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This week’s effort was my most successful yet. It wasn’t perfect, but it was more successful than Week 2 because I actually produced something. and more successful than Week 1 because it was actual news.

I was in court for the verdict on a high-profile child abuse case: Sitting through the Judge’s summing-up wasn’t the easiest thing, but the course thus far prepared me as much as possible for the inevitable time I would have expose myself to difficult subject matter. I think the best way to cope with it is to keep myself as emotionally distant as possible. If I can treat it as just information and nothing more, I don’t get wrapped up in the ordeal. Hopefully, this colder approach will also mean the news piece I produce will be less likely to have errors in things like balance, libel, contempt or the tricky Section 39.

Having put a rough script together, I set my gear up outside the courthouse and delivered a piece to camera. This was made slightly testing by my lack of footage. Without the funds of a professional news organisation, I was unable to buy Tracy Dawber’s mugshot or any other images; this meant that I would have to speak to the camera for 45 seconds without tripping over my own words or any legal issues. This wasn’t made any easier by the usual problems of failing light and people wearing very loud shoes click-clacking across the shot, but eventually I cracked it.

Or so I thought. Back in the newsroom, my footage laughed at my vain white-balancing efforts with a yellow grin. Just in case my work wasn’t completely unusable, my inability to monitor my own sound (headphones don’t look good on camera) meant I didn’t hear my self-inflicted mic-rattle until it was too late. Into the bin with it.

The following morning, I rushed back to the courthouse, this time with the capable hands of John on camera and his capable ears in the headphones. Even so, with just three hours until deadline I had a challenge.

I rattled off my script again and again. I never managed to get it exactly the way I wanted, but time was short and I managed to get something which, while not great, was good enough.

This time, the editing software revealed something which was delightfully short on technical problems. I needed a shot that would introduce the location, make the package more interesting to look at, avoid opening with a piece-to-camera and show a little bit of camera ability, so I began the clip with a decent pull-focus shot (see video) I’d taken.

Everyone was happy enough with it, and it was placed second on the news agenda. Not bad for a 45 second piece. I still need to work on my voicing and my delivery to camera though, and I need to be quicker and slicker with the equipment. It was okay for my second attempt at producing a news package, but I expect more from myself and will be striving to improve each week.

Journalism students at the University of Winchester have the ongoing task of producing a weekly news bulletin. This 10-minute program is put together in the same way a TV news program is created; everyone has a job to do, and if the reporters and presenters do their jobs, then the people in production roles should be able to put this content together in time for a live broadcast at 3pm each Wednesday.

The patch I have been given to report is ‘Crime and Community’. I’m pleased to have been given this opportunity as it is challenging for a number of reasons: Firstly, the subject matter is often difficult. It isn’t easy to get hold of people for interviews when dealing with trauma or controversy, and I feel this will prepare me for a career in reporting. Getting information from a press office is like trying to nail jelly to a tree.

Secondly, this kind of reporting presents a person with a fabulous selection of legal hurdles and pitfalls. For example, when reporting court cases, you have to be constantly mindful of committing contempt by publishing something which could be seen to be likely to influence a jury on an active case. A moment of absent-mindedness leading me to refer to a convicted burglar as a ‘robber’ would land me in trouble. Why? Because ‘burglary’ means unlawfully entering a building as a trespasser.  ’Robbery’ means that threat or use of unlawful violence has been used to take someone’s property. Calling a burglar a robber is defamation.

Finally, Winchester doesn’t see a great deal of crime. I’m not complaining about this fact- a low crime rate is a good thing. I’m just saying that being a crime reporter in Winchester is a bit like being a restaurant critic in the Atacama Desert.

My first piece of content for Winol was less than successful.  I heard that a pathway in Winchester was very poorly lit and a quite frightening place to be at night. I took myself down there at 10:30pm and found myself wishing I brought a torch. I thought I’d get some GVs (general views) and took out my camera. I found that shooting at night was trickier than I thought and decided to come back with Maddie later on.

Still, I decided I’d found my story and decided to run with it. I spoke to students about their feelings towards the area, I chased the council to find out the reason to the lack of lighting, and I called the local police to see what they had to say. Students were happy to talk, but police and Council were harder to pin down and my deadline was looming.

I carried on putting together what little material I had in between phone calls, all the time hoping that the authorities would have something to say. Alas, very late in the day I received the news: Both sources got back to me, but neither of them were available for interview. The police confirmed that the path, while creepy, is historically as safe as the Cathedral. The Council said it had tried to get some lights down there but had run into problems which it would not elaborate on.

