sake take time and trouble to shoot it properly.
Children in Need was a nice end item (remember the 'mix') but sound a bit low for me.
On screen name supers looked really good.
What's on in Winchester - a bit of a stretch simply as a studio spot. Why not got out into town and pre-record
from one of the venues in question that week?
Presenters and reporters: I'm sure you've already told Maxine to slow down her delivery - studio shot on her
could have been tighter too. In fact they should all slow down their delivery! Still not seeing enough
pieces to camera or reporter 'involved' in stories. Stanmore ptc was good though - an honourable exception!
Hope some of this useful - what they are finding out now is how hard it is to do apparently simple things -
so stay positive.
ticker is great.
A few thoughts on the last two bulletins:
Headlines and titles - I can see good signs that students are getting a sense of how important
it is to get these right - can't emphasise enough that this is the 'shop window. Still loads more
scope for being more imaginative with the shots - but this will come with more imaginative
camerawork.
Lead stories: Tuition fees felt like the right lead for the audience and the interview off the back in the
studio was editorially good - although framing could have been better. Framing matters because when it's wrong
the viewer's attention wanders.
Contrast with this week's lead (road smash) which felt wrong for the audience. Ask yourselves how
significant an event this was for students? Answer - not very.
Row over students 'taking over' Stanmore was a much better story. This has potential to be a big problem
for university bosses and for students. Good to be at the meeting but sadly no filming of rowdy late night
students, or student voices defending their right to live there.
Erasmus Park story was potentially brilliant for one reason - a shot of mushrooms growing in a
student kitchen! But it was much too fleeting - I assume because the camerawork wasn't good
enough. This should have been a headline shot. Lesson - when you recognise you have actual or
potential genuine news pictures for goodness sake take time and trouble to shoot it properly.
Children in Need was a nice end item (remember the 'mix') but sound a bit low for me.
On screen name supers looked really good.
What's on in Winchester - a bit of a stretch simply as a studio spot. Why not got out into town and pre-record
from one of the venues in question that week?
Presenters and reporters: I'm sure you've already told Maxine to slow down her delivery - studio shot on her
could have been tighter too. In fact they should all slow down their delivery! Still not seeing enough
pieces to camera or reporter 'involved' in stories. Stanmore ptc was good though - an honourable exception!
Hope some of this useful - what they are finding out now is how hard it is to do apparently simple things -
so stay positive.
HCJ2 - Zeitgeist
In Our Time (R4) this morning was about James Joyce - Portrait of an Artist as a Young Man. This afternoon the lecture is about George Orwell, Wittgenstein and the Philosophy of Language. All lectures are of equal but some lectures are of more equal than others - and this is one of them! Generally speaking his is very much a high point of the whole HCJ series, in many ways all the material about the enlightenment, romanticism, nationalism, Hegel, Marx, Freud and modernism builds towards Orwell given his standing as probably the greatest journalist of the 20th century, and certainly the journalist who made the biggest contribution to contemporary philosophy and to popular culture ('Big Brother' and 'Room 101' and 'Though Crime' etc). Be sure to read Orwell's short essay Politics and the English Langauge (this contain the core of his argument, and it is easy to find at many locations around the web). See also: 1984 And a more recent TV document derived from Orwell (same team that made the 'century of Freud' series for the BBC - Adam Curtis's The Power of Nightmares ("there's always a war"). Orwell and pop culture - Hollywood - Its OK! - he gets the girl in the end! But 1984 is full of philosophical ideas (eg 2+2 does equal 4, no matter what the state says = Descartes) ("They can't get inside your mind" = Kant) and the all pervading paranoia, sexual repression, masochistic puritanism and orgisatic hatred = Freud and his political followers.
Wednesday, 25 November 2009
WINOL overnight traffic rankings
Winol got 260 unique user sessions on Wednesday for the second bulletin. That's about half the first edition, but still pretty good. This is the well known second edition slump. I reckon it has slackened off because the upload issues with the bulletin meant we were not webcasting at 5pmbang on (the bulletin was done on deadline, but we had horrendous technical problems, including the slowness of he internet connection in the newsroom. Rich did very well to get it up, and we were there at about 5.45. Also the news on the front page is not very grabby. We need another PR push for next week, a remake of the front page and a physical presence around the campus. The good news is that we overtook The Basingstoke Gazette today in the Alexa rankings, and have left the Hampshire Chronicle way behind. The next target would be the Southern Echo but that would mean extending the News Agenda to students at Southampton and Bournemouth Universities... and promoting the site at those places with leaflets or whatever. Interesting... but stick to our local audience focus for now at least... (how this works is - the lower the number, the more readers/users you have.
ECHO...........079
WINOL..........616
BAS GAZETTE....732
HANTS CHRON....787
WESSEX SCENE..1845 (Southampton University Student News service)
ECHO...........079
WINOL..........616
BAS GAZETTE....732
HANTS CHRON....787
WESSEX SCENE..1845 (Southampton University Student News service)
Visit by Steve Power from Wave 105
Thursday, 26th November, 11:00 a.m. in The Vault
Wave 105 Breakfast Presenter will be speaking and answering questions, providing an insight into the industry.
His own career credits include BBC Radio Sussex, Southern Sound, Virgin Radio, Talk Radio, as well as being part of a Sony Radio Gold Award (the Radio "Oscars") team for the 1st National Music Day and presenting the Genesis Prince’s Trust concert for the commercial radio network.
Steve also runs his own media training company, Talk of the Devil in 1996 and is responsible for working on the development of various music artists including the Spice Girls, James Blunt, Katie Melua, Jamelia, Westlife and Corinne Bailey Rae.
Wave 105 Breakfast Presenter will be speaking and answering questions, providing an insight into the industry.
His own career credits include BBC Radio Sussex, Southern Sound, Virgin Radio, Talk Radio, as well as being part of a Sony Radio Gold Award (the Radio "Oscars") team for the 1st National Music Day and presenting the Genesis Prince’s Trust concert for the commercial radio network.
Steve also runs his own media training company, Talk of the Devil in 1996 and is responsible for working on the development of various music artists including the Spice Girls, James Blunt, Katie Melua, Jamelia, Westlife and Corinne Bailey Rae.
Monday, 23 November 2009
Andy Stegall and Christine Alsford
Andy Stegall of ITV, Sky (and just of this week the BBC)OR Christine Alsford (ITV Meridian social affairs correspondent) will be the guest editor for WINOL this Wednesday. We have also signed these two very senior and current broadcast news and sports journalists up to lead the basic 'off line' training of year one in television news production (making packages etc) after easter. Andy and Christine worked with us last year and we are delighted to welcome them back, playing an even more central role in the development of the course. We also heard today that the university is backing WINOL's bid for a free to air digital TV franchise (channels 33,34 and 35 on the digital transmitter at Foley on the Isle of Wight). If this succeeds Winchester will by 2012 be the first university in the UK to transmit news (and entertainment and educational) channels in this way. The channel will be available on set top boxes (if the plan goes ahead) in up to two million homes in the south. It is part of a major new journalism research project at the university into community broadcasting and alternative economic models for broadcasting news and factual programming in the future.
After a very successful launch yesterday we can begin to see where our ‘hits’ are coming from. We peaked at nearly 600 hits last night and this is really impressive almost on a par with the Hampshire Chronicle. We are going from strength to strength and I am confident that this figure will rise every week. This is the national picture of where hits are coming from.
From this it is clear to see that we are currently getting the most traffic from the Southampton area for obvious reasons. A large portion of traffic is coming from London, as this is where a large portion of the ‘spiders’ is based.
We are also getting traffic from other English speaking countries. America,
Showing a hit from California.
Australia, showing a hit from Melbourne.
South Africa,
Despite a language barrier we are still receiving traffic from Europe,
This shows hits from France, Belgium, Austria and Germany. Further to this we are received three hits from Sweden.
This is really impressive and although the average time spent on the site is only five minutes I am confident that this will increase in the coming weeks.
