Research and Planning

Research

What is news?

Before we start anything, I think it's safe to say we should define news first, since that's the focus of my research and planning.

News consists of distinctive topics that are based on the different news values ranging from impact, to the elite or even bad news, but they're all considered on what type of news it is. They are newly received or noteworthy information, mostly focused on recent events. News can be published in newspapers, TVs, magazines and etc. News consists of current events that are happening around the world right now, they either announce bad or good news which are categorized under different news values.

One question stands out from this: Just what exactly is news value?
*slides*

Codes and Conventions of Local Radio News

Codes and conventions of a Local Radio News broadcast include:
1. News is conventionally introduced on the radio (an on TV) by a stab of serious, attention seeking music
2. The presenter introduces himself or herself so that she is accountable (telling the truth)
3. The news topics are arranged in most important to least important. (news order)
4. LRNP are stuctured together through links made by the presenter.
5. The language is always simple...first time.  because audience only has ONE CHANCE
6. Each programme consists of several topics.

The following audio clip is the 12pm news from BBC Radio Leeds. I will be analyzing this clip for it's news values and for the codes and conventions of local radio news it contains.

1:
 Duration: 20 secs.
 Story:  Man convicted of double murder in Bradford
 Analysis: The proximity and the tragedy of this event makes this segment of the news quite valuable. Death is generally a sad thing and it's especially touching when someone is murdered. This news will hit close to home for anyone who has experienced death, like a loved one dying, and it will be even closer to home for someone who's friend or loved one was murdered.
2:
 Duration: 31 secs.
 Story: police questioning a man on motorway pile up Bradford. a woman died and 60 year old man rushed to leeds general infirmary.
Analysis: This news is valuable because of it's proximity. It's also valuable because a woman died and an old man was rushed to hospital, which people will feel sorry for
3:
 Duration: 23 secs.
 Story: man convicted of shooting a British business man's wife 4 years ago during their honeymoon. man said the husband hired him to kill her.
Analysis: This story is newsworthy because it is unusual. It's not too often you hear about a man wanting their wife dead, let alone on their honeymoon.
4:
 Duration: 44 secs.
 Story: politics Lib Dems stay in government after general election they will use 1/2 billion cut back on waiting times to tackle mental health conditions
Analysis: This is hard news. Politicians will find this particularly appealing but this will affect everyone in the country, as it's related to the government itself. This might also be appealing to people who know someone with a mental health condition, or people with the condition themselves.
5:
Duration: 52 secs.
Story: Spanish nurse infected with Ebola virus. 1st person outside west Africa to contract it. David Cameron's plans on how to combat the spread in the UK
Analysis: This story is valuable due to timeliness. Ebola is the current killer disease to be scared of, and as it grows ever so closer to the first world it draws more panic.
6:
 Duration: 13 secs
Story: Bradford is youngest city in Europe 21.6% population below 15
Analysis: This is appealing to people in Bradford because it's record breaking. Proximity and human interest make this event newsworthy
7:
 Duration: 14 secs.
Story: new dads army film to be made in Yorkshire
Analysis: This news will be appealing to fans of the franchise, and will be impactful to people in Yorkshire, as the fact that it's being filmed there is likely to draw in more tourism, which is good for business but likely to be bad for locals, as traffic will be increased and the place will be generally more crowded.

Now for the codes and conventions of this particular broadcast:

1. The clip opens with a jingle to introduce the news. The jingle is to alert passive listeners of the incoming headlines and weather reports to follow.

 


2. The presenter introduces himself by name. This is to add legitimacy to the news, as the presenter is now essentially taking personal responsibility for the news items, and the accuracy and in-fallacy of said items.



3. Immediately following the presenter's introduction, the first headline is detailed, and news stories are presented back to back after.



4. The radio broadcast features an outside broadcast, adding depth and another point of view for a news item by obtaining information or opinions from eyewitnesses or experts.


Codes and Conventions of  Radio News

All radio stations have codes and conventions when presenting news. They consistently follow these. The codes and conventions include introductions, special guests, a specialist reporter who introduces themselves, an outro, weather and traffic updates which are aired hourly, along with the news. The news tends to last around 5-10 minutes.

Where Stories come from

Journalists can't just steal news, they have to find original, valuable news, that is appealing to a particular audience. The question is, how do they find news?


A journalist either finds a story, or the story is given to them. Journalists have multiple contacts that will tip them off in regards to new developments that has news value. These contacts will include people in the police department or the fire department, contacts with political connections, people who know what's going on behind closed doors so that they can get the scoop first.

