Newsgathering Part 2

Here are the links too all the final stories that myself and my group have chosen to include in our final broadcast:

Story 1: Investigation into New Year's Armed Robbery



Story 2: Suspected Bomb





Story 3: Ryde Arena Repairs





Story 4: Island Antarctic Explorer




Story 5: Random Rooms Attraction




Story 6: Festival Announcements




Story 7: Islander Writes New Song

News Gathering

Here is a Prezi, outlining the initial stages of my online news gathering:  s

Ideal Listener Profile

This is Kate, a sixteen year old from the Isle of Wight. Kate listens to the radio on average four times a week. She usually listens to the radio when she’s in the car with her family or boyfriend via the car’s FM Radio, however she also listens sometimes on bus journeys or when she’s on the train via her pre downloaded apps for specific radio stations as accessing stations via the internet on her phone via 3G or 4G is expensive and far more complicated. Occasionally she will listen to the radio when it is quiet at work on the weekends. Kate listens to local and regional stations, rather than national stations, as she finds the content more relevant and interesting to her. Kate doesn’t care or have a preference of radio news bulletin genders, as long as they speak clearly and are easy to understand. Kate also prefers them speaking at a normal speed, rather than a faster pace than normal like some national stations do, as she wants to ensure the news she is listening to makes sense to her. She doesn’t mind the news reader having a specific accent either, as long as it isn’t incredibly outrageous such as strong American or Australian accents, as she is listening to British stations. She prefers it when news readers vary their vocal tone and the emotion with which they read stories, dependent upon their content, such as how serious they are and whether it is a positive news story. If they don’t, she will disengage from the broadcast. Kate likes listening to the news programmes in the morning as they catch her up on the news in her area that she might’ve missed otherwise. Kate loves entertainment, such as TV, films and going to festivals with her friends, as she loves following and being a fan of new bands. She also likes to know the weather, regardless of what time she listens to the station, as it helps decide her outfit that she’ll wear, what transport she will take and if she needs to take an umbrella to make sure her hair doesn’t get soaking wet! Kate hates political and economic news as she normally finds it isn’t relatable to her area or to young people either – it’s boring too! She doesn’t mind listening to short sport news stories, however if there is more than one in a broadcast, she will stop listening to it, as it doesn’t interest her at all.  Kate likes radio news as it tends to be less effort than reading the local paper and also usually condenses stories to only the vital and important information which is great as Kate is normally quite busy. She likes being able to hear what’s happening in her local area, as she wants to know if anything is happening that could directly impact upon her. Kate also loves radio news, as they tend to get the inside gossip and first news about bands, celebrities and music acts before it is broadcast on TV or mentioned on social media as news bulletins are very regular. She also likes knowing the information is legitimate, rather than it being questionable like on social media sites. However, she doesn’t like it when news bulletins repeat stories or have too similar stories in the same bulletin. She loves a variety of hard and soft news, however prefers to hear the main hard news at the start of the bulletins, so that she is clear what’s important in her area. She likes personalised stories, when there is outside broadcasts from people related to the story as she thinks it makes the story more rounded and also more detailed.

Structure Changes After Audience Research Results

Within our survey, question 6 asked whether our target audience preferred to have a male or female news reader, to which all but one participant replied they didn't mind. Therefore, we have decided to have Max, the male member of our group read the main news segment, then have myself reading other specialised news segments such as entertainment and Franky, another female member of our group, being the OB reporter that provides the voicer's and introduces/asks the questions in the Vox pop's that we will include in the bulletin. They didn't mind about the gender of those reading the news, thus, it makes sense to have a mixture of both genders, as this is common in most local station's bulletins, like the one we are producing.

In the questionnaire in which we sent out to the members of our class, question 6 asked 'Which gender of news reader do you prefer?', to which almost every member of the class answered with 'no preference'. So as a group we decided that Max would be an ideal presenter for our news radio bulletin because he is confident and has a clear voice.

Olivia who will be our entertainment news reporter, reporting on the gossip and music news. This was chosen because again the participants said they did not have a preference to who they would like to present their news and it would makes sense to have a mixture of different gender news readers.

I will be the OB reporter, reporting live from the location in which will be mentioned using a voicer, a vox pop will also be used in the middle of copy stories.

6 people thought weather was very important,

14 said weather was important,

out of 25 participants, 80% thought that including the weather in our broadcast should be included. This is because they believe it has great importance to the broadcast compared to Sport for example.