We have had 412 unique visitors, have had nearly 2000 separate page views and an average of 3.8 page views per visitor.
From this it is clear to see that we are currently getting the most traffic from the Southampton area for obvious reasons. A large portion of traffic is coming from London, as this is where a large portion of the ‘spiders’ is based.
We are also getting traffic from other English speaking countries. America,
Showing a hit from California.
Australia, showing a hit from Melbourne.
South Africa,
Despite a language barrier we are still receiving traffic from Europe,
This shows hits from France, Belgium, Austria and Germany. Further to this we are received three hits from Sweden.
This is really impressive and although the average time spent on the site is only five minutes I am confident that this will increase in the coming weeks.
We have had 412 unique visitors, have had nearly 2000 separate page views and an average of 3.8 page views per visitor.
Year One - HCJ Zeitgeist
At about two minutes to nine on the Today programme this morning there was a discussion about Adam Smith and how the application of his ideas to the economy caused all sorts of problems (claims Will Hutton, ex editor of The Observer. Listen to it again on the BBC Radio 4 play again facility - today prog between 8.50 and 9.00. I have now posted my (very extensive) Adam Smith notes to the HCJ 1 page. I have also posted some notes about Hobbes, the Union of England and Scotland and the rise of the nation state. We don't have a specific lecture and seminar on this topic; but it comes in as an important theme in Rousseau and in Adam Smith; so I put some thoughts in to that - partly summarising the Von Mises radical free market view that the nation state is a fleeting (and basically catastrophic) phase in the development of human society; and that the sooner we arrive at Adam Smith's notion of a world-wide market ('globalised') for all goods, services and labour the better. We will next look at 19th century romantic nationalism (eg Hegel and then Social Darwinism and scientific racialism) as we continue our quick fire, journalistic, headlines-only trip through what we are still pleased to call Western Civilization.
Friday, 20 November 2009
WINOL
Congrats everyone on a much improved WINOL this week. Everything is moving in the right direction, athough there are clearly some issues on and off screen that need addressing. I will give you all a thorough debrief when I'm in this week on Monday.
Football investigations - LSE conference and volunteers needed
I see that the story about massive match fixing in international football is about to break. I did this story five years ago for a Channel Four series (see: investigative journalism). The series was spiked - shot to bits with prior restraint threats of libel, injunctions, massive brick wall from teh swarms of press officers the top professional clubs employ to give you the run around (think Winch's press officers x 1,000,000) threats of Ofcom, threats of legal action from agents, threats from the press offices of the clubs, the individual stars, their sponsors of no more co-operation on day to day stuff for channel four - the whole bit - and in addition I expect objections from advertisers (Nike, Addidas, Coca Cola all implicated). So I ripped out all teh bits the lawyers were most worreid about. I wrote it all down in a book that virtually nobody read but - like a lot fo my books - the tiny number of people who did read it, really liked it. Sadly in those days there was no Reynolds - let alone Jameel. So it was sort of impossible to do this story - because football is the key to the finances of commercial TV (at that time partic ITV and Sky) and if nobody thinks the 'Champions League' is worth watching ebcause it is fixed like WWF wrestling (why wouldn't it be?) then the whole financial basis of pay TV collapses. But the book is still out there and I am delighted to find that you can buy a copy for one penny.
In the meantime I am speaking at a conference at the London School of Economics next Saturday. If anyone would like to go to this it could be good, because it is being organised by Derek Dyson of ITV, and it would be good to video this and webcast it live and make a highlights package for YouTube - which I reckon would get good hits. It would mean hiring two cameras for the weekend and going up to London. LSE is walking distance from Waterloo. Any takers please email me at chris@horrie.com.
In the meantime I am speaking at a conference at the London School of Economics next Saturday. If anyone would like to go to this it could be good, because it is being organised by Derek Dyson of ITV, and it would be good to video this and webcast it live and make a highlights package for YouTube - which I reckon would get good hits. It would mean hiring two cameras for the weekend and going up to London. LSE is walking distance from Waterloo. Any takers please email me at chris@horrie.com.
CHRONICLE EATS OUR DUST
Friday night Alexa rankings.
WINOL - 822th
HAMPSHIRE CHRONICLE - 837th
We have already overtaken the Hampshire Chronicle. And Friday's not even a big day for us. And we have done zero SEO. I reckon it was Guess The Sweets wot won it. The target now is the mighty Basingstoke Gazette, owned by he mighty NewsQuest conglomerate.
BASINGSTOKE GAZETTE - 755th (with tons of local news, but no video).
WINOL - 822th
HAMPSHIRE CHRONICLE - 837th
We have already overtaken the Hampshire Chronicle. And Friday's not even a big day for us. And we have done zero SEO. I reckon it was Guess The Sweets wot won it. The target now is the mighty Basingstoke Gazette, owned by he mighty NewsQuest conglomerate.
BASINGSTOKE GAZETTE - 755th (with tons of local news, but no video).
YEAR THREE/TWO - WINOL
I found this cute American documentary about the layout of a newsroom. It is pretty good. The structure is exactly the same as us, but the jargon is slightly different (and they are bigger, scaled up). Thus 'assignment desk' in UK language is 'planning' and 'assignment reporter' is for us 'chief reporter' (in the UK - correspondent for the US term 'beat reporter' - so crime beat, entertainment beat instead of crime correspondent, though on WINOL we do use the US jargon for that - we have beat reporters rather than corespondents). They have Edit Pods, which are just the same as we have edit machines on the production desk (the production desk is if you like one big 'edit pod') Their 'receive room' is our ENPS desk (which have not fired up yet). But this is where they get all the news wires and live feeds and what have you - notice how humungously big is their receive room (or ENPS) because US journalism is even more a matter of all these hundreds of stations constantly recycling each others pictures...
It would be very nice if somebody (Ben?) could film a 'guide to the studio' which apart from anything else would get vast hits on your personal blog and - in a way - solves the problem of writing the critical review to a large extent or somebody who wants to practice indoor capture and eiditing (eg one of the features team) assuming you can get a camera on a low priority basis.
It would be very nice if somebody (Ben?) could film a 'guide to the studio' which apart from anything else would get vast hits on your personal blog and - in a way - solves the problem of writing the critical review to a large extent or somebody who wants to practice indoor capture and eiditing (eg one of the features team) assuming you can get a camera on a low priority basis.
Thursday, 19 November 2009
Year One HCJ - Something for the weekend
You should by now have read a goodly chunk of The Wealth of Nations and the whole of A Modest Proposal (Swift). I have found a lot of You Tube clips about Adam Smith featuring Smith's most famous recent devotee the US economist Milton Friedman (inventor of Monetarism).
Ludwig Von Mises (Institute) and neo-classical liberal economics (David Hume, John Locke modernised). Very good lecture on the Nation State (mercantalist, Hobbsian, protectionist) in opposition to free markets (legalistic, internationalist, rights-based, individualistic.) The lecture below is an excellent talk dealing with many of the themes dealt with so far (eg Hobbes and the state, Locke and rights) and the nature of the state and its economic basis. The talk is by the significant contemporary US philosopher Donald Livingstone. He is an advocate of 'small state' conservatism and free market economics. I first came across him arguing that Abraham Lincoln far from being a great liberator was in fact a sort of American Napoleon who created a transcontinental empire which is ultimately doomed to disintegration - a very interesting idea. This was posted on the web very recently... so it is 'hot from the press'.
Ludwig Von Mises (Institute) and neo-classical liberal economics (David Hume, John Locke modernised). Very good lecture on the Nation State (mercantalist, Hobbsian, protectionist) in opposition to free markets (legalistic, internationalist, rights-based, individualistic.) The lecture below is an excellent talk dealing with many of the themes dealt with so far (eg Hobbes and the state, Locke and rights) and the nature of the state and its economic basis. The talk is by the significant contemporary US philosopher Donald Livingstone. He is an advocate of 'small state' conservatism and free market economics. I first came across him arguing that Abraham Lincoln far from being a great liberator was in fact a sort of American Napoleon who created a transcontinental empire which is ultimately doomed to disintegration - a very interesting idea. This was posted on the web very recently... so it is 'hot from the press'.
