Being Editor.
Semester 1:
I volunteered for editorial roles after my success of being editor during second year. I came into this role feeling confident.
Being editor required me to bring stories to pitch on the day. This is something that I am very good at. Generally, I bring 2-4 stories to help the editors every week an easy task as I usually just come across content to use through my social media channels.
Throughout the day I was challenged various colleagues. I learnt some would not accept certain decisions, will dislike their stories and groups. To remain professional, I simply explained factors were beyond my control and that they just had to try their best.
Sickness and absence were also something I couldn’t control. However, it made my decisions a lot more difficult.
Just one decision I had to make was to put just two people on a smaller story in order to keep a larger group on an election story because I had previously gained permission for the team to film at the Q&A event held at the university. The election stories were incredibly important and took priority because we had to abide by the IPSO and OFCOM rules about reporting accurately and fairly.
Semester 2:
For semester two, I volunteered to be the first editor back. Over Christmas our Newsday’s changed drastically. We now had a team working on a paper, and a broadcast team. Our TV Bulletin had changed times our big bulletin was now at 12.45 rather than 3.45. During semester 1 we always had prep stories and hand-ins, so we had plenty of footage to start with and all our work was multimedia convergence stories for our website.
The approach to this day was a lot different. Before I would have done loads of planning and would have had up to 10 stories. This time I had around 7 people to be on the ground journalists. Instead of having up to 10 stories I decided to have at least 5 and a few extra just to mention in bulletins.
Being editor 2nd time was significantly easier and more chilled out. Having a smaller team meant I was able to work more closely with them. I was able to spend time with each group and help them edit footage. I had a chance to sit down and make sure all the video codes and lengths were correct for the bulletin. I also had the opportunity to help with both TV and Radio Scripts on inews.
Both editorial days were successful, and all bulletins were published and streamed on time. Being editor has given me the opportunities to push myself and gave me confidence to lead and teach groups of people and given me the skills of thinking on my feet and coming up with new solutions to problems throughout the day.