Both males and females answered that sport was not very important to them which contradicted our first thoughts of including 1 minute of sports news into our bulletin; consequently we've decided to remove it. We will replace it with 30 seconds weather reports due to it being more popular then sport, even with the male participants

16 participants answered that 'Entertainment news' was important to a radio news bulletin, this is more then we expected from our target audience therefore we will dedicate 30 extra seconds to our original time of 1 minute air time for Entertainment news.

Politics feedback returned quite positively.

4 answered that it was very important while 16 answered that it was important.

This is more then we first expected; therefore we've decided to include 30 seconds of politics news, most likely copy stories so the audience don't get bored. Also we will try and make them relevant to our area and age as much as possible, how it will affect us and how we can have our say.

The results for music news varied greatly, we believe liking this news type is dependent on having a personal interest in music. Generally entertainment news is valued as more important so we have decided to not include specific music news in the bulletin but instead include a music related story in the entertainment section.

Updated Timetable: 

News: 2 minutes 30

Entertainment (Including music story): 1 minute 30

Weather: 30 seconds

Politics: 30 seconds

Target Audience Research Survey

In order to discover the likes and dislikes of our target audience and to refine down the conventions and content we will use in our bulletin, we devised this survey and got 25 people within our desired target audience to fill them in, in written format, to avoid mistakes in results which I have found before when using an online survey tool such as Survey Monkey. Survey Monkey also limited the number of questions I could ask, thus, I didn't use it and instead collated the results manually....

Here is a rough draft of the survey:

Target Audience Survey from oliviagarnerasmedia

We later improved the survey, to include the following questions so we could discover which areas of news our target audience liked the most and more:


Rate from Important (1) to Least important (6) the following:
Sports news, political news, entertainment news, music news, travel news, weather

Do you like a music bed underneath the news? (Yes or No)
If yes, what kind of music? (Independent Answers)

Do you like the use of stabs to break up stories or differentiate between news segments? (Yes or No)

Planning Initial Stages - Local Radio Station Name

For our local radio station, we have chosen the name 'Rebel Radio.' We used this name for our preliminary task and felt it was suitable enough to use for our Main Task. 

Before deciding upon a name, we chose our target audience:
-14-18 
-More females than males
-New British music lovers

We then decided to research names. Max found a random radio station name generator to get us started. They were incredibly unsuitable for our station as they weren't suitable for our station's target audience aimed at a young audience as it produced names such as: 

-Wise FM
-Route 81 Radio 
-Smooth Groove FM

After creating approximately 20 names we decided the names weren't appropriate. They didn't include youthful vocabulary like we wished to include, that was snappy or catchy, instead, they contained relaxed words, such as 'Smooth Groove FM' which includes too many o sounds which slowed down the reading of the station name and consequently it sounds like a very relaxed station - a stark contrast to the upbeat, youthful station we wished to create. 

Wise FM we felt was too aged for our station. It sounds as if it is aimed at an older target audience, as the connotations of wise suggest. We felt that FM also limited the station being available on one platform only. We wanted our station to be available on many different platforms, like modern radio stations are, as we understood that the majority of our target audience would access the station on modern platforms such as online, via TV or DAB, rather than purely FM listening for example in cars. Therefore, we as a group decided not to include FM in our station name as it limited down the platforms that the audience thought they could listen to the station on.

Finally, Route 81 Radio is not geographically appropriate for our station. We wanted it to be focused upon new, upcoming British music, thus, this reference to a road in America wouldn't be appropriate. It could creating a misleading view of the station that it broadcasts American related content, whereas we only wanted to broadcast British content. However, we did like the alliteration of Route and Radio, therefore we decided we wanted to include alliteration within our station name, as it is incredibly catchy and easy to remember. Finally, it adds a youthful vibe also, as it somewhat rolls off the tongue.

We then decided to find words that were youthful in order to find one beginning with R to alliterate it with 'radio'. We found words such as rhythm, raw, raving, rush and finally found Rebel. Immediately we all loved it and thus, after a group vote, all 3 of us decided that 'Rebel Radio' was perfect for our station.

My Visit to IOW Radio

My media studies class and I visited our local radio station Isle of Wight Radio. We visited and met the News Editor who showed us round the various studios and then we discussed what is considered 'News' in their station. We looked at the software they use to edit their news scripts and it shocked me to see that they pay a certain fee in order to receive stories from Sky's national news centre. Therefore they have a mixture of national and local news stories in their broadcasts. Here is a photo of us in Studio 3 where we listened to the News being read live in the studio next door:

This day was very beneficial as it highlighted to me what is considered news in a local radio station environment and also, technically how news bulletins are constructed, read, edited and finally how the general station works. The broadcasting technology was incredibly interesting!

