WINCHESTER NEWS ONLINE
Winchester News Online (WINOL) is a community news, sports and features service produced by BA Journalism and MA Journalism students in simulated live conditions at the University of Winchester.
The project was conceived and created for use at a variety of universities. The effectiveness of the project was recognised by the Broadcast Journalism Training Council (BJTC) and won the BJTC’s award for Innovation in Journalism Education for two years running.
WINOL is published once a week on Thursday – coinciding with a broadcast – or ‘webcast’ - live television news bulletin. It can be updated constantly. Immediately after publication the students and staff gather for a weekly debrief – just as they would do in commercial broadcasting or on a newspaper.
The target broadcast and online audience is the student and staff community at the University and, to a lesser extent, the surrounding community. But the project is an exact scale model of a working newspaper, magazine or TV station. We aim to reach at least ten percent of the target audience with each update or publication. By doing that we would in fact achieve a higher market penetration.
The aim is achieve the highest number of page impression “hits” possible by serving this audience and following an appropriate “news agenda”. But this must be done by observing the highest moral and ethical standards. The Winchester Journalism ‘Fatal Errors’ system applies.
All the major components of a ramified news/features site such as BBC News Online will be produced and students will have the opportunity to try out a variety of roles and, for purposes of assessment and portfolio building.
The editorial structure, production schedule and site design are supplied and are fixed, as are the various editorial roles to be taken on by students.
There are three groups of role (or ‘jobs’) – (1) journalism executive and broadcast production (2) news and (3) feature writing and (3). During the course of the project students will rotate jobs (at least once) and must undertake “jobs” from at least two of these three groups.
Students are required to work on the site for either or three days per week from 9 am until 5pm based in Winchester News Online newsroom (TAB9) and television journalism studio or working outside the office on specific and notified reporting, writing, filming or production activities. The time involved includes teaching/training sessions, tutorials, briefings, de-briefings and, where appropriate, editorial management meetings of various sorts.
Some students may find that they will need or want to attend three days a week if appropriate. The project will not normally take place on Thursday or Friday when other types of study will be undertaken for the course (such as introduction to journalism in semester one; and media law).
The exact pattern of your working week will be determined by your choice of role(s) within the project; by the nature of the production schedule and possibly by agreement with other students working within their roles on the project.
A high degree of reliability and team working is required by this project and that will be reflected in the assessment criteria.
Follow this link to see the roles within the project set out in graphic form.
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