WINOL Weeks 7 and 8

WINOL in week six proved to be a nightmare. What made it worse was that we all failed to perform in front of our guest editor, our biggest guest editor of the year, Sky's Rob Kirk.
There was confusion between the news team, sports was unusually disorganised and not one person from production was in until at least 11am on the Wednesday. Rob described the organisation and the running of the bulletin as a "shambles."
That night I sat round Hannah Keegan's, WINOL's very own features reporter and we discussed the day's events. We came to the conclusion that due to the lack of organisation within production and a lack of knowledge from the rest of WINOL in operating equipment in the studio and the gallery, we believed that a day just committed to production would be hugely beneficial to everybody interested. Would you believe it? Just 48 hours later, on the message board, WINOL's week seven had been cancelled in order to partake in a day full of production where everybody involved could understand the equipment and practice and perfect what we would learn.
We did 4 bulletins throughout the day which included changing and practicing roles including presenters, directors plus gallery and studio roles. My first role was to shadow Jon on the vision mixer which at first looked like just a load of confused old buttons jumbled up on a board, then when Jon explained its functions and the idea of doing it correctly at the right time on each screen I became pretty content with it. The second bulletin I took the reins and I became comfortable with the role with no hesitation. If anything it was something I enjoyed doing and I hope to come across again sometime in the near future because I felt confident with it and I felt like it was something I could do really well with even more practice. For the third bulletin we had to go on something else and even though the idea of presenting did appeal to me, I wanted to get to know the equipment in the gallery more so that my experience in there could prove beneficial to future bulletins.
Next I chose to shadow Joey on sound and this looked relatively simple to understand master making sure the audio levels were peaking between 4 and 6 for both presenters and VTs, and making sure that when recording the presenters were muted when VTs were rolling and VTs were muted when presenter or presenters were talking to avoid any errors. Joey seemed to have the hang of it, and in the fourth bulletin with help from Joey and Chanin I did what I thought was a relatively good job. It was a job that requires a lot of attention and understanding though. One lapse in concentration to result in a major mistake so the challenge to make it perfect on first go was always tough but it was a smoothly ran bulletin and for the third and fourth bulletins, I will give a lot of credit to Justina and Charlotte for their directing skills, who in their first tries both seemed calm, confident and organised in what they wanted done in the gallery and in the studio.
I enjoyed week seven. It was a change from the usual routine and I had learnt a huge amount, and it made me want to do well both on news and in the gallery for WINOL. I was intrigued to what I could learn next in there, and despite it being a long day, the decision to run a production day was a decision well made by Chris and Brian!

Week eight ensued and I was full of motivation for this week. We had yet another change in news editor. Due to Claire's plans to journey to Holland in the coming days, we needed a replacement nd who better than Joey Lipscombe. The news team's very own political correspondant was keen to get the team morale up, and get the team working hard to produce a strong bulletin. Despite not finding a story of concrete, the luck I needed came to me at 2pm on Monday. The Silver Hill Project - a £100m development scheme to rejuvinate part of Winchester's town centre. The principle scrutiny meetin was at 4pm on that afternoon and as the only member of the public, I became highly interested in the project. Having taken the names of particular councillors making noticeable contributions to the meeting, I returned home that evening and emailed the councillors I wanted to talk to. Fortunately for me, two of them replied, city council leader Kelsie Learney and Conservative councillor Stephen Godfrey.
I met Cllr Godfrey at midday before rushing to the Guildhallshortly after to meet Cllr Learney who took me on a tour of the proposed site for development and even handed me an information pack on the scheme itself. They were both massively keen on the scheme and felt it was huge for the future of Winchester. My only issue now was obtaining balance to my story, and after a day of filming interviews, GVs and making phone calls I had no balance by Tuesday evening. I chanced my arm in the hope one person would reply and at 11pm on Tuesday, labour politician Patrick Davies had contacted me and was keen to talk to me. An interview was agreed for the next day, and it gave me the perfect opportunity to test myself in filming, intervieweing, editing and exporting my package in a short amount of time ready for the bulletin.
I met Patrick and was back in the newsroom by 12pm, however due to unforeseen circumstances the bulletin had to be put back a couple of hours meaning I would not make the bulletin, even though I had met the original deadline of 2pm with time to spare.
One criticism I had of myself was that I didn't work quick enough. I spent too much time perfecting my filming and making sure I had enough on Tuesday, meaning that any opportunity to gain a balance on the same day or to even get all of the diting done that day was a no hoper. It's been a constant downfall of my work in this first term, and even though I can work quickly to meet the deadlines, I have to work quicker if I want to be competing for top story on the bulletin. It's a learning curve, but something I will learn from. As for Joey's first week in charge, he followed the same route as Claire in her first week; a supportive, encouraging role showing good faith in his team and he was well rewarded with good packages and stories.
My written article in as soon as and my package was completed and put on my own personal youtube channel, which I believe can become a very important peronsal portfolio for me in years to come. As for WINOL, it was another smoothly run bulletin, with a few standard hitches here and there, Mr Lipscombe started his first week in charge in impressive fashion.

