P3: Location Recce

Location recce

Recce checklist for both locations when performing VOX POP's: 

Things to take:

• Risk Assessment
• Mobile Phone
•  Notebook and Pen

When talking to people:

• Explain intentions
• Confirm how material from people will be used
• Exchange email (or other details)

Transport/access:

• Walking
•  Pavement

Sound:

• Traffic/road works

First location for:  Bow Road, London, E3

Source: https://www.flickr.com/photos/tetramesh/8190805685

Address: Bow Road Tube station

Positive: This is a place where there will be a lot of young adults, as it is a prominent tube station in Bow road used by young adults and students. This means that, in this location I have a better chance of meeting a student and ask for their views in my VOX POP.

Negative: This location like any other tube station has times when it is very busy and times when there is hardly anyone there. Thus, I will need to carefully choose a peak time, when there are a lot of students using this location. 

Source: http://www.londonphotoproject.co.uk/blog/2008/04/23/bromley-by-bow-to-tower-hill-tube-walk/

Address: Bow Road Metropolitan Police station

Positive: This location is not as busy as the Bow Road Tube Station, this means that I will have space to perform the VOX POP and not get in the way of pedestrians. Also, this road is frequently used by students in nearby schools, such as Central Foundation Girls School.

Negative: However, this road has severe road work going on that may not clear up soon, thus it might be quite difficult and hazardous to perform a VOX POP in front of the police station, as road works may interfere with the sound of the VOX POP.

Conclusion: In conclusion, for the Bow Road location I will be performing my VOX POP in front of the Bow Road Tube station, because I feel like there will be more opportunities to perform my VOX POP, as there will be a better chance of meeting young adults and students than in front of the Bow Road Metropolitan Police station. 

Second location for: Mile End Road, London, E3

Source: http://www.londonphotoproject.co.uk/blog/2008/03/12/stratford-to-liverpool-street-tube-walk/

Address: Mile End Tube station

Positive: This station is used by young adults and students a lot as well, so I will have a good chance of meeting students or young adults.

Negative: In contrast, this location is extremely busy and could be the busiest out of all locations I have chosen, thus it may be very difficult to stop someone and perform a VOX POP.

Source: http://www.urban75.org/walks/mile-end-victoria-park-olympics-site-walk.html

Address: Mile End Road Bridge

Positive: This location has a lot of shops and fast food restaurants, which means that there will be a lot of young adults and students using this location. Therefore, this location will be effective in providing me with young adults to perform my VOX POP on.

Negative: On the other hand, this location tends to be very busy and heavy on vehicle noise. These factors may make it difficult to perform my VOX POP, as there may be too many people and the noise from vehicles may interfere with the sound of the VOX POP. 

Conclusion: In conclusion, I have decided to use the Mile End Road Bridge as my second location, because I feel this location is broader than the Mile End Tube Station, so I will have a larger area to cover and perform successful VOX POPS that will make an overall impact on my story in my group’s radio program.  

Radio Journalism Masterclass vidoes

Advice from Sandy Warr: Radio Journalism Masterclass

Sandy Warr: Top tips in presenting on Radio:

• Don't go too close to the mike
• Be careful when producing plosives (letters like P and B)
• When reading out news, find the right balance in pace, as in radio you cannot playback content (unless it is DAB), thus you need to read news so that listeners can understand. 

Advice from Sandy Warr:

Radio Active Radio news from the Journalism masterclass

Radio Journalism Masterclass images

Collage made on https://www.befunky.com/features/collage-maker/

  

Radio Journalism Masterclass notes: Trip to City University London

Taster Lecture notes: This taster lecture was given by Richard Evans who is the Senior Lecturer in journalism in City University London:

