I have created this page as a requirement for my fourth year Multimedia Newsroom class, taught by Napier University’s head of journalism, Rachel Dungar. I will use this blog-spot for the duration of the module to post comments and critical reflections on my own news practice as well as industry-wide convergence journalism.
Weekly Diary
Week 1 (29th Sept) – No Class.
Week 2 (6th Oct) – Opted to be part of the radio team. Met with Colin the sound engineer in the radio studio. There are only three of us in the radio team – Kellie, Emma and myself. We went out on campus to find and record a quick story to get used to the mini-disc recording equipment. We interviewed a group of Muslim students about the lack of Halal food in the canteen.
Week 3 (13th Oct) – Attended the lecture on Multimedia Reporting. Met in the studio afterwards with Colin. Jamie joined our group. Colin taught us how to record a phone interview for radio. We then started to edit the Halal story we recorded last week. I had never used Audacity before as I was studying abroad the year Diane taught the radio class. The software was easy to pick up – familiarised myself with basic functions such as cutting tracks, pasting audio, normalising, amplifying etc.
Week 4 (20th Oct) – Our radio group met at 9 a.m. to collect the recording equipment before heading out on the road to get our stories. I interviewed the owner of the Blue Moon Cafe, Colin Dempsey, about his popular gay hangout before we jumped into a group discussion with him about the problems Edinburgh trams are causing. He agreed to a follow up interview if we ever decided to pursue the story or begin a student protest. Today I realised the importance of conducting interviews in a relatively quiet environment – as I hadn’t planned this interview it was quite on-the-spot and therefore the surroundings weren’t ideal. The audio quality consequently suffered. Next time I will make sure to plan interviews ahead of time ensure the sound is good enough.
Week 5 (27th Oct) – I scheduled an interview this morning with Stonewall Scotland to talk about the current legislation on same-sex adoption and fertilisation for later on this semester. I am working on a story which follows the progress of the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Bill and its implications on the gay community in Scotland. Revisited my blog and re-vamped it. I used it in year 3 for the online journalism class with Robert Dawson-Scott. Added some of my recent work.
Week 6 (3rd Nov) –
Checked out some books from the library on interviewing for radio and radio as a news medium. Read up on interviewing techniques and phone interviews. Gathered together some potential references to use in the reflective essay portion of this module. This is the first time I have ever studied radio, and I’m enjoying it so far. I’ve decided to write an essay on pirate radio in the 60s and 70s for my media regulation class this semester!
Week 7 (10th Nov) – Keeping my eye out for good stories to cover for the news days…Started browsing www.morgefile.com for some copyright-free images to use for my blog – got a few, with permission from the photographer. I’ve found this to be a great resource for online blogging.
A good example of a pic I found on MorgueFile, and used in my blog.
Week 8 (17th Nov) – Started thinking about potential stories for next week’s first news day. Considered doing something relevant to the run up to Christmas, like drink driving statistics, what the police were doing to prevent drink driving, under 18s being served in pubs etc… I contacted various organisations for more info – the Youth Café in Edinburgh were very willing to talk to me about the ClubZone+ initiative which I had been researching – a scheme set up by the local authority involving many organisations such as the police, schools, bus services etc. It aims to provide safe club nights for under 18s.
Week 9 (24th Nov) – Live Rolling News Day – ‘Know the Score’.
This week was by far the most stressful. I started off with the intention to follow up on my ClubZone+ story, and found a press release on the Lothian and Borders website about their plans for the scheme. I called the Lothian and Borders press officer, Holly Gilfether, who gave me info on the campaign but advised me of a more recent development she was involved with – she gave me a good tip-off that a cocaine awareness weekend was launching in town and invited me along. Luckily, the launch was in the morning of the news day so I abandoned my alcohol story and ran with this one instead. Holly had arranged for me to interview the police officer involved with the anti-cocaine initiative, and everything went smoothly. I also managed to interview a representative from Know the Score. However, as Emma and I were sharing a mini-disc, we accidentally taped over my police interview when we went to record hers. So, I panicked a bit, returned to the studio and tried to re-interview the police officer. But unfortunately he was no longer available. So, I had to make do with the interviews I had and scraped together a vox pop. It was all very frustrating knowing that the best interview I got was now lost L It was a good learning experience though – I’ll know next time to be extra careful when recording new tracks onto a disc already carrying data.
Week 10 (1st Dec) – I interviewed Calum Irving at Stonewall for our mock news day today. Had no technical issues with the equipment but the interview was about 30mins long so it was very hard to edit and condense down. Note for next week: have very concise questions and take more ownership of the interview.
Week 11 (8th Dec) -Live Rolling News Day – ‘Festive Blood Shortage’. I decided to go with this idea because I keep hearing the ‘give blood’ adverts on the radio – I noticed that in the run up to Christmas ScotBlood really go to town with their campaigning. So I arranged an interview with their publicity manager (Jennifer Wilson) to find out more. She was so helpful, and very well media trained judging from her input to my package. She gave me a bag full of stuff to dish out to the class – t-shirts, stickers etc. We put the t-shirts to use as soon as we stepped out the door of the donation centre – Emma posed for some pictures for me!
Emma posing!
This was a simple story to edit, as both interviews were brief and extremely concise! I am becoming quite familiar with Audacity now so I‘m finding that the editing process is a lot more enjoyable than it has been in previous weeks! The only issue I had today was noticing half an hour before the interview that the batteries in the mini-disc were dying, so had to buy some last minute. Note for next week – have a pack of backups!
Week 12 (15th Dec) – No class…news day for alternate group.
Week 13 (5th Jan) - Live Rolling News Day – ‘Law Tightens for the LGBT Community’. I originally wanted to do a story on animal rights and what the various animal protection agencies were doing to improve conditions for animals in 2009. I interviewed Advocates for Animals and even managed to get an interview with the head of the Scottish SPCA.
MSP Patrick Harvie
However, Charlotte suggested I cover the very current legislation reform in the gay community – she had planned to cover this herself for print but as she was elected editor again this week she couldn’t leave Merchiston for interviews and didn’t want the story to go to waste. So I agreed and through some miracle managed to get the interviews I needed for the animal story and the Offences Bill story all before 12:30. As I wouldn’t have time to edit both by the deadline, I put the animal story aside for the time begin (I may return to it later, possibly for next semester’s class) and concentrated on getting the Offences story up on the website before the radio deadline. It all went very well J
Week 14 (12th Jan) – No Class as assignment due tomorrow!
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