FIRST YEARS
Brian writes:
Please read Peter Cole's article on broadsheets before Friday's News Clinics:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2007/sep/03/mondaymediasection.pressandpublishing1
And bring along at least one broadsheet.
YEAR THREE - Media Law
I have had a lot of unscheduled management type meetings this morning - all sort of good - but it means that I will have to reschedule the media law session today from 12am - 1pm - to 1pm - 2pm. Please read my notes about the Freedom of Information Act (and investigative journalism) before the session. They are on media law web - yours Chris Horrie.
Wednesday, 18 November 2009
WINOL IS A HIT
Overnight unique user sessions - 600 + (Google Analytics). Alexa ranking up by 100,000 places to 888,000 (and in top 15,000 in UK) - neck and neck with Hampshire Chronicle already, and closing on the Basingstoke Gazette. A complete triumph and it can only get better when the features really start to kick in over the next couple of weeks. We are probably now the most widely read thing on the Winchester Campus other than things like facebook, etc. Well done. What a day!
WINOL NEW EDITION
The new edition of WINOL is now online at http://www.winol.co.uk. The guest editor this week was Kay Oliver of GMTV, Sky and ITV. Here is what she said about the bulletin.
Tuesday, 17 November 2009
WINOL - ONE DAY TO GO!
Winol (http://www.winol.co.uk) launches tomorrow at 5pm. All students please watch it online and use facebook and any social media you have to make sure people look at the bulletin and view the site. Well done for putting the fashion gallery on the front page... that looks great... and the crime story about the bitten nose is fantastic - well done Rob. Here are the pre-launch circulation stats, just using Alexa rankings. Ben - we need a graph doing on the wall...
WESTMINSTER NEWS ONLINE WNOL - 3,895 (much bigger potential audience)
WESSEX SCENE - 1,888 (Soton Uni SU news magazine - much bigger potential market)
WINOL - 966 ('000 - prelaunch traffic on the main domain winchesterjournalism.co.uk)
HAMPSHIRE CHRONICLE - 831
BASINGSTOKE GAZETTE - 759
We already have much bigger traffic than any comparable student media, despite our smaller 'home' market. It makes me think we can start attacking Southampton University and Solent with stories about those places as well... and lucky dates punters... hmmm. One for Ben to think about. We don't want to break the link with the audience. And even in pre-production we are already on the heels of the Hampshire Chronicle. I reckon we can overtake then maybe even in launch week. The Basingstoke Gazette is well within our reach as well.
The Echo will be more of a stretch (it is in the top 100,000) but that's not comparing like with like because of the massive catchment area - maybe five million potential readers instead of 5,000. So you are achieving a very high penetration of a small market. But you may already be beating say the Daily Telegraph (just on the campus) with your production traffic alone. All this I think is gold for your critical review. Can somebody go and ask the newsagent on campus what the sales of various papers are on the site, so we can start boasting that we are outselling The Guardian, the Daily Mailm etc on campus... This is the kind of pro talk that will give you a massive edge in an interview for a job - readers, audiences, markets, fast-accurate-fair, banging out lots of stories, getting angles... etc. Let's have the circulaztion figures up on the wall in graph form and have our launch party when we overtake the Hampshire Gazette.
WINCH UNI - 190
WESTMINSTER NEWS ONLINE WNOL - 3,895 (much bigger potential audience)
WESSEX SCENE - 1,888 (Soton Uni SU news magazine - much bigger potential market)
WINOL - 966 ('000 - prelaunch traffic on the main domain winchesterjournalism.co.uk)
HAMPSHIRE CHRONICLE - 831
BASINGSTOKE GAZETTE - 759
We already have much bigger traffic than any comparable student media, despite our smaller 'home' market. It makes me think we can start attacking Southampton University and Solent with stories about those places as well... and lucky dates punters... hmmm. One for Ben to think about. We don't want to break the link with the audience. And even in pre-production we are already on the heels of the Hampshire Chronicle. I reckon we can overtake then maybe even in launch week. The Basingstoke Gazette is well within our reach as well.
The Echo will be more of a stretch (it is in the top 100,000) but that's not comparing like with like because of the massive catchment area - maybe five million potential readers instead of 5,000. So you are achieving a very high penetration of a small market. But you may already be beating say the Daily Telegraph (just on the campus) with your production traffic alone. All this I think is gold for your critical review. Can somebody go and ask the newsagent on campus what the sales of various papers are on the site, so we can start boasting that we are outselling The Guardian, the Daily Mailm etc on campus... This is the kind of pro talk that will give you a massive edge in an interview for a job - readers, audiences, markets, fast-accurate-fair, banging out lots of stories, getting angles... etc. Let's have the circulaztion figures up on the wall in graph form and have our launch party when we overtake the Hampshire Gazette.
WINCH UNI - 190
Innocence Project
Third Years:
I've received three of the cases for the Innocence Project - I realise you're completely snowed under at the moment with Winol but let's get together at 11am tomorrow (Wednesday) in TAB 9 for 15mins. Don't worry if you can't make it because of filming commitments or whatever - Winol is the priority at the moment.
Channel Five News (TV)
Hear (and see) Chris Horrie on Channel Five News just after 7pm as part of a package about The Sun. Exclusive footage of my very nice sofa.
Monday, 16 November 2009
BBC Radio Five Live
Hear Chris Horrie live and exhausted on the Richard Bacon show (radio five live 11.30 - 12.00 midnight tonight) debating with Phil Hall former editor of the News of the World about tabloid journalism. But do not phone in. I will kill anyone who phones in!
WINOL - 2 days to launch
We have got the 'what's on' guide up on the WINOL site - another piece of the jigsaw. go to www.winol.co.uk and press the button for features. There is a rough version of what's on listings there. We hope to make this smoother if we can light the studio a little better and maybe cut some copyright free stills or bits of video in over the voicework. Editing this feature against the clock is an excellent way to get quicker and more confident about cutting simple video inserts. There will be a final rehearsal in the studio tomorrow when we hope to deal with the lighting and test out a range of technical functions so they run smoothly for the launch edition on Wednesday LIVE AT FIVE...
Sunday, 15 November 2009
HCJ -1
I have slightly re-cut the the Rousseau podcast (for HCJ-1 theory). You can hear/see it at this link. I will also post a version on YouTube.
You should definately listen to this if you are HCJ one because it will be a big help for the seminar and - ultimately - for the exam (or test as it is called). We need volunteers to play the role similar to Seb and Andrew for the next podcast which will be a week on Tuesday. What this means is that after the lecture (3-4.15 pm in the HCJ) we will record the podcast in the radio studio (next door to the main newsroom TAB9) from 4.30 - 5.00 and then edit it and whack it up on the web. Tom Ostrebski did the production last Tuesday (very good too - another thing for the CV - produced half-hour 'as live' talk show with studio guests. So we need volunteers fto be the studio student guests to ask questions (logically those who are giving the seminar paper). We also need volunteers to do the studio production with Tom. He will show you how to do it maybe. Podcast a very good thing I think - ideal way to really massively deepen understanding on the theory course - and a great thing to be involved with producing. Please contact chris@horrie.com if you want to volunteer to be involved with the next podcast a wekk on Tuesday. If so please listen to BBC radio 4 - 'In Our Time' (or radio four play again - this is the style for the programme. Also In Our Time has many HCJ type topics as well). Onwards and upwards - Chris.