• Richard Evans used to work at the BBC as a presenter, but left the BBC for teaching 6 years ago.
• Richard Evans has a lot of experience in journalism.
• Journalism is a broad subject and many things make up its definition such as: journalism is: sticking your nose in other peoples businesses, giving information to people according to what they want to hear also giving information to people according to what they need to hear and other.
• Recently, there is the perception that journalism has become opinion based and this is due to citizen journalists, such as bloggers and vloggers (video bloggers). In these blogs and vlogs citizen journalist broadcast news, but tend to be subjective when  broadcasting information/news.
• The opposite of citizen journalists are professional journalists, and such journalists avoid imputing opinions although, the proximity of news may be close to them. Secondly, another difference between citizen journalists and professional journalists is that, professional journalists make a living out of journalism, whereas citizen journalists do not. 
• Journalism has changed as time has gone on and technological advancement is forcing journalists to adapt, as when Richard Evans was first sent out to find news and report back, he had to first find a public phone, as in the past there were no portable phones or internet to report back to the news station without a payphone.
• From this taster lecture, I have learnt that journalism is very broad, this means that there are many careers journalism can lead on to. In addition, I learnt that it is important for journalists to keep up with time and changes in society, as they must adapt to these changes, because that will be the only way journalists can reach a broad audience.

Radio workshop held by Sandy Warr notes: 

• Sandy specializes in radio news presenting, she used to work as a presenter in the Breakfast show (radio 1 BBC) and currently works as a sports news presenter on radio station "talksport".
• Normally, on the radio a little bit of an interviews is put on broadcast, while the long interview is uploaded on to the radios website. 
• When broadcasting news it is always important to attribute news to the source.
• News is giving people information from both sides of a story to help them decide who they agree with, who they disagree with, or figure out whether they have an alternately different opinion.
• When producing news there is no democracy as the editor is always right, although the editor may be wrong. 

R:23 Journalist Josie Verghese and the Wassup FM team

Journalist Josie Verghese pictured in the middle, is the very journalist that has kindly received and answered our questions that we sent over through email. We enjoyed meeting her and found out other reasons why she enjoys her job, as a journalist, for example being able to interact with young people of London. 

R 23: Questions for journalist and answers

BBC Journalist, Josie Verghese.

1)      What have you learnt about yourself from your time of being a journalist?

I've reiterated to myself how nosey and inquisitive I am - key skills as you always need to be asking questions and wanting to know more as a journalist!

That I am resilient and can work under pressure and to a deadline, and that I love the unknown and unpredictable opportunities and meeting different people that the job involves.

2)      What other career opportunities open up through journalism?

Managing other journalists, being a Media or Press Officer or PR (as you have a really good understanding of how to pitch or promote an event, research a product to get broadcast coverage for it).

Being a journalist is a lot about communication and creativity so any jobs where this is integral, for example I know former journalists who are now teachers, an actor, an events organizer, a freelance photographer, a writer...

3)      How has being a journalist changed your perspective of how news is delivered to the public?

I've learnt to really understand how different programmes or publications really need to know and understand their audience to successfully report, i.e. the same story might be reported on Newsround, Radio 5 Live, the BBC News website and the 6 o'clock news but the way the story is told needs to be different. Until I worked for BBC News I hadn't ever really thought about this. Now the first question I ask myself is "who is my audience?"

4)      How do you deal with criticisms of being a journalist?

I always try to listen to what people have to say as being a journalist understanding different people's opinions is really important!

I might not always agree but it is useful to hear people's criticism to try and see how you might improve in the future - journalists aren't always right!

5)      How do you feel knowing that news you collect or broadcast can change a person’s opinion for the better or for the worse e.g. creating prejudice or stereotypes?

This makes me feel really responsible and committed to what I do - understanding this is possible should be something you've always got at the back of your mind as a reminder your reporting needs to always be true, factually correct and balanced.

P2: Risk assessment

R/P 2: Polar patterns of microphones

Omnidirectional microphones are microphones that can pick up sound from almost any direction. Such microphones are useful in picking up ambient sound or in an environment where sources of sound are moving , but not moving with the microphone.

Advantages of using omnidirectional microphones:

·      They are easy to set up and use, even by inexperienced people who may have never used omnidirectional microphones before.

·      Due to broad pick up abilities of omnidirectional microphones, they can be used in environments where large coverage of sound is needed, or if the sound source is not yet known.  For example, in wildlife, omnidirectional microphones may be used to pick up general background sounds, as the person recording may not be able to predict how the subject or the sound source might move.

·      There are high quality omnidirectional microphones with low costs.
  
   Disadvantages of using omnidirectional microphones:
   A major disadvantage would be the idea that you will not be able to discriminate between wanted and unwanted sounds using a omnidirectional microphone. Therefore, this makes omnidirectional microphones not ideal for presenting radio news in the studio.