So I ended up with something of a non-story that explained that a bit of Winchester is dark at night, students aren’t keen on it but the council can’t do much to help. What little controversy was there on existed because I asked for it.

Still, I did learn a great deal. As well as practising camera and editing work, I learned that reporters should be reporters and not try to be writers. It’s okay to look for news, but trying to make the news is a fool’s game (unless you’re working for a tabloid, perhaps). The mistake I made was failing to recognise the point at which my story ceased to be news. To be fair to myself, I thought there was going to be more to this story, and by the time I realised this wasn’t the case I was too close to deadline to put anything else together; but from now on I’ll be chasing hard facts, not whispers.

So the following week I found something better. Winchester Crown Court was to hand down a sentence after a man pleaded guilty to GBH. This was my chance to put together an interesting court report and demonstrate that I can tiptoe around tricky laws. The complainant in the case was facing a criminal charge of his own, so I would have to be careful not to identify him even though the case I was reporting was no longer active, or I would be at risk of prejudicing the jury in his own trial. I hoped to score some points for spotting that one.

Unfortunately, on the morning of the sentencing I felt more unwell than I can ever remember feeling before. (This was thanks to an overpriced sandwich I purchased- but as I can’t prove it I must resist the urge to warn any local readers about the vendor.) Still, with some kind help from Charlotte, a very generous coursemate, I made it to the court, sat through the trial and reminded myself how bad my shorthand is. I even asked the defendant, who was given a suspended sentence despite stamping on someone until they suffered organ failure, for a quote after the trial- which I didn’t really feel like doing while my body’s reaction to some malevolent bacteria had me sweating and shivering uncontrollably. I hoped that would score me some points as well.

I thought that if I could manage that on Tuesday, I should be able to do a quick piece to camera and submit my edited package on Wednesday. I was wrong. Tuesday’s triumphant story became Wednesday’s sob story when I found that a small sandwich had rendered me unfit to drive into uni and incapable of any kind of activity (and I hate admitting that). I ashamedly called in to let the editors know, and asked if I could deliver my report over a phone link in the hope that it would go some way towards redeeming my “It Gets Dark at Night” story the week before. This offer was declined and I now face Winol Edition 3 with additional pressure. This pressure comes only from myself, but that’s the best and worst kind of pressure there is.

Buy this book

Tabloid Nation was written by our own course leader, Chris Horrie. The book (which I really must ask him to sign), begins with the inception of the first red-top, the Daily Mirror. The title of the book gives the reader a nudge to consider reading it not just as a story about newspapers, but to also consider an idea: That by documenting content of tabloids over a period of time, and the way in which that content is marketed, one can gain an insight into changes that took place in the attitudes, needs an expectations of their readers. To put it another way, the Mirror offers a reflection of the nation.

An example of this is identifying which groups of people were generally unpopular at a given time; a way to ensure good sales of a paper is to publish a headline that casts a negative light on an unpopular group (incidentally, fascist regimes gain supporters in a similar way). This means that by looking at tabloids printed over the past hundred years, we can see when certain people were unpopular, Gypsies, Jews, Muslims and the unemployed have all had their turn. Whether or not the newspapers were responsible for instigating their unpopularity in the first place will be the subject of mass debate for some time to come.

The Daily Mirror began life in 1903 as a paper written by women, for women. It was a disater, and owner Alfred Harmsworth made his diagnosis of the problem very clear: “Women can’t write and don’t want to read.” But it seems as though the paper was simply ahead of its time; if we look at the colour supplements in Sunday papers, there is almost always a magazine that may be described as “women’s interest”.  In newsagents across Britain, you can see the women’s racks stuffed full of magazines- and it seems there is always room in the market for one more publication.

But from the ashes of  failed Mirror rose the majestic pheonix of the tabloid as we know it today. Most of the defining features of modern red-tops are the result of the broken Mirror’s rebirth under the leadership of the editors that followed, beginning with Hamilton Fyfe. Once the most of the female staff were fired and replaced with new blood, Fyfe began experimenting with methods of increasing circulation.

It was the decision to aim the newspaper at the working class that gave birth to this new beast. As time passed the format developed; the language was simplified, walls of text were replaced with pictures (preferably images of the Royals, the celebrities of the time), and mad comeptitions and giveaways were introduced. A beehive was put on the roof of  their office building to prove that honey could be made in London. Other sweet ideas included the purchase of a doomed pit pony, and the Mirror shouted itself hoarse over its crowning achievement; acquisition of photos of King Edward VII on his deathbed. The pictures were published two days in a row, and the second run resulted in record-breaking sales of over 2,000,000 copies.

Click here for some of the best newspaper headlines ever published!