Rules for Writing Radio

Rule 1: Write as if you're talking to a friend – use contractions, (e.g. don't, can't, shouldn't).

Rule 2: Follow and include the 6W’S:

Who – is involved?

What – has happened/is happening?

Where – did it happen/is it happening?

When – did it happen/is it happening?

Why – has it happened/is it happening?

(How) – has it happening/is it happening?

Rule 3: KISS – Keep It Simple, Stupid!

Simple sentences- one idea, one sentence.

Avoid using commas!

Rule 4: Sentences:

Two or three sentences for a cue;

Four for a copy story.

Rule 5: Write numbers as words, e.g, 2010 becomes ‘two thousand and ten’ or ‘twenty ten’.

This makes it clearer for the news reader to read.

Rule 6: Joe Bloggs, 17, from Newport.

This doesn't make sense when you read it aloud so it is changed to:

Seventeen-year-old Joe Bloggs from Newport...

or:

Joe Bloggs - who's seventeen and from Newport…

Rule 7: When writing a cue, make sure you don’t repeat what is said in the clip! Paraphrase the first line of audio or sum up what is going to be said.

Rule 8: Write names of people or places phonetically (if they aren’t said how they are spelt).

E.g, Sarah Leahy (PRON Sare-rah Lee-hee).

Rule 9:  Round up statistics and put them in context. E.g.260,000 hectares = the size of three football pitches.

It is easier to understand and paints a picture in the mind of the audience.

Rule 10: Don't use ‘today’ in your top line of the story!

The audience should assume events are taking place ‘today’ – otherwise, why are you telling them about it today?!

You can use ‘this morning’ or ‘this afternoon’ though to be more specific if necessary.

Rule 11: Don’t use quotations from people in the newsreader’s script.

The only ‘quotes’ we should hear are from the person themselves.

An exception to this might be using one or two words in the top line of a cue – if we’re then going to hear from that person themselves as a clip.

Rule 12: Avoid abbreviations unless they’re very common/well-known.

E.g. NATO or the UN would be fine as they are commonplace.

Rule 13: READ IT ALOUD to ensure it reads correctly! Sometimes words look fine written down but read aloud, they don’t make sense or might be an awkward tongue twister or an unintentional rhyme!

In order to practice these rules, I looked at a recent article in my local newspaper, the County Press and re-wrote the story into a radio script, utlising the rules and skills I've learnt:

Here is my Copy Story Script:

• Ventnor Winter Gardens has offered its venue free of charge to Isle of Arts festival organisers. It’s an attempt to rescue the popular island arts based festival which has been losing money since its launch in twenty-ten. The proposal from the Winter Gardens is worth around five-thousand pounds and it’s hoped it will encourage other sponsors to come forward to support the festival.

Here is my Cue and Voicer Script:

• Cue: Ventnor Winter Gardens has offered its venue free of charge to Isle of Arts festival organisers. It’s an attempt to rescue the popular island arts based festival which has been losing money since its launch in 2010. Joint Organiser of the festival Janneke Oxley (Pro: JAN-ECK-A) is grateful for the donation but is unsure if it is enough to rescue the festival for 2016,
  
  
  Clip: ‘By itself, it will not be enough to cover reduced sponsorship elsewhere and the fact we have sod our hotel which we used to accommodate performers. We would also need to have started booking acts two months ago for next May.’

What Makes Something News?

This is my research of what makes something news, in the audio file embedded below. It includes what makes something news, what news is, Galtung and Ruge's news values and their importance and impartiality:

Radio News Bulletin Analysis

Also, in order to show my understanding of these conventions and what they sound like, I have analysed in depth a variety of different UK Radio stations' news bulletins. Doing this task enabled me to realise many things, such as the difference of national bulletin to a local bulletin.