Unidirectional microphones are microphones that can only pick up sound from a source that is directed towards the microphone. For this reason unidirectional microphones are useful, when it comes to narration, as it will only be sensitive to the sound coming directly from the narrator.

Advantages of unidirectional microphones:
 Using a unidirectional microphone unwanted ambient sound will most likely be eliminated, as the source of the ambient sound will not be the target source for the microphone to pick up. This makes unidirectional microphones ideal for presenting radio news in the studio.

Disadvantage of using unidirectional microphones:
 Due to the ability to pick up only target sources of sound, unidirectional microphones will not be suitable to used in outside broadcasts or VOX POP's because ambient sound is required in both the recordings of an outside broadcast and VOX POP, therefore the inability of unidirectional to pick up ambient sound will not allow the production of high quality outside broadcasts or VOX POP's.

Sources:
http://www.wisegeek.org/what-are-omnidirectional-microphones.htm

Design of microphones:  http://blogs.articulate.com/rapid-elearning/4-simple-tips-for-recording-high-quality-audio/

P1: Reseraching News Topic

R17: Preliminary Task evaluation

BBC News lesson 4 Broadcasting News: R22

BBC News lesson 3 Finding News: R21

BBC News lesson 2 Gathering News: R20

BBC News lesson 1 Finding News: R19

Preliminary Task: R17

DAB Radio: R18

DAB Radio:

DAB or in other words digital audio broadcast is a new way of broadcasting radio through the use of a network of transmitters. It is similar to analogue radio but profoundly better, as it provides high quality material, various new stations and no frequencies, which makes it rather easier to tune in to different radio stations. Moreover, there are also added features, such text and pictures.

How does it work: To simply put it DAB radio uses convergence of two digital technologies in order to provide a reliable radio broadcasting system with crisp quality?

To explain in detail, DAB provides such quality through the use of an audio compression system called MPEG. This system reduces the enormous amount of digital information needed to be broadcast, by removing sounds that do not and will not be perceived by listeners. For example, quite background noise that is hidden under loud noise, this is removed by the system as it is not needed and a waste of digital space. COFDM (Coded Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplex) is used to ensure that consistent and strong signals are received, even in environments that are prone to interference. Through, mathematical precision, the data signal is divided across 1532 diverse carrier frequencies and across time. This sort of process ensures that even if some carrier frequencies are disturbed by interference or signal is affected for some time, listeners will still be able to receive the original sound.

What are the benefits: To put it simply, listeners have a much wider choice in radio stations, as DAB uses the radio spectrum more efficiently than analogue radio, thus making it possible to broadcast a lot more stations using the same frequency. In addition, sound is greater in quality through the convergence of the two digital technologies. Lastly, more information is provided to listeners, as with the efficient use of the radio spectrum, stations using DAB radio can increase information put on broadcast, for example, some stations already have broadcast the latest news, weather and travel.

 http://www.pauldenton.co.uk/DigitalRadio.htm

Preliminary Task Planning:

Focus Group Notes

Focus group R16

Group discussion for focus group

Collage maker: https://www.befunky.com/features/collage-maker/

Audience survey analysis: R15

How to write a good radio script: R14

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/school_report/6180944.stm

From this research task on how to write a good script for radio news, I learnt that it is important to consider the audience of the news report while writing a news script, to consider the length of the entire newscast and how long each report will be. A typical news bulletin is around 2 to 3 minutes long and each report is around 30 seconds. Secondly, if certain words are hard to say, then it would be helpful to write the word out phonetically, and there is certain rule that radio news presenters typically stick to when writing a script. This is the 3 words a seconds rule. thus if a script for a 30 second report is written, then the script of that report should contain around 90 words. When writing my script I will consider these rules and tips, to ensure a sufficient script is written for our radio newscast.

How to be an original Radio Presenter: R13

From this video I learnt that, in order to be an authentic presenter I should present in a way that shows who I am and not who I am meant to be. For example, I could present to the viewers things I like and enjoy instead of things that I should like, for example if I am presenting a pop music radio show, I should recommend and play music that I like, although it may not be pop. Lastly, in order to carry this out should follow the idea “being personal is the key to creating connection” mentioned by Kate Cocker (the speaker of the video). 

