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.