When the stories are gathered, they will be filtered by their news value. Some news items are more valuable than others. News value is based on factors like proximity and timeliness. Items with more news value will have a higher priority than those with less news value.

The Kilburn literary festival is a local event taking place for the first time in the area, from Thursday 30th October to Tuesday 4th November. The festival will include a number of workshops, including author events, quizzes, writing competitions, creative writing workshops, literary advice and much more. These events will be happening in various parts of the Kilburn area and tickets can be purchased for each workshop. This festival is news because it is fairly new and something like this has never been introduced to the area for the public to utilise.

A striking global news issue at the moment is the Ebola crisis. We are continuously being reminded of how quickly this virus is spreading throughout the regions of the world, so it would be really important to keep people updated of its whereabouts and what is being done to tackle it. On the front page of The Guardian, there is the headline 'The world is not safe while Ebola remains anywhere' which has made the front page due to its urgency. It keeps the public informed of the status of the problem right now.

On the front page of The Daily Telegraph is the headline 'Scandal of rip-off rail tickets machines' which is an issue which could affect the local audience, mainly those who commute on a regular basis. This outrageous news may be impacting the lives of many residents in the local area because it means that people may have been cheated out of their money to pay expensive rail way prices. This is being held to the attention of those in the community.

Planning

Pre Production

During this course, our aim was to produce a 5 minute radio broadcast which consisted of 7-8 news items. These will all include the 6 codes and conventions the I've explored in my research. 

The roles within our group:

Presenter: Bradley Loughnane

Specialist Reporter/Editor: Edevi Awodey

Editor/Researcher: Celyn Perez Dizon 

Editor/Researcher: Thiago Duarte

On each of the names, there is a link which leads to where you will see a version of the construction of our radio broadcast. 

When in the group, we had to decide upon the radio name for our broadcasting channel. Doing this task was quick and easy. We came together as a group in which we brainstormed good names for the radio broadcast, in which we shortlisted or favourites. We all came to the final decision of 'Canon FM' as the name was unique and outside the box. 

Upon deciding on the radio name, we had to set ourselves various responsibilities during the process of our production and below you will see what each member of the group was responsible for: 

• Bradley was the presenter for our show
• Me and Thiago research the news topic in which we will use for our broadcast 
• Celyn created the script from which she would get research evidence from me and Thiago to do so
• Once the script is ready to be recorded, me and Celyn gather the people who we feel would be relevant to our recording
• After the recording process, me and Celyn work together in editing the news item(s)
• Once all news items have been recorded and edited and we are all content with the final result, our next(final) step is to work on constructing our whole radio show. 

While we were in the process of constructing our radio show, we had to take part in answering the 7 Evaluation Questions. Each member of our group had to complete 2 questions each. Since there is 4 of us, we all decided to come together and answer one Evaluation Question together. 

Programs

Within our time of constructing our news broadcast, we used a different number of programs which aided us in making improvements to our news item. 

 The logo on the left is for the website Blogger. It allows you to create a blog, in which my case for using the blog is to record what I am doing during every stage of my project and its construction for the last 12 weeks. It is where we will explain and describe each stage of our progress in much detail, so that it will be easy to understand what we are trying to accomplish. As Blogger is connected to Google, it was essential for us to have a gmail account, which everyone in our group has created. 

This is what Blogger looks like once you have logged in.

Audacity is a free editing audio program, which enabled us to construct(record) our news items. It contained all the tools we needed to carry out our recording and editing of our show.

*Click to zoom in*

The image above shows the program that we used and the tools that were involved in the Audacity program. 

FreeSound is a website in which you can research any sounds that you need for free. Sounds may include: people talking, the traffic etc... This website was very convenient for our radio show as it enabled us to insert any different types of audio that we needed. This website enabled us to get sounds to be able to make our news items sound more realistic when our audience would be listening to it. With this website, we could get the sounds without the painstaking effort of recording samples of background audio and sound effects ourselves. 

*Click to zoom in*

Above, what you seen is a screenshot of what the website looks like. At the right of the page, there is a search bar, in which you can search for any sound that you are looking for and the results will be likely to pop up.

GarageBand is a stock app with Macs. This software allows you to compose sounds and music with your own touch.  This is the place of which we will be composing our jingles and intro music due to the fact that it includes hundreds of thousands of different sounds that we can choose from. By using Garageband, it will allow us to learn how to use the program as well as constructing our radio's intro music and also our jingle. 

*Click to zoom in*

Above, what you see is what Garageband looks like when opened. There were many options of instruments to use for our local news broadcast's jingle and intro.

