Editor

I was editor for the first news day back of our third year at university. This was my first time being the editor on my own, so I found it challenging but very rewarding.

To prepare for the day, I made sure I found enough stories for the number of groups. I worked this out with the deputy editor by organising everyone into groups, so it was one less thing to arrange in the morning meeting at 8.30am. We split the teams up equally with second and third years so there were balanced strengths in each team. To make sure my stories were as up to date as possible, I checked websites and social media every day to see if there was a new story worth reporting on. I had to think of stories that would be suitable for the students to film.

On news day, after all the groups were happy with their stories and started researching or filming, I recorded a quick video for social media. This involved me introducing myself and explaining what stories we had lined up for our bulletins later on in the day. I thought this was a nice idea as it gets us connected to our followers on social media.

The top stories:

World Mental Health Day
Southampton – Smoke free by 2040
Craig David performing in Southampton
New e-Learning tool to understand Autism
Eco-friendly bus routes
Walktober

I think both the TV and Radio bulletins were well produced and had great content. The 3.30pm bulletin was really successful. It was more stressful than usual because we used a new studio to record in, but once everyone had practised, the bulletin flowed nicely. It included a chroma key, interviews, vox pop’s and good pieces to camera. Therefore, I would say it was a successful bulletin.

I would definitely say it was one of the more challenging days as it was the first news day back. Sometimes it takes a while for everyone to get back into it after a long Summer. Therefore, I found communication was lacking between journalists and the TV/Radio teams. This meant I found myself going between groups a lot throughout the day, which was not a problem and it did work out. However, small problems could have easily been avoided if communication was better. This certainly improved over the weeks after it was discussed in our meetings at the end of the day where we consider what went well and what could have worked better. This helps us develop our skills for the following news day.