Haz Got News For You: December 2013

This semester’s WINOL team, comprised of 40 students, has worked hard to maintain and build upon the work from last year which has led to many innovations not only in the bulletin but also on the features & news sites.

Whilst, generally speaking, the overall quality of WINOL’s output has improved through these changes, the viewing figures have not reflected this. At the first look into our Alexa Rank in early October, we ranked #1,309,425 globally and #38, 579 in the UK which has only improved to #34,210 in the UK and #776,668 globally on the 8^th December. At its peak, on 30^th October, WINOL ranked #27,807 in the UK though only #1,192,940 globally. This mean that our website managed to go up by 10,772 ranks in around 1 month but, over the entire semester, only went up 4,369 places. Compared to the same semester last year, our rank has slipped by 23,872 places as we achieved a final rank of #10,338. During the second semester of last year, at our peak on the 6th March, we achieved a global rank of #372,251 and #9,154 in the UK, which are our best rankings on record and whilst our end figures came to #373,953 globally and #12,025 in the UK on 27^th March, we had gained 21,925 places in our UK rank which is a considerable difference compared to this semester.

There are likely several reasons for this gap in figures. The first is the way in which social media was used compared to previous semesters. In previous semesters, the reporters and social media editor kept up a more consistent presence on site such as Facebook and Twitter and articles were shared with groups with a specific interest in them through these sites. Whilst this did happen to some extent this semester, it was not as frequent and largely began to happen towards the end of our time on WINOL, meaning it had a greatly reduced impact on the viewing figures partly as no trust had been built up between the groups and the WINOL team but also because Alexa averages views over 3 months, the poorer figures from previous weeks skew the rank negatively making it look as though the impact of introducing new ideas and techniques is less effective than it actually is. The other key social media aspect that was overlooked at the beginning of the semester is the email reminders sent to everyone within the university on a Wednesday to advertise the bulletin. By picking this up quite late in the semester it suffered similar problems to the lack of sharing articles to relevant groups on social media sites. This is not to say, however, that the use of social media has had no impact on the viewing figures on the news site. According to slim stat, a word press plug in for viewing figures and analysis, Twitter and Facebook combined account for 2.66% of our viewing figures.

We have also tried to use advertising on the university screens and competitions to improve figures however, the contests were not really kept up throughout the semester and were not particularly well advertised. Whilst there is no specific way of measuring the impact from the advertising screens, the number of views since it was implemented seems to have improved, suggesting that it has helped improve the awareness of WINOL on campus.

Another reason that the viewing figures are not as high as before is that we do not seem to update the site as regularly. Whilst before, we have had rotas to ensure content is uploaded over the weekend, this has not come into fruition this year. Partly, this is due to the inconsistency of News Editor each week as well as the lack of volunteers or interested reporters. Since we have had a front page editor, the site has been much fresher and content has come in earlier and even over the weekend but this wasn’t until the last few weeks of the semester so, again, has seen little impact on the Alexa rank however, the success can be seen in some of the viewing figures on slim stat.

The other major thing that could have had an effect on the figures is the disparity in quality and timing of articles and bulletins. Whilst the production of the bulletins has been good and improved by the use of a new vision mixer and green screen image for the background, due to various technical issues, the bulletin has been late most weeks. To help this, I feel the News Editor needs a clearer image of what they want in the bulletin earlier which would be easier if we had one News Editor rather than a rota as well as getting our reporters to plan their articles more in advance and stick to deadlines better. By using more contact lead stories, reporters could get better stories and scoop other local news sources which would not only improve the quality of the bulletin and our viewing figures but also make the News Editor’s job a lot easier.

A problem that we had a lot, especially at the beginning of the year, was over exposure and poor white balancing and framing in packages, especially with PTCs (pieces to camera) which is likely to be, in part, due to both inexperience and the fact that, as VJs (video journalists) it is difficult to focus, etc. your camera when you are stood in front of it as you cannot adjust the settings on the camera remotely and so have to move to change it. However, as our audience would not know this, they would only notice that the video looked strange and therefore feel it was not as professional as it should be which could make them feel that we are not as trustworthy as other news organisations. Over time, the quality of packages did improve but it is possible that we lost some of our audience members at the beginning as they were not impressed with our work.