The first is from Isle of Wight Radio, from a news bulletin that aired in July 2015. It is one of the on the hour news bulletins that the station delivered. I decided this bulletin would be appropriate to analyse as I myself will be creating a local news bulletin, such as what this station provides. Therefore, it meant that I could see how these conventions were utilised in a local bulletin, rather than on a national bulletin, in order to make my final task as accurate to a local radio news bulletin as possible:

What can you hear?	Content	Additional Notes
Jingle	General IOW Radio Jingle, not news specific. Fast with a strong background beat, focusing on the locations the station reaches	Generic Male Voice with clear diction
Intro	Greeting of good morning, time-check, name of presenter	Female voice with Southern accent. Clear diction with a formal and serious tone.
Story 1 – Historic Child Sex Abuse	Cue and Voicer – Cue of presenter giving status of the enquiry, followed by Voicer from male reporter at Sky for more information.	Voicer has male voice with serious tone. Evident background noises, highlighting his location of being outside the court in order to create dramatic atmosphere within the voicer.
Story 2 – Budget Cuts	Cue and Clip – Clip featuring George Osbone who is voicing his justifications for making the cuts	Clip has Osborune using very formal language, giving him to right to reply to the story. He uses many facts and statistics and there is also again background sound which shows the interview takibg place in a London location, for further atmosphere.
Story 3 – Primary School	Cue and Voicer – IOW Radio Reporter John Weeks adds additional information to the story through his voicer.	Giving such a plain story a voicer means that the listener will value it with more importance than on first thought.
Story 4 – Firefighters receiving extra training	Cue and Clip – Clip features chief fire fighter giving more information and reasoning to why the training is needed and what the training will be exactly.	Male voice of authority that gives the story more relevant information. Quite formal as information is important
Story 5 – Primary School Music Festival	Cue and Clip – Clip features a pupil who organised the event. Used mainly to highlight how young the organisation of the event is,  thus giving it a reason to be news	Young male voice with basic vocabularly – very casual, mentioning how happy he is to be the radio etc. Least formal story in broadcast.
Story 6 – IOW (Local festival to station) won major award	Copy – Presenter outlines what award they won.	No soundclip of them winning award, simply reporting which one, thus it’s the shortest story in broadcast
SOC	Tells the audience there’s more information and photos on news pages on the radio website. Asks audience if they find any news stories to send them to the website (which she reads out.)	Standard, no strange sound effects etc, website mentioned.

The second is from BBC Radio 1. It is one of their 'Newsbeat' bulletins which pride themselves on being incredibly concise due to the staton having a younger target audience in coparsion to most local stations. I analysed this bulletin so that I could compare the usage of conventions to that in the IOW Radio bulletin (local.)

What can you hear?	Content	Additional Notes
Jingle	Fast, with a sense of urgency through its intense beats. No mention of news.	Used to remind us of the station we’re listening to and its name.
Headline – Increase in testing of STI’s in Females	Basic outline of story that will follow in the programme.	Serious subject, therefore man has serious tone to voice with clear diction
Stab	Fast, modern beats to build up to the news story after hearing the headline, making the audience realise the importance of the story.
Story 1- Increase in testing of STI’s in Females	Cue and voicer – Voicer of reporter gives doctors and governments opinions upon story Bed – fast and urgent music	Female voice in voicer– used to make story easier to understand to as it’s from a female voice and story is about females. Continues through voicer too
Story 2- Latest soldier killed in Afghanistan	Copy – short story including just basic details	Name, date, cause of death told.
Stab	Even shorter than previous stab, but same music.
Story 3 – Missing child found	Copy – Basic information on circumstances	No stab follows this copy story whereas previously there has been a stab after a copy sotry.
Story 4 – Reminders to vote through facebook	Copy – No external opinion, pure facts
Story 5- Illegal sharing of videos and films online will be punished through new laws	Copy	New law outlined to listeners
Story 6 – Sport based, Wayne Rooney injured and out of action for important club match	Copy	Only sport based story. Mixing sport news in with normal news shows that the station limits the time dedicated to news as it knows its readers will prefer music and chat etc.
SOC	Name of programme (Newsbeat) mentioned Told time of next broadcast (3:30)	Signposting where there will be a news programme again, later in the day. Doesn’t linger on any of the stories.

The third is from BBC Radio Jersey. The BBC Local stations don't utilise the 'Newsbeat' bulletins that most of its national stations does. Therefore, I analysed this bulletin in order to see how to BBC used the conventions in a local bulletin format. It suprsied me that this bulletin was so long and incrdibly indepth!