In the meantime here is the YALE UNIVERSITY undergraduate lecture on Rousseau. tHe lecturer here is a Rousseau specialist (at pehaps the top ranked university in the world for political theory). Note that this lecturer sees much less of a contrast between Rousseau and Locke than either Brian or myself (Brian adn I take the more traditional view). But this guy is obviously rehabilitating Rousseau to some extent. I didn't see this youtube lecture until after we did our podcast, so I am pleased to find that my review on Rousseau is not contradicted by this guy and - I would say - my version gets to the core of it more effectively than he does - he being an academic (meaning good at narrow/deep) whereas I am journalist, better a summing things up (broad and shallow). so there you are - between the two video (me and Yale) you should get a pretty good handle on this. We will do the same for each topic (eg Adam Smith next).
You should definately listen to this if you are HCJ one because it will be a big help for the seminar and - ultimately - for the exam (or test as it is called). We need volunteers to play the role similar to Seb and Andrew for the next podcast which will be a week on Tuesday. What this means is that after the lecture (3-4.15 pm in the HCJ) we will record the podcast in the radio studio (next door to the main newsroom TAB9) from 4.30 - 5.00 and then edit it and whack it up on the web. Tom Ostrebski did the production last Tuesday (very good too - another thing for the CV - produced half-hour 'as live' talk show with studio guests. So we need volunteers fto be the studio student guests to ask questions (logically those who are giving the seminar paper). We also need volunteers to do the studio production with Tom. He will show you how to do it maybe. Podcast a very good thing I think - ideal way to really massively deepen understanding on the theory course - and a great thing to be involved with producing. Please contact chris@horrie.com if you want to volunteer to be involved with the next podcast a wekk on Tuesday. If so please listen to BBC radio 4 - 'In Our Time' (or radio four play again - this is the style for the programme. Also In Our Time has many HCJ type topics as well). Onwards and upwards - Chris.
In the meantime here is the YALE UNIVERSITY undergraduate lecture on Rousseau. tHe lecturer here is a Rousseau specialist (at pehaps the top ranked university in the world for political theory). Note that this lecturer sees much less of a contrast between Rousseau and Locke than either Brian or myself (Brian adn I take the more traditional view). But this guy is obviously rehabilitating Rousseau to some extent. I didn't see this youtube lecture until after we did our podcast, so I am pleased to find that my review on Rousseau is not contradicted by this guy and - I would say - my version gets to the core of it more effectively than he does - he being an academic (meaning good at narrow/deep) whereas I am journalist, better a summing things up (broad and shallow). so there you are - between the two video (me and Yale) you should get a pretty good handle on this. We will do the same for each topic (eg Adam Smith next).
Friday, 13 November 2009
WINOL updating now
I have moved WINOL on to the actual WINOL web domain (http://www.winol.co.uk) over-writing the old version from last year. We are now approaching the final run down to launch. There's technical snags with the site at the moment - we lost the sound from the first part of the bulletin and had to patch it all up with no headlines over the bongs at the start. Also we are still running dummy copy on the front page. But the template is pretty much sorted now, and we have a way of webcasting as a live stream or a looped video for the news bulletins, for features packages and for sport. I think it looks very good and in terms of set up and already in terms of content is by far the best student journalism in the country, maybe the world. Arnold says it is far better than most national broadcasters in Africa, with the possible exception of the SABC. The main opposition to us is Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism (where they give the Pulitzer Prize). But we are way, way better than them. All they do is steal pictures off the national network and then do a load of crappy vox pops. We would fail a Winchester student for lifting those network pictures. Also the pieces go on and on and on. On the other hand they have this terrific solid oak and gold studio news desk and the presenters are very well lit, with lots of make-up and have fantastically straight and clean American-type News Teeth. i think we should copy the visual styling and presentation style of all this, with its fantastically over-the-top sing-song way of producing voice. We are better than them b ut - to be fair - we do have advantages such as the Mayor's firework show, and that mad guy from the Liberal Democrats who phones us up with stories. No wonder the columbia students are struggling - all they've got is broadway, the twin towers, the United Nations general assembly, the Bronx, Chinatown, Maddison Square Garden, The Clintons, Sex and the City, Drive By Shooting,Manhattan, Wall Street and that's before you start on the untrue stuff life crocodiles in the sewers, UFO abductions and swarms of killer bees... so it must be hard for them finding stories in such a quiet, sleepy out of the way place like New York City the poor things. No wonder they have to resort to Vox Pop about whether people like Barack Obama or not.
Radio presenter
Annette writes:
The guest speaker, Steve Power from Wave FM, will be giving his talk (11am-1pm) in the Vault on Thursday 26thNovember.
Apologies for the change of date - it should be a very interesting event, and all are welcome.
Sky News - all years
ROB KIRK (Sky News representative on the BJTC national council, and good friend to the Winchester Journalism team) writes:
I’m able to offer students a very special chance to join in the Sky News coverage of next year’s General Election.
We’re creating an army of stringers to ensure we have the fastest and most accurate results service.
I’d be very grateful if you could distribute the following message:
Do you want to play a key part in the General Election coverage for Sky News?
Do you think you’re up to the job – and do you think you can be fastest and best?
Sky News is looking for energetic, reliable and accurate student journalists willing to contribute to the General Election results service for the 24-hour multi-platform news organisation.
You’ll be paid a fee. And we’ll DOUBLE the fee if you get the results to the Sky News Centre first, beating all the opposition.
The election will be sometime between March and June, so don’t volunteer unless you’re sure you’ll be able to deliver.
Think you’ve got the skill and the bottle?
Send a CV, with 150 words on why we should pick you, to the Sky News Co-ordinator, Pauliina Porkka at Pauliina.porkka@bskyb.com.
Put ‘Election’ in the title of your email. Tell us which part of the country you could cover. Make sure you include full contact details.
Get your application in by Monday, January 4th.
Chris Horrie adds: You will be able to ask Rob about this later this term when he comes in to function as guest editor of one of the WINOL bulletins. We will see the bulletin through the studio at 4.00 - 4.10 and then do a debrief in the newsroom, and then take general Q and A about journalism and Sky TV.
I’m able to offer students a very special chance to join in the Sky News coverage of next year’s General Election.
We’re creating an army of stringers to ensure we have the fastest and most accurate results service.
I’d be very grateful if you could distribute the following message:
Do you want to play a key part in the General Election coverage for Sky News?
Do you think you’re up to the job – and do you think you can be fastest and best?
Sky News is looking for energetic, reliable and accurate student journalists willing to contribute to the General Election results service for the 24-hour multi-platform news organisation.
You’ll be paid a fee. And we’ll DOUBLE the fee if you get the results to the Sky News Centre first, beating all the opposition.
The election will be sometime between March and June, so don’t volunteer unless you’re sure you’ll be able to deliver.
Think you’ve got the skill and the bottle?
Send a CV, with 150 words on why we should pick you, to the Sky News Co-ordinator, Pauliina Porkka at Pauliina.porkka@bskyb.com.
Put ‘Election’ in the title of your email. Tell us which part of the country you could cover. Make sure you include full contact details.
Get your application in by Monday, January 4th.
Chris Horrie adds: You will be able to ask Rob about this later this term when he comes in to function as guest editor of one of the WINOL bulletins. We will see the bulletin through the studio at 4.00 - 4.10 and then do a debrief in the newsroom, and then take general Q and A about journalism and Sky TV.
HCJ-1 Rousseau - Man vs Nature (anti-enlightenment)
A couple of more things to think about; if you have the time...
Thursday, 12 November 2009
WINOL DUMMY EDITION
The last dummy edition of WINOL is up on YouTube. You can view it here. It uses the old title sequence. We lost the the first few minutes of the bulletin because the tape was corrupted. The delay in uploading was all about that. We have a system of sorts now. We need to keep the bulletin under 10 minutes next week when we go live. There's various other technical glitches, and we need to light and set up the studio properly, or build in time to do green screen. But it is all going very well. Sport especially strong. Good bash at some strong stories, but you can see how production concerns are still dominating, which is natural enough. Need to get the production/editing beast under control so we can concentrate on zipping up the stories and editorial focus.