WINOL Weeks 5 and 6

Firstly apologies for the huge delay in both WINOL and HCJ blogs. But here they are, back in motion!
WINOL saw a change in news editor for the first time this term in week five. It had been decided early on Monday that Kayleigh would now be entertainment editor, while former presenter Claire Isbrandij took over the news editor role. At first I was a little sceptical of the change, as was every other reporter, however it seemed to be a breath of fresh air and a new lease of life on WINOL come Wednesday night.
Remarkably, everybody produced a package and we were the most prepared I had ever seen us. Claire was confident, supportive and very well prepared. This is no dig at Kayleigh, as I was more than happy with Kayleigh in the role, but it just came across that the change was one that was needed, or in fact was more than welcome.
My story this week was one I had prepared for early. It was about a parking row between residents and the city council. The council were set to increase the price of parking on privately owned land to residents in Bar End, and this increase was set to go from £200 to £480 in the space of five years.
On the Sunday I walked up to Bar End and Barfield Close to find the 10 parking spaces in question, and with the hope of finding residents who would be willing to talk to me on camera. I found a woman who had been affected by the parking rise and at first she was not keen about the idea as she wasn not keen on the idea of talking on camera and was unsure as to WINOL. I assured her that having her on camera would make the story the best it could be and after talk about the spaces themselves and discussion of the council's decision. The woman agreed to meet me on Tuesday morning to answer a few cameras on question. In this time on the Sunday afternoon I had managed to talk to two of her neighbours who were far from happy with the council's decision. One of them in particular was very vocal on her opinions about the charges and I had also obtained an interview with both of them on the Monday meaning I could begin preparations for filming, interviews and GVs alike.
I set about gaining an interview from city council leader Kelsie Learney however she was not available for comment on camera so I had to expand elsewhere. Cllr Eleanor Bell who supported the decision taken by the council was willing to talk and I gladly got an interview with her behind the Guildhall late on Tuesday, just hours after interviewing Bar End's local councillor Ian Tait who felt the residents had been treated "unfairly".
The majority of the piece had been edited from Tuesday evening late into Wednesday morning and it was all done. The piece was finally completed and I felt it was a piece that I could be impressed with because of the effort I had put in and because of the luck in getting somany interviews, along with 3 statements from councillors via email. Unfortunately, due to the high volume of news stories this week, my story was dropped last minute and again I missed out on the bulletin in disappointing fashion.

If I found week five disappointing, week six was sure to be even more of a disappointment for myself. I found a story on an old Victorian house, one of the oldest standing houses in Winchester was set to be redeveloped into new houses and flats. It doesn't sound like much of a story on first impression, but the angle I was going to for was for a city council who highly encourages Winchester's historical outlook, why is it destroying one of its oldest buildings and destroying part of the city's cultural heritage. Unfortunately, because the decision to redevelop was ongoing, nobody could comment on it and the story fell through early on Tuesday. Luckily that was not the end of my contribution to WINOL for the week. Andy had to go to court on Tuesday afternoon and I was asked if I could go along to offer any assistance, filming, listening and taking any notes for him to assist with his story. The story Andy was looking to follow up was two acts of exposure in Andover, however beforehand we believed there to be a theft involved but this failed to come to fruition.
We left court after a few hours listening in and taking solid notes, and Andy wanted to film his piece to camera. However, we had a major problem with the light. It was very dark and any light available was artificial so we had to make do with what we had at our disposal. It took a good hour before we had filmed a decent shot of Andy, and what did not help was the constant passing of cars providing un-needed background noise on frequent occasions. However with hard work and good communication we managed to work together to enable Andy the footage he needed before both returning to the newsroom for any editing which should take place.