There have also been a lot of inconsistencies in the quality of written work which has, largely, been much improved by our team of subs however, the amount of work they put into fixing these stories is far greater than it should be; they should be there to fix minor grammatical and layout issues rather than to completely alter the story which, especially in the first few months, they frequently had to do. This impacted on the amount of time the subs had to work on features and how quickly text stories went on the site which could also have impacted on the overall viewing figures as our site would seem outdated as the latest news was slow to appear.

This semester, we launched a weekly entertainment bulletin which has proven quite popular with our audience. It has improved in quality over the weeks but could be better still with greater planning as often the team doesn’t know what sort of things they are going to film until a few days before it goes out and occasionally end up with a lack of packages due to this. However, it has been an important feather in our cap and has increased our audience. Unlike our news bulletin, Access Winchester knows exactly what its audience is and appeals directly to it; by gaining a better understanding of our audience and defining it either as a student or local news site, WINOL news could further increase its audience as our entertainment bulletin has.

The features site has been dramatically altered and improved over the course of the semester and whilst it now looks good, the continuous changes could well have impacted on the overall figures for the site. Previously, the features have helped make the site ‘sticky’ as well as actually bringing more people to the site either by making them aware of the news site through links on the site or by inter-promoting through social media.

However, the new integrated site makes the features look a lot more professional and regularly updated and has good viewing figures according to slim stat though could have done better still if the content was moved over quicker, the site was re-launched properly and it was updated more frequently. It would probably also have helped if the changes had not come into effect part way through the semester as this sudden change in layout may have confused our viewers. Overall however, I feel the features site is running much smoother both due to the new site and the way we now hold features meetings which is now a lot closer to the way the news conferences work. This improvement is reflected in the statistics for the site, with viewing peaks of 559 in one day and an average weekly reach of around 854 viewers since the re-launch according to slim stat.

Like features, sport is usually a big draw for the site. Although this is still true this year, with it being the 2^nd most popular category according to slim stat, the Sports Week news bulletin viewing figures seem to be down compared to previous years. This may be partly due to the lack of niche sport coverage. In previous years, we have covered more unusual sports such as ice hockey which has meant that people with an interest in more unusual sports have tended to flock to our bulletin. However, we have been unable to cover ice hockey but have not found another sport to replace it nor have we been covering the university teams which would draw a new audience with an interest either in a niche or in the university which would appeal to our student demographic.

As the Editor this semester, I have been trying to improve all aspects of WINOL, co-ordinating the editors and attempt to increase the circulation of the site. Over my time in this role, I have developed my communication and leadership skills as well as learning even more about how a newsroom works for all the various members of staff and attempted to use this knowledge to make the various processes involved in WINOL easier and more efficient. This has been quite difficult as we are all at an equal level in that we are all students, it has been difficult to assert authority when it is needed and to effectively be in a position of authority as I have no real power. I have also tried to fix some of the serious issues the team has had with communication. In the beginning, things such as changes to running order or production were not effectively communicated between news editor and head of production but by stressing the importance of this in debriefs it has gradually improved over the semester as have things such as production values in packages, the use of social media and SEO checking articles. I also tried to increase the circulation by suggesting that the features sites ran competitions and to get the bulletin advertised both around campus and elsewhere. The competitions were not as successful as hoped but this may be due to a lack of advertising outside of the magazine’s social media. Whilst our managing editor did manage to get the news site advertised on the screens around the campus, we were unable to find a way of streaming the bulletin on these which we felt would dramatically increase awareness. I also took the decision to group the features content all together in one new site after gathering the support of the various magazine teams which has been relatively successful so far.

Overall, I feel the team has worked well and the site shows this but there is still a lot of room for improvement. Whilst better circulation can be attained by better use of SEO checks, social media and more advertising, the quality and frequency of uploads needs to improve for us to be able to retain viewers’ attention and build a loyal audience.

Haz Got News For You

Monday 9 December 2013

Semester 2 WINOL Roles

Sunday 8 December 2013

Critical Reflection - Year 3 Semester 1