News clinics
First Years you'll need to read Peter Cole's article before Friday's sessions:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2007/aug/20/mondaymediasection.pressandpublishing
Bring along either the Express or Mail
http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2007/aug/20/mondaymediasection.pressandpublishing
Bring along either the Express or Mail
HCJ2 - Steinbeck, Lange, the great depression, photojournalism
You tube on hero photojournalist Dorothea Lange here.
Hero journalist John Steinbeck on YouTube here - on why people hate and persecute immigrants, and what to do about it.
Woody Guthrie - 'hillbillie poet' and voice of the redneck Oakies (sunburn on neck because of picking crops all day in California)
Woody Guthrie - Music and journalism, oral tradition, folk music, rap music.
Migration - the eternal story - Oakie crop pickers in California in 1942; Polish farm workers in East Anglia in 2009... persecuted, starved, denied rights, scapegoated for unemployment, scapegoated for crime, constantly lied about and denigrated, persecuted for the very act of seeking asylum, openly reviled, shunned, physically attacked, deported, harassed...
Migration in the 19th century - The Irish
Hero journalist John Steinbeck on YouTube here - on why people hate and persecute immigrants, and what to do about it.
Woody Guthrie - 'hillbillie poet' and voice of the redneck Oakies (sunburn on neck because of picking crops all day in California)
Woody Guthrie - Music and journalism, oral tradition, folk music, rap music.
Migration - the eternal story - Oakie crop pickers in California in 1942; Polish farm workers in East Anglia in 2009... persecuted, starved, denied rights, scapegoated for unemployment, scapegoated for crime, constantly lied about and denigrated, persecuted for the very act of seeking asylum, openly reviled, shunned, physically attacked, deported, harassed...
Migration in the 19th century - The Irish
Tuesday, 10 November 2009
Year One - HCJ - Rousseau, the social contract and romanticism
This is first in a series of podcasts discussing issues raised in the History and Context lecture programme. This week: Rousseau and the General Will with Chris Horrie, Brian Thornton and first year students Seb and Andrew. LISTEN NOW
Year 2/3 Ian Anderson
Ian Anderson is confirmed for tomorrow - Angus and Brian will be editing in the morning. Ian will take over in the afternoon, see the broadcast out and then do the debrief. He will give a general Q_A about journalism after that in the newsroom at about 4.30. Here is what he said during an earlier visit a couple of weeks ago (filmed by Grant Payne).
Monday, 9 November 2009
Year Three BJTC work attachment
YEAR THREE: IF you want to do a work attachment of two weeks in BBC local radio (or maybe regional TV) or GCAP commercial radio please let me have your name now. You have seen the previous dire warning but I think many of you might benefit from it. We are allowed to submit the names of half the cohort (so that means a maximum of eight). It means that you will be working from day one in a newsroom, doing stories or some closely related thing such as preparing story lists, etc. But if you have done just a half day on ENPS (coming soon!) then you will feel relatively confident. Please let me have you name soonest if you want to be considered. I have to register your names with the BJTC so that you are entered on the scheme. If you do take part you are pretty much guaranteed two weeks on a news desk at some period between Easter and June (I think) and they will try and fit you in at places that are no more than 1 hour's commuting distance (much nearer if possible). This attachment will be a real high point for people who in particular want to start their careers as local community news reporters and who have good on-air skills (voice, presentation, script). The BJTC matches the number of placements to the number of students on BJTC validated courses (such as ours) which is why there are such small numbers of students on BJTC courses...
The war against schoolteacher English continues
Graham Mole draws our attention to this piece in the writer's journal:
And another thing...
One of the most persistent misconceptions about writing in English is that you’re not allowed to start a sentence with ‘and’ or ‘but’. Utter rubbish. In fact, sometimes they’re the only words that will do – they can give your writing pace, drama and oomph. And writers have been doing it for hundreds of years.
But you probably knew that already. Maybe you’re thinking ‘that’s all fine by me, but my boss thinks it’s wrong. How do I persuade someone else that it’s OK?’
Show some examples
They’re everywhere. But if you need one in a hurry, try:
‘In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.
And God said, Let there be light: and there was light.’
Genesis Chapter 1, The Bible, King James version
(In fact, the Bible can’t get enough of it: 33 of the 35 sentences in Genesis Chapter 1 begin with ‘and’.)
‘Many of these missions, including MoonLite, are far from assured. And there is no shortage of people suggesting we’re better spending money elsewhere. But who can fail to be inspired when they look up at the Moon on a clear night?’
BBC news website, 19 July 2009
‘The coalition’s leaders, at least, seem to have grasped that it must behave not as an occupying army but as a partner, whose aim is to build up the local forces that will ultimately ensure Afghanistan’s security. And soldiers and civilians are beginning to understand that development aid can benefit local people...’
The Economist, 17 October 2009.
Set a challenge
If someone says they get annoyed by sentences starting with ‘and’ or ‘but’, ask them to check their newspaper. They’ll have been happily reading them for years, without even noticing. We only tend to spot the ands and buts if we’re asked to look at a bit of writing critically.
Today (5th November 2009), we skimmed through the Times, the Daily Telegraph, the Financial Times, the Independent and the Economist. Every single one of them has sentences and paragraphs starting with ‘and’ on almost every page. And we lost count of the amount of sentences that started with ‘but’. There were hundreds – three on the front page of the Guardian alone.
And if they still don’t buy it?
Hey, there are still some people out there who think the world is flat. You can’t win ’em all.
And another thing...
One of the most persistent misconceptions about writing in English is that you’re not allowed to start a sentence with ‘and’ or ‘but’. Utter rubbish. In fact, sometimes they’re the only words that will do – they can give your writing pace, drama and oomph. And writers have been doing it for hundreds of years.
But you probably knew that already. Maybe you’re thinking ‘that’s all fine by me, but my boss thinks it’s wrong. How do I persuade someone else that it’s OK?’
Show some examples
They’re everywhere. But if you need one in a hurry, try:
‘In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.
And God said, Let there be light: and there was light.’
Genesis Chapter 1, The Bible, King James version
(In fact, the Bible can’t get enough of it: 33 of the 35 sentences in Genesis Chapter 1 begin with ‘and’.)
‘Many of these missions, including MoonLite, are far from assured. And there is no shortage of people suggesting we’re better spending money elsewhere. But who can fail to be inspired when they look up at the Moon on a clear night?’
BBC news website, 19 July 2009
‘The coalition’s leaders, at least, seem to have grasped that it must behave not as an occupying army but as a partner, whose aim is to build up the local forces that will ultimately ensure Afghanistan’s security. And soldiers and civilians are beginning to understand that development aid can benefit local people...’
The Economist, 17 October 2009.
Set a challenge
If someone says they get annoyed by sentences starting with ‘and’ or ‘but’, ask them to check their newspaper. They’ll have been happily reading them for years, without even noticing. We only tend to spot the ands and buts if we’re asked to look at a bit of writing critically.
Today (5th November 2009), we skimmed through the Times, the Daily Telegraph, the Financial Times, the Independent and the Economist. Every single one of them has sentences and paragraphs starting with ‘and’ on almost every page. And we lost count of the amount of sentences that started with ‘but’. There were hundreds – three on the front page of the Guardian alone.
And if they still don’t buy it?
Hey, there are still some people out there who think the world is flat. You can’t win ’em all.
YEAR ONE VOLUNTEERS NEEDED FOR NEWS DAY
WINOL is nearing the launch of its annual production run. We are looking for first year students who are willing to help crew the TV studios on Wednesday - setting up and controlling the lighting, helping control the mixing in the control room and operating the cameras under direction. If you are available 2.30pm on Wednesday through to the live bulletin at 4pm - 4.30pm (this week guest edited by Ian Anderson, ex-editor of the BBC main evening news)then please contact Rich Taylor, Production Editor, WINOL - Taylor.rich10@googlemail.com. We would give you training on Tuesday 2pm. Email first and then come to the newsroom and we will give you studio operations and camera training. This is a great way to see a news bulletin being put together and - on this occassion - under the leadership of one of the BBC's top journalists, so it is a bit of an opportunity actually. THE DUMMY TEMPLATE FOR THE WINOL SITE IS HERE.