How to write a good News Headline: R12

From this video I understand that the headlines that we will be presenting in our radio newscast are extremely significant, as it has the power to invite listeners, but also deter listeners. Thus, from the headline types listed in the video, I may choose the numbered headline, because this implies that there is “valuable, to the point content”(as mentioned by Jesse Forest, the speaker in the video) in the story that will be covered, which I think will increase the value of the story and therefore garner more attention.

Bias in News: R11

Bias in News

Example of biases in news

http://umich.edu/~newsbias/index.html

http://www.studentnewsdaily.com/types-of-media-bias/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Media_bias

News bias refers to the bias approach news journalists and producers within news in, how news events and stories are selected to be reported and how these chosen stories/events are covered in news.

News may be biased because of government influence, such as overt and covert censorship. Overt censorship refers to open and recognizable censorship, such as military appearance to carry out censorship, while covert censorship refers to censorship that is concealed and not easily recognizable, such as censorship of the internet.  Countries that practice censorship would be North Korea and Burma. News may also be biased due to market forces, for example pressure from companies, such as, if a news company is owned by the company Disney, then news covered will most likely present positive news about Disney. Another example of a market force would be, the preferences of the audience being targeted, for example if an audience consists of mainly females, the news covered will most likely support news on perhaps female empowerment. However, to ensure that such bias does not occur there are several national and international watchdog companies that regulate institutions, such as news institutions and an example of a watchdog group in England would be OFCOM. 

http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/covert

Planning images for R15

The first image is of how we planned to edit the videos we took for R15 on IMovie and the last two images are the scripts for the videos we took for R15.

Research on OFCOM R10

ofcom - Kizoa Video Maker

DIRECTIONS TO VIEW VIDEO:
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If you want use the arrow buttons to navigate through the video, please first PAUSE the video then use the arrow buttons to navigate.
Thank you.

Interviews on representation of teenagers: R9

What are news ethics? R8

What are news ethics and give case studies of news ethics?

Link: http://www.alliance.org.au/code-of-ethics.html

http://www.unesco.org/new/en/communication-and-information/freedom-of-expression/professional-journalistic-standards-and-code-of-ethics/key-concepts/

In this research task, I will be explaining my findings on ethics in journalism and the general codes of ethics that all journalists are obligated to follow. Ethics of journalism are essential device of self-regulation in the industry of journalism, and provide a necessary reference for journalists to understand their roles, rights and how they can perform their best at their occupation, in the same time providing a standard against which journalist work can be assessed. Moreover, Ethical codes of journalism contribute to the fairness, accuracy and credibility of information, which overall is beneficial for the public.

1)       Journalists must report and interpret honestly, making sure everything is accurate, fair and all facts essential are included. Journalists must not leave out essential facts or give distorting importance to something. They must strive to give a fair opportunity for reply.  An example of a case study whereby this code was ignored would be

2)      Journalists must not place unnecessary emphasis on personal characteristics, such as race, ethnicity, nationality, gender, age, sexual orientation, family relationships, and religion, physical or academic disability.

3)      Journalists must attempt to attribute their information to its source. If a source wants to be anonymous , then  do not agree to use the source until inspection on the sources motives have been inspected and alternative sources have been viewed as well.

4)      Journalists must not allow personal interests, beliefs, commitment, payments, or personal benefits undermine the accuracy, fairness and credibility of news.

5)      Journalist must remove conflict of interest that affect, or could affect, the accuracy, fairness or credibility of journalism.  They must not use their journalistic position improperly for personal gain.

6)      Journalists must not allow advertising or other commercial influences to affect accuracy, fairness and credibility of news.  

7)      Journalists must do their utmost best to present any direct or indirect payment made for interviews, photographs, stories or information.

8)      Journalists must use fair, responsible and honest way in gathering information and other material. They must identify themselves or their employer before obtaining an interview for broadcast or publication. Journalists must not take advantage of a person's vulnerability or unawareness of media practice.

9)      Journalist must present pictures and sounds that are accurate and have been obtained fairly. Any misleading content should be disclosed.

10)   Journalists must not plagiarize.

11)   Journalist must respect personal privacy and grief. Journalists have the right to resist force to intervene in private matters.

12)   Journalist must do their best to achieve fair modification of errors.