The morning meeting

One of the best ways to get experience as a journalist is to, well, act like a journalist. It helps to have equipment and trusted advisors on hand to make sure you don’t libel anyone or miss the best angle.

In the Journalism department at Sheffield University we organise regular ‘newsdays’ for the postgraduate students. They have a meeting to discuss the stories they’ll cover then they’re off! This semester the broadcast students are sharing their newsdays with the print and web students on alternate weeks. They produce:

• Hourly radio bulletins from 10am – 4pm (broadcast students)
• A 15-minute television bulletin at 5pm (broadcast students)
• Live website: JUS News (web and print students on alternate weeks)

I helped the web students – this is how the day panned out.

Morning meeting

The web team met at 9am and student Mike assumed the role of web editor. Everyone had brought at least one story so he made a note on ‘the grid’. Mike and the section editors for news, sport and features then went to a meeting with the broadcast students to see if any of the stories were being covered by both teams and whether students from different courses could pair up to go out.

'The grid' - list of stories to be produced

Liaising

We were joined by three broadcast students who were repurposing audio stories from the hourly radio bulletins. They were re-writing the cue and taking quotes from the story, then posting an audioboo onto the page in the WordPress content management system (CMS).

All the students had to communicate what stories they were writing to ensure there weren’t two versions of the same story. If there was audio or video available then these had to be included into the web story.

Sourcing images

Finding copyright-free images proved to be difficult. We couldn’t just take any old picture from the internet, we had to make sure we had permission to use them.

Quick image fix: In Google image search, choose advanced image search and choose ‘Return images that are labeled for reuse’

‘Are we allowed to have lunch?’

Most students brought their own lunch and munched at their desk. This is a bad habit to start so young, I think they were enjoying the atmosphere too much.

About a third of the students were out on stories at lunchtime, the rest were in the newsroom writing up their pre-prepared stories, doing research or phone interviews.

Coming together

In the afternoon things really started coming together. Students who’d been out were back and writing up stories. Our ‘chief sub editor’ was zipping through live stories checking headlines, spelling, grammar and images. The broadcast students sitting with us were part of the team and confident using the CMS. Multimedia editor Nicolas edited a video for web from rushes sent by a broadcast student.

Fresh homepage

Finally we had enough new stories to completely fill the homepage. Web editor Mike was able to pick the best story and put it as the lead, while the other reporters fought for a space for their story.

Our mantra? “My story needs to go on the homepage because…”

The debrief meeting

5pm! Debrief time

An impressive 31 stories had been produced for the website, almost all had images and we had a video and an audio slideshow. The broadcast students had created 39 minutes of radio news and 15 minutes of TV news.

As ever, there was plenty to discuss and improve on next time, including:

• The web’s slow-ish start. The homepage ought to be completely refreshed by lunchtime
• Web need a picture editor role
• The students need to liaise more closely with each other
• All the TV stories need to be covered online so news output is reflected on all platforms
• A shared document on Google would allow all the students to write down what stories they’re covering and whether they have images/audio/video
• We need to use social media to crowdsource as well as push stories out
• The smallest jobs can take ages!

Communicating effectively is the biggest learning curve during the newsdays.

JUS news website

Screen shot of Sky News story on 10 March 2010

Do you, as I did, look at the image first then let your eye travel up to the headline? How many people don’t look at the headline? You could easily think this chap is Jon Venables – when the entire point of the article is to say he isn’t.

Words are important but visually they’re not as strong as a photo or image on the page.

It’s an obvious choice to put these two photos together but it doesn’t tell the user what the story is. In fact, it actually leads the user to an assumption that is completely wrong.

I think I would have kept the two images apart and had the image of David Calvert first, then further down the page had the image of Jon Venables. Would you place them differently? I’d be interested to think if you think I’m being over-sensitive or I’m right to be on my high horse on this one.

So, how can you tell you’re reading a news article?

The role of a title in a news article is to plainly inform the reader of the story that is about to be told. Within a feature you will spot a punchy title designed to grab your attention and hook/draw you in to read the story. This title is followed by a dramatic introduction which creates questions you want answered and so (they hope) you will read the feature to find them.

News stories are based on serious factual information provided for the reader on a need to know basis. This information is current and of general interest to most readers. A feature piece expands on this idea by focussing on a universal subject and delving deeper into the background of it. This leads to the piece being designed for those who have a specific interest in the topic discussed.

With features providing a broader range of information on a subject they vary in length from a typical news story. A narrative style is usually adopted, with the article taking a story telling format of introducing, detailing and then summing up the story.

News stories are structured in an inverted pyramid format, which means they reach a conclusion once all the information needed has been given to the reader. A feature will have an obvious summing up sentence to make it clear that is the end.

The basics of who, what, and why are always important when writing any type of article but a feature will focus primarily on the human interest of those involved. The personal tone portrays the story from a specific perspective providing an insider view.

To confuse you even more I’m now going to fit this none news article, none feature piece into the style of a feature and provide my concluding sentence. Features allow readers further insight into a topic. They are the close friend who gives you all the extra information you are desperate to know in a clear linear format.

This post was originally published by Jess on Wed, 03/11/2009