Sunday, 8 November 2009
TOP WINCHESTER BLOGS
I read every blog over the weekend. A lot of them are really excellent. I also measured the traffic as measured by Alexa. If you go to Alexa you can download a 'toolbar' which will measure the traffic of any site you visit. The measure is the rank whereby the simple No 1 means the most visited site on the web (I think that might be Google) and 10 millionth means the 10 millionth most popular website in the world. It is rare for a personal blog to be in the top 1 million. Anyway here are the top ranking blogs by traffic. There are other blogs which I think are just as good - or perhaps even better in terms of content. But these are the top ranking at the moment:
01. Maxine Erasmus (2.7)
02. Rich Taylor (3.3)
03. Vron Frydel (3.6)
04. Matt Clifford (4.1)
05. Ben King (4.5)
06. Kayleigh James (4.7)
07. Dale Gornal (4.7)
08. Andrew Giddings (5.2)
09. Seb Farris (5.2)
10. Julie Cordier (5.3)
(another excellent blog but with less traffic: Jenni Koetsier (7.2).
Any blog below 10 (million probably has no traffic at all).
Most readers of these blogs are probably other students on the course, so the first years are getting a lot of readers simply because there are more 'eyeballs' available. Factors like position on the page is probably significant. The top ranking blogs are probably because I have recommended them on the messageboard as useful blogs. There is a lesson there, if you get a recommendation (a 'link in') from another blog (such as the Winchester messageboard) that will give you a lot of traffic. Also if you post 'linkbait' on your site, such as useful notes or exclusive 'how to' guides (as both Maxine and Rich have done) then this will get you traffic.
Beyond this there is the whole question of 'off page' search engine optimisation. The key to this is:
(1) Submit your site to the Google directory, the Yahoo directory and all other web directories. You especially need to submit your blog top the DMOZ directory. A listing there will lead to a huge leap in traffic. The snag is that you might have to wait a year or more until you are registered there (human directory quality assessors will read it - one reason why DMOZ sends so much traffic is that only quality sites are allowed in - but many of your blogs are good enough certainly. So the sooner you do this the better. It is getting harder and harder to be allowed into DMOZ, so if you wait it might never happen.
(2) Leave messages on other people's blogs. You should go round all the blogs in all years and leave a message - a bit more than 'hi - great blog' (this is called 'comment spam' don't do that) - then you will normally automatically get a link back to your site. The person whose blog you visited will almost certainly go back to your blog - out of curiosity if nothing else. Go to blogs in the journalism department at Columbia School of Journalism in New York, and other leading UK journalism departments such as City University and Cardiff University. The blogs there can be interesting/useful anyway. The students there will appreciate your comments and are likely to visit your site. This will build your traffic. The people who do this sot of thing will tend to learn a great deal about journalism, make contacts ... and all these good things will automatically lift traffic to your site and create a virtuous circle. I am thinking of doing a "cull" of blogs with traffic under 5 millionth (maybe at Christmas) so we get down to a core of key bloggers. The other blgs we can just then keep going because they are for assessment for course modules. If we had the top 20 blogs (from all years) on the front page all of those would get a lot of traffic because the front page of Winchester Journalism gets up to 500 visitors a day (and growing all the time) and you would all get a slice of that.
(3) Create "linkbait" that your target audience will want to link to, or tell their friends about. The classic thing is Rich Taylor's notes on Joomla. When you make this linkbait, then you need to go round other websites and blogs telling people that you have made these notes. Leave comments on blogs pointing out that you are offering this material. You can also log on to Wikipedia and leave a link there. I am doing this myself for the first year Journalism Now material.
(4) Explore websites that are about search engine optimisation (SEO) - there's lots on the web, and sites with titles like 'how to get more traffic to your blog'. SEO is a key skill in the new form of journalism that is emerging and you are lucky enough to be there right at the start of it all, so you have a huge opportunity to become the first generation of journalists (or information brokers or whatever it is that journalists will become in the future). If doing SEO on your blog became a bit of a hobby, then that would be good. I am aiming to create an environment of friendly o-operative competition to see who can get the highest Alexa ranking (and then - a little further down the line - the best Google Page Rank an d best Search Engine Return Position - SERP - but more of that later). Obviously at the WINOL Xmas party we can have an awards ceremony for the highest ranking blogs.
MEANWHILE....
I have also read all the first year Journalism Now pieces - excellent, with a few quibbles here and there on my part. Everyone has passed that part of the course - 25 percent of the credit for that introduction to journalism module - some with very high marks, some by a narrower margin. But no absolute disasters. It was all about technically accurate English and these pieces are pretty much completely free of errors, though the sylistics are weak. You are moving on to style now with Evans, etc. Please note that this feedback was given within days of you posting up the material. The feedback was instant (we need that to be noted at some point) as is the feedback on work for WINOL (year two and three). The actual marks you record we are not allowed to tell you until well in to the New Year, because it has to be brought together with everything else.
ALSO...
I worked all weekend on the Joomla CMS system (2nd / 3rd will understand what this means). The template has been largely de-bugged and greatly improved. In technical terms we are good to go for a full written version of the WINOL site as well as the scheduled TV bulletin. Ian Anderson is guest editor again this Wednesday. FIRST YEARS - can we have a couple of volunteers to film an interview with Ian Anderson if you have any time on Wednesday, during he day.
01. Maxine Erasmus (2.7)
02. Rich Taylor (3.3)
03. Vron Frydel (3.6)
04. Matt Clifford (4.1)
05. Ben King (4.5)
06. Kayleigh James (4.7)
07. Dale Gornal (4.7)
08. Andrew Giddings (5.2)
09. Seb Farris (5.2)
10. Julie Cordier (5.3)
(another excellent blog but with less traffic: Jenni Koetsier (7.2).
Any blog below 10 (million probably has no traffic at all).
Most readers of these blogs are probably other students on the course, so the first years are getting a lot of readers simply because there are more 'eyeballs' available. Factors like position on the page is probably significant. The top ranking blogs are probably because I have recommended them on the messageboard as useful blogs. There is a lesson there, if you get a recommendation (a 'link in') from another blog (such as the Winchester messageboard) that will give you a lot of traffic. Also if you post 'linkbait' on your site, such as useful notes or exclusive 'how to' guides (as both Maxine and Rich have done) then this will get you traffic.
Beyond this there is the whole question of 'off page' search engine optimisation. The key to this is:
(1) Submit your site to the Google directory, the Yahoo directory and all other web directories. You especially need to submit your blog top the DMOZ directory. A listing there will lead to a huge leap in traffic. The snag is that you might have to wait a year or more until you are registered there (human directory quality assessors will read it - one reason why DMOZ sends so much traffic is that only quality sites are allowed in - but many of your blogs are good enough certainly. So the sooner you do this the better. It is getting harder and harder to be allowed into DMOZ, so if you wait it might never happen.
(2) Leave messages on other people's blogs. You should go round all the blogs in all years and leave a message - a bit more than 'hi - great blog' (this is called 'comment spam' don't do that) - then you will normally automatically get a link back to your site. The person whose blog you visited will almost certainly go back to your blog - out of curiosity if nothing else. Go to blogs in the journalism department at Columbia School of Journalism in New York, and other leading UK journalism departments such as City University and Cardiff University. The blogs there can be interesting/useful anyway. The students there will appreciate your comments and are likely to visit your site. This will build your traffic. The people who do this sot of thing will tend to learn a great deal about journalism, make contacts ... and all these good things will automatically lift traffic to your site and create a virtuous circle. I am thinking of doing a "cull" of blogs with traffic under 5 millionth (maybe at Christmas) so we get down to a core of key bloggers. The other blgs we can just then keep going because they are for assessment for course modules. If we had the top 20 blogs (from all years) on the front page all of those would get a lot of traffic because the front page of Winchester Journalism gets up to 500 visitors a day (and growing all the time) and you would all get a slice of that.