WINOL News Package

Here is my news package on this week's WINOL.

Winchester City Council's Silver hill project is back on track after a new developer declared an interest in taking over the renaissance.

HCJ - Thus Spoke Zarathustra

After being told there are some questionable blogs and suspicions of plagiarism I have decided to re-write my recent HCJ seminar blogs to avoid any errors or mistakes I may or may not have made. I will attach any sources I use as references at the bottom of the blog.

This is my new blog on Frederick Nietzsche's "Thus Spoke Zarathustra"........

Frederick Nietzsche was one of the most inspiring philosophers of the 19th century. His works had a huge impact and largely widespread in the 20th century. However, understanding his writings is rather complex.

Nietzsche believed in the time of modern movements, people begun to break away from the former social boundaries. Before hand society had been under severe difficulties from the Church, and hence Nietzsche along with other major modernists believed society to be weak. Nietzsche firmly believed the only way to become greater was to look into your own being and develop yourself.

Nietzsche hated his peers and one who were superior to him because they had something which he did not. He believed Christianity gave people a lie. The lie being that the belief in their book would not give them any kind of reward. Yet, to the majority, the religion was simply a way of being involved in something that they believed would benefit them before the end.

Nietzsche creates a Zarathustra who changes traditional values and morality. He says Zarathustra is the first immoralist, or in fact he himself is the first immoralist but uses Zarathustra as a reason to express his own ideas.
He believes that all values come from our own creations and we are, in turn, responsible for creating the high-values and, more importantly, living up to them.

The book itself begins with Zarathustra coming down from the mountains after 10 years away from society. He wants to teach society about the overman and that the overman is the meaning of the world, and that society is nothing more than just a mere connection between animals and the overman. He goes on to say the overman is someone who creates his own values and lives up to them, linking back to the point I made earlier in this blog. Hardly anybody listens to Zarathustra apart from a tightrope walker who has fallen. The walker eventually dies and after his first day Zarathustra is disappointed by his failure to change, what he calls, the “herd of people”.

In the book, Zarathustra climbed a mountain. I believe that Zarathustra himself sees himself as some kind of overman because it could be argued the path to the overman is similar to climbing a mountain, a mountain in which Zarathustra had occupied for 10 years. Nietzsche believes the path to the superman is a struggle and one of the desires to complete this path is to offer a lot of sacrifice. This is one of the key themes in Nietzsche’s philosophy. Zarathustra also encourages the famous phrase, one which Nietzsche was keen on – “God is dead”

Zarathustra lectures about the overman, a figure who has moved past the good and evil. He has embraced the doctrine, which is the eternal recurrence. Referring back to my earlier comment about Zarathustra becoming an overman, this is not really true until the end when Zarathustra embraces the doctrine himself.

Nietzsche is very critical of Christianity in the book. He compares the Christian values to the successes of the overman, and says that what the overman has accomplished is always better than the values of the religion. Zarathustra believes anybody who is strong enough to become an overman will struggle in life, and sacrifice a lot. However, those who are not strong enough will turn to religion, nationalism or other means of belief.

The doctrine of eternal recurrence is important in the book because Zarathustra teaches new men on the path to the overman because he cannot deal with the idea of there being a world with no improvement or development. He believes after his time passes, new teachers will evolve and his work will not go unnoticed upon the world.

The overman (in a nutshell) is mankind’s main aim. The overman is somebody who only follows the values he sets himself, and even though Zarathustra could be seen as an overman, he believes we have not yet created one, and that the creation of an overman would give substance to the society we inhabit.

Relevant Sources
http://praxeology.net/zara.htm
http://www.absoluteastronomy.com/topics/Thus_Spoke_Zarathustra

WINOL News Package

Here is another news package produced this week. It has been uploaded to my youtube channel, so I thought I would put it here on my blog as well.