What can you hear?	Contnet	Additional Information
Jingle	Relaxed, but classical music, not modern or bassy	No dialogue or words
Intro	Presnter introduces news and who’s reading it. Female news reader greeting (good morning)	Male voice, serious tone No time check given
Story 1 – Malaysia Airline Investigation	Cue and Voicer – Cue gives detail on the current progress made in investigation. Voicer from Kualalmupas international Airport. States how relatives are being looked after. Gives information given from the airline about plane, and highlights the pressure on airline.	Voicer -  Female Strong Audtsralian Accent. Accent slightly distracts from what she reads as it is so strong, however could be due to logistics as Singapore is closer to Australia than UK. Some words difficult to understand, but serious tone in voice highlights the horror of the tragedy and how important the enquiry is.
Story 2 – Jersey Treasury Minister setting out government spending	Cue and Wrap Cue states what story is then Voicer from Clare Peters gives information on last year’s spending, highlighting how little there Embedded in voicer is a Clip – Head of Citizens Advice bureau on what he hopes it will help to do. Voicer then gives time it will be given	NAational story mentioned but localised Local Opinion
Story 3 – Isralei Army Launched First Grand Offsenive in Gaza for 5 Years	Copy – Given background to why it happened and how many fatalities
Story 4 – New Local Law, anyone under 14 must wear a cycle helmet	Copy – States the new law and how it has been rejected before	Local law as its for a local station
Story 5- Sinking motorboat rescue	Copy – States rescue operation details
StorY 6 – Polar Bear Attack (national story) that features local boy	Cue – Coroner due to give verdict, evidence given by Jersey teenager	National story, but made local through the person involved.
Story 7 – Jersey inflation rate slowed	Copy – Facts and figures	No opinions given
Story 8 – Local naviagtation for boats technology broken	Copy – How long it will take to fix and advice to sailors	Serious tone taken when advice given
Story 9  - Parish Countsbale stepping down in Trinity	Copy
Intro	Entertainemnt news begins	Interesting  that all included in one programme, no split or specific jignle
Story 10 – Local festival Acts and Locations announced	Cue and Voicer – Ryan Morrison gives more information on ceratin events, such as film synposis’, what certain places are hosting and who is involved Back Anno – Reiterating that if you cant make it you can listen to the final event live on the station	Dates of festival given
Intro 2	Sports News, introducing Sports Presenter, name and good morning	Sports news has new presenter whereas entertainment news doesn’t.
Story 11 – Englands Cricket Udate	Copy – Update on scoring and players opnion upon not taking avdanatge of bowling first.	Quote read by presenter, no clip.
Story 12 – Rory  MCilroy latest competion	Copy – Tells of his competitors and the event details	Presnter stutters at start of story, stumbling on words, but then apologising and correcting himself. Evidence of it being a local station and live broadcast instead of pre-recorded national for example. But then returns back to serious tone after breaking and changing it to apologetic.
Story 13 – Tour de France Update	Copy – Who’s leading	Names given
SOC of Sport Bulletin	Time of next broadcast given and also, makes a joke that it’ll be ‘when I’ll be able to talk again’	Formal reminder, then followed by a joke and so, a change in the males voice, to a sarcastic tone.
SOC of News	Presnter thanks Sport Presenter then gives a time check	Female remains formal, she doesn’t react to joke, perhaps due to the strict time constraint of this broadcast.

The final analysis is of Absolute Radio's news bulletin. This bulletin is from a national station and is of normal length for a news bulletin however it only focusses on a few stories. I wanted to analyse this specfic bulletin as it still manages to use many conventions:

Jingle	Name of station, not news specific, slow, relaxed jingle, with ‘we’ being used to show the relationship the radio staton wants with audience, they want them to feel relaxed and included in the station
Intro	Incredibly Short! Only states her name	No breath taken between introduction and first story,  so difficult to realise when news is starting. No time check, so could confuse listener.
Story 1 – 4 Moths before England begin World Cup Capgin,  Capello resigned as manager	Cue and England former captain opinion  given via phone call Presenter states when more details will be given Introduces writer of daily Mirror who gives his opinion again via phone call, Harry rednappe obvious succeser, talking about how he has helped Tottenham Presetner states how redkanppe is bookies favourite
Story 2 – Tax eVASON	Linked to Story 1, no break inbetween., but only a copy story.	Detasils of how he took untaxed bonsues
Story 3 – Steve Coogan and Paul Gascogine settling for compensation for phone hacking	Copy – Amounts of compensation given
Story 4 – Weather update	No jingle or different presenter National forecast and lowest temperature	Again, very different to differnciate that it’s a different segment of news, even the sponsor is read in the presenters same, serious tone
SOC - Jingle (Weather)	Weather knigle used to end programme, sponsor mentioned	Completely different voice, a happier, more lively female with added effects