(3) Create "linkbait" that your target audience will want to link to, or tell their friends about. The classic thing is Rich Taylor's notes on Joomla. When you make this linkbait, then you need to go round other websites and blogs telling people that you have made these notes. Leave comments on blogs pointing out that you are offering this material. You can also log on to Wikipedia and leave a link there. I am doing this myself for the first year Journalism Now material.
(4) Explore websites that are about search engine optimisation (SEO) - there's lots on the web, and sites with titles like 'how to get more traffic to your blog'. SEO is a key skill in the new form of journalism that is emerging and you are lucky enough to be there right at the start of it all, so you have a huge opportunity to become the first generation of journalists (or information brokers or whatever it is that journalists will become in the future). If doing SEO on your blog became a bit of a hobby, then that would be good. I am aiming to create an environment of friendly o-operative competition to see who can get the highest Alexa ranking (and then - a little further down the line - the best Google Page Rank an d best Search Engine Return Position - SERP - but more of that later). Obviously at the WINOL Xmas party we can have an awards ceremony for the highest ranking blogs.
MEANWHILE....
I have also read all the first year Journalism Now pieces - excellent, with a few quibbles here and there on my part. Everyone has passed that part of the course - 25 percent of the credit for that introduction to journalism module - some with very high marks, some by a narrower margin. But no absolute disasters. It was all about technically accurate English and these pieces are pretty much completely free of errors, though the sylistics are weak. You are moving on to style now with Evans, etc. Please note that this feedback was given within days of you posting up the material. The feedback was instant (we need that to be noted at some point) as is the feedback on work for WINOL (year two and three). The actual marks you record we are not allowed to tell you until well in to the New Year, because it has to be brought together with everything else.
ALSO...
I worked all weekend on the Joomla CMS system (2nd / 3rd will understand what this means). The template has been largely de-bugged and greatly improved. In technical terms we are good to go for a full written version of the WINOL site as well as the scheduled TV bulletin. Ian Anderson is guest editor again this Wednesday. FIRST YEARS - can we have a couple of volunteers to film an interview with Ian Anderson if you have any time on Wednesday, during he day.
Friday, 6 November 2009
Year One - joint with American Studies
I noticed via Margot Huysman's blog (year one) that the American Studies degree is starting to teach using blogs in a similar way to journalism. This is great news because the theory side of the journalism course and the American studies course have a lot of overlap. So that is great. We lost contact with Margo's Blog for a while. It is here Margot Huysman. It is a very good blog, and links journalism history to American history which is a very good thing since - we shall assert - journalism is a mainly (not entirely) American thing - especially when you consider WR Hearst etc in the 20th century, and Mr Murdoch right now. Go contact the American Studies people and invite 'em to the blog party.
Year One - Journalism Now
Year One - I am reading through the blogs right now - they continue to be very, very good. I am measuring the Alexa traffic rank on each one - this is a guide to how many visitors you get not in absolute terms (which does not mean much) but relative to all other sites on the web. So I am just leaving the Alexa score there basically "1" means in the top one million (that would be excellent) and 10 means in the top 10 million. So an Alexa number of 6.5 means in the top 6.5 million websites in the world. I can tell you all of ways to increase your traffic - we will get to that soon in the course. In the meantime I am snowed under, so I won't comment much on blogs.
But I am reading them. I will also get the Journalism Now thing sorted over the weekend. That could attract a lot of traffic to both the coursesite and your personal blogs.In the meantime Charlotte has blogged up some useful notes on the philosopher David Hume. He is often bracketed together with Locke as one of the empiricists and moved on Locke's idea of synthetic ideas arising from sense impressions even further.
We will look a Hume in a couple of weeks as part of Adam Smith and Economics, if I am not mistaken. But Charlotte's notes are useful, though she needs to over them and get all the names right at the new 'precision english' standard. I'm not one to talk, but there you are. Charlotte on David Hume
In the meantime there's Hume here in this terrific series of TV talks which is like a video alternative to reading Russell - it is like Russell in video form.
But I am reading them. I will also get the Journalism Now thing sorted over the weekend. That could attract a lot of traffic to both the coursesite and your personal blogs.In the meantime Charlotte has blogged up some useful notes on the philosopher David Hume. He is often bracketed together with Locke as one of the empiricists and moved on Locke's idea of synthetic ideas arising from sense impressions even further.
We will look a Hume in a couple of weeks as part of Adam Smith and Economics, if I am not mistaken. But Charlotte's notes are useful, though she needs to over them and get all the names right at the new 'precision english' standard. I'm not one to talk, but there you are. Charlotte on David Hume
In the meantime there's Hume here in this terrific series of TV talks which is like a video alternative to reading Russell - it is like Russell in video form.
Thursday, 5 November 2009
Copyright law - (yr 1 and yr 3)
Here's an article I mentioned that I wrote a while ago that might help you remember some of the points... COPYRIGHT LAW
Year One - shorthand timetable changes
Friday 13 November - 1 - 3 in TAB9
Tuesday 17 November 4 - 6.30 (NOTE CHANGE OF DAY - ROOM TO BE ANNOUNCED - keith.edwards@winchester.ac.uk)
No lesson on 27 November
Friday 4 December - 1 -3 in TAB9
No lesson on 11 December
Friday 18 December - 1 - 3 in TAB9
End of Term and end of Shorthand.
Tuesday 17 November 4 - 6.30 (NOTE CHANGE OF DAY - ROOM TO BE ANNOUNCED - keith.edwards@winchester.ac.uk)
No lesson on 27 November
Friday 4 December - 1 -3 in TAB9
No lesson on 11 December
Friday 18 December - 1 - 3 in TAB9
End of Term and end of Shorthand.
Year Two: Northcliffe Notes
I have now uploaded my HCJ2 notes on Northcliffe. You can get to them via the HCJ2 page on the sub-domain, or directly by this link. There will also be a Northcliffe section of the Journalism Now (mini-wikipedia) which I am at the moment trying to find time to set up on the site (probably do that this weekend). Grant - where is the Ian Anderson film? Can you finish that and get it to me please.
Wednesday, 4 November 2009
Radio presenter
Annette writes:
Just to confirm – Steve Power from Wave 105 will be coming in as a guest speaker on Thursday, 19th November, from 11:00am-1:00pm, in The Vault.
The Vault seats up to 140, apparently, so there’s plenty of room for all! Do please bring groups along, and encourage as many as possible to come.
As well as being the breakfast presenter for Wave, (which covers a region of well over one and a half million adult), Steve also trains rising celebs in how to deal with the media, so it should be of interest to all on several levels.
The link below is a local newspaper blurb about him, just for a bit of background.
http://www.chichester.co.uk/newsfeatures/INTERVIEW-Steve-Power-and-the.4978440.jp
Just to confirm – Steve Power from Wave 105 will be coming in as a guest speaker on Thursday, 19th November, from 11:00am-1:00pm, in The Vault.
The Vault seats up to 140, apparently, so there’s plenty of room for all! Do please bring groups along, and encourage as many as possible to come.
As well as being the breakfast presenter for Wave, (which covers a region of well over one and a half million adult), Steve also trains rising celebs in how to deal with the media, so it should be of interest to all on several levels.
The link below is a local newspaper blurb about him, just for a bit of background.
http://www.chichester.co.uk/newsfeatures/INTERVIEW-Steve-Power-and-the.4978440.jp
CITIZEN KANE
The screening of Citizen Kane will take place in the newly cool and comfortable HJLT at 3pm tomorrow (Thursday). It will be a full quality DVD in glorious Wagnerian wrap around sound and not a crappy youtube clip! We are showing this film as part of the YEAR TWO HCJ course and it is required that year two attend this, so it can be viewed and then discussed in a group. But year one and year three students, and indeed students on any courses, are very welcome to attend the screening.
Why are we showing this film? Citizen Kane, first of all, is a major cultural artefact of early 20th century western culture, because it is routinely described as a masterpiece of early-ish cinema, and is rarely out of the list of the best American films of the 20th century. In this respect is as important as Germinal was to the realist movement in 19th century European literature (a topic previously discussed in HCJ2) or the essays of Addison to the early 18th century (an HCJ 1 topic). Kane is full of ideas and themes from the HCJ2 course so far this year - not least Freudianism 'rosebud!' but most particularly of course the New York newspaper circulation wars of the 1900s and of course the life and career of the film's protagonist W R Hearst (the thinly disguised model for Citizen Kane itself). Citizen Kane was made in the 1930s and it has amazing prescience in predicting the danger in the new and emerging mass media as a means of mass (standing up for 'the propaganda. In terms of politics Kane is an archetypal demagogue, and his populist posturing on the side of 'the little guy' against the Big Corporation (ie The Jews and his great rival Pulitzer) and at the same time (Union Bully Bosses) - ie the organised trade union very accurately presages the appeal of fascism (we saw in HCJ2 last week the connections between Rothermere and the British Union of Fascists, and with directly Hitler. We are looking at fascism and totalitarianism next in HCJ2 (the next huge theme we are working up to is George Orwell and the philosophy of language (post Logical Positivism). It should also be said that there are all manner of culture references in Citizen Kane including, for examople, Steinbeck and Keynesian economics, Wagnerian opera... the film is an education in its own right if you followed all the thousand and one themes. There are also very significant cineographic breakthroughs, such as the use day-for-night lighting and deep focus (I dont fully understand the technicalities of this, but Media Production and Film Production types seem to regard Kane as the the starting point for all midern film technique and camerawork - so it can be viewed from that point of view as well) Beyond that the film is simply very enjoyable and entertaining even after all these decades. If you have seen it before, don't worry come and view it again because (after the Freud lecture at least) you will see more in it, and get more from it. Like any significant cultural artefact, it rewards being seen many times over. I would assert that you are not culturally literate if you have not seen Citizen Kane - many people in the film making world for example know it almost line by line, and it is 'ripped off' in all sorts of later films (and I am afraid to say subsequent US presidents who may have adapted Kane 'Totalitarian Theatrics' - see the amazing scene of Kane in (something like) an opera house addressing a rally with a spotlight on him against the backdrop of a massive photo of himself. So the annual collective witnessing of Citzen Kane is now inaugurated as a semi-religious annual ritual on HCJ with all students welcome. Not to be missed.
Also here is a link to a learned website (for people who have had the HCJ2 lecture) tracing all the links between WR Heart and Kane. Extremely useful.
Kane it seems (for example) was the model for Montgomery Burns in The Simpsons (appropriately enough since the creator of the series has said that he based Bart Simpson on The Yellow Kid (HCJ will understand this). The Simpsons may be old hat now, but it is still the most valuable TV property in the world and made all the momey that allowed/is allowing Rupert Murdoch (very much the Citizen Kane of today) conquer a large chunk of the American media, and therefore the world's media. So this screening is not just a lecture. It is an event!
Year Three: Rich's Notes and some follow up talk on SEO
Rich Taylor's excellent crib notes on how to operate the Joomla Content Management System (CMS) are here. These are mainly of interest to year three students on the production desk at the moment. They are very clear, very useful. 'How to' crib notes on technical stuff are very useful for building traffic to your blog (re: SEO) so the more of these you can all make on things like - I dunno - how to correctly frame shots when doing video, then you will get a lot of credit and a lot of traffic and page rank (eventually). I measured the traffic on Rich's blog and it is now in the top one million (and rising). That is pretty good seeing how the blog is new, has no page rank (yet) - page rank takes ages to get, and you need a lot of in-coming links. The whole university of Winchester is only ranked at 250,000th - and it has page six (just because it is a university). Most other student blogs rank from 10 millionth (that's the lowest that Alexa will measure) up to 5 millionth. I mention this because in production - especially - there are times in the day when you are just waiting for things to happen, and I personally find that side of thing exhausting. Then since WINOL is basically all held together with bits of string and elastic bands - there will be moments when tutors are of dealing with some unforseen crisis or other. So doing a bit of SEO - either in the form of making these 'how to' items ('linkbait') or just in say going to Wikipedia and linking from that to your blog, or submitting your blogto search engine directories or emailing other blogs and doing 'link exchange' is a sort of harmless/useful thing to do.
On this sort of theme we have now got booked access to the studio on Tuesdays so if anyone wants to practice in there, or just do any photography with good lighting, then that's available. Speak I think first of all to Brian. We filmed a very nice thing last year with students reading out the NUJ code of conduct last year. It was a nice thing for the show reel, so anything like that.
On this sort of theme we have now got booked access to the studio on Tuesdays so if anyone wants to practice in there, or just do any photography with good lighting, then that's available. Speak I think first of all to Brian. We filmed a very nice thing last year with students reading out the NUJ code of conduct last year. It was a nice thing for the show reel, so anything like that.
Tuesday, 3 November 2009
YEAR ONE: Changes to timetable
We have changed the timetable for introduction to practical journalism (Thursdays and Fridays). It has been simplified and now makes much more sense. Please check the details. Contrary to rumours shorthand will continue on Friday afternoons, but there are a couple of weeks when Sheila Mutch can't make it. We will keep you posted.
Monday, 2 November 2009
YEAR THREE and RECENT GRADS - The Next Step - leapfrog those years on the lower rungs...
Please find attached the advertisement for the ITV News Group Journalism Traineeship 2010, which appeared in the Media Guardian and on a variety of websites today.
Due to recent circumstances at ITV News Group the recruitment process and start date for the 2010 scheme has been delayed and we appreciate this is out of step for many of your 2009-10 students. However, we hope you will be able to circulate our advertisement to those students who graduated in the summer and may still be looking for opportunities in the industry.
Full details of the structure and content of the traineeship are available to the applicant when they access the ITV Jobs website - www.itvjobs.com/newstrainees - but in brief:
· Applications can only be made using the online application form
· The traineeship is open to applicants over the age of 18 who can demonstrate commitment and enthusiasm for ITV regional news
· The closing date for completed online applications is Friday 20 November 2009.
· Shortlisting will take place in early December.
· Shortlisted candidates will be invited to one day assessment centres at ITV Central, Birmingham, on Monday 11, Tuesday 12 and Wednesday 13 January 2010
· The successful candidates will commence their 12 month programme on Wednesday 24 February 2010.
Thank you very much for your support.
Kind regards
Elaine
Due to recent circumstances at ITV News Group the recruitment process and start date for the 2010 scheme has been delayed and we appreciate this is out of step for many of your 2009-10 students. However, we hope you will be able to circulate our advertisement to those students who graduated in the summer and may still be looking for opportunities in the industry.
Full details of the structure and content of the traineeship are available to the applicant when they access the ITV Jobs website - www.itvjobs.com/newstrainees - but in brief:
· Applications can only be made using the online application form
· The traineeship is open to applicants over the age of 18 who can demonstrate commitment and enthusiasm for ITV regional news
· The closing date for completed online applications is Friday 20 November 2009.
· Shortlisting will take place in early December.
· Shortlisted candidates will be invited to one day assessment centres at ITV Central, Birmingham, on Monday 11, Tuesday 12 and Wednesday 13 January 2010
· The successful candidates will commence their 12 month programme on Wednesday 24 February 2010.
Thank you very much for your support.
Kind regards
Elaine
Innocence Project
These are the groups for the Innocence Project:
Alice, Max, James, Emma
Ben, Mark, Matt, Rich
Leanne, Colin, Liban, Omar
I want to apply for our cases (three) as soon as possible - can someone from each group let me know (a) what kind of case your group wants - ie type of crime (b) what location - ie where the crime happened.
Thanks,
Brian
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