SoundCloud is a free music website where you are able to share music or music of your own to the worldwide web and everyone is able to listen to the music without any charge. Once we recorded all of our news items, we would use SoundCloud; uploading our final edited recording from Audacity onto the website before embedding it in our blogs. Embedding it into our blogs required very basic knowledge and use of HTML coding.

*Click to zoom in*

Above, what you will see is the SoundCloud website in which shows all the audios that we have recorded can be seen here. 

Evaluation

1. In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?





 2. How does your media product represent particular social groups?









 3. What kind of media institution would distribute your media product and why?

4. Who would be the audience for your media product?

5. How did you attract/address your audience?



6. What have you learnt about the technologies for the process of constructing this product?







7. Looking  back at your preliminary task, what do you feel you have learnt in the progression from it to the full product?

.Date (Week Ending)	Task	Review
6th March
13th March	Tick off Evaluation Task
20th March	2nd Evaluation Task
Sat. 21st March - In Media from 9:30 – 12	3rd Evaluation Task
27th March	4th Evaluation Task
10th April - In Media from 9:30 – 12
11th April - In Media from 9:30 – 12	5th Evaluation Task
18th April	6th Evaluation Task
25th April	7th Evaluation Task
	Blogs to be completed – 29th April

Main Task

Main task: A five minute news bulletin (local radio) to include title music, presenter, specialist reporters, OBs, recorded interview, a vox pop and appropriate sound fx and structure. 

All audio material must be original, produced by the candidate(s), with the exception of music or audio effects from a copyright-free source. Both preliminary and main tasks may be done individually or as a group. Maximum four members to a group.

Our brief is to produce a 5 minute local radio News broadcast.  This broadcast must include: 

• Title music
• at least one presenter
• at least two specialist reporters
• at least two Outside Broadcasts (OBs)
• at least one interview
• at least one vox populi (one vox pop sequence)
• sound effects
• an organised structure

In this part of my blog I will set out all of the elements which meet the brief. From my research and planning I have discovered that local radio news broadcasts are typically 5 minutes long just like the brief. I have also discovered that they usually include about 8 - 10 stories. So I am going to use the 7 codes and conventions of the genre of local radio news that I discovered in my research and planning to help construct my own local radio news broadcast.

First Article:









Part of my job within this task, is to try and find local news items to include into our news broadcast. Since it is a local radio, we need something to distinguish us from the rest of the radio stations in London and the UK as a whole. Local news comes into play here, as no other radio station would actually report these news items. In a way, it's a world exclusive, as there's a big chance that only the news/radio stations in the area are reporting these. Doing my job, I went through the West Hampstead Digital Newspaper, finding this, the first ever Kilburn Literary Festival. The next step was to try and construct a news angle. As we know, this is going to be the first ever literary festival in Kilburn; so I am going to want to know whether there will be another festival like this in Kilburn. This piece of news is a local news item, so it won't be the most valued news item, so we will need to find a piece of breaking news that catches the attention of our audience, Something that will affect everyone.

 Below, is an example of what the festival will consist of:


A challenge in presenting this news article was producing a script for us to use on the radio broadcast. We needed something that sounded like it belongs on a radio station, but we needed it to sound human as well. I find that reading off of a script is in no way complete emulation of human speech and thought. A news presenter can get away with reading off of a script, but we were interviewing people related to the news item. They couldn't read a script entirely as it wouldn't sound genuine. If they were asked a question, they would have to think a little about it. There would be some hesitation, like "erm" or "um" between sentences. These people are pretty much being put on the spot, they know they are going onto a radio, and logically they would be nervous to a degree, or at least they would be thinking about what they are saying. I suggested that we use a script, but deliberately not follow it. That way we would know what to say, but not word for word. We would have a path to follow, but we would still have to remember it, and we would not recite it completely. It would add a level of legitimacy to the broadcast.








This is the creative process of producing our script.
I am the presenter.
Celyn was the guest.
Edevi was the specialist reporter.
An interesting point I would like to add is the use of an alias. My name is Bradley Loughnane, but in the script I am Bradley Andrews. We thought it would add some sense of authenticity to the news article.


The final step would be to chop up the recording on Audacity to complete the item.

Editing our first news item

Using Audacity

We used Audacity to record and edit our news item. Audacity consists of many tools which allow us to record and edit our show more efficiently, as you will see below.

Screenshot 1 & 2

Screenshot 3 & 4

We would remove any periods of silence i.e after we said our line and are moving to stop the recording, or if someone finished recording and said "ok, is that good?" or something of the likes.



Week 2





The following week, we unearthed another festival. This time it was the INTO film festival, which was an annual celebration of film and education for schools and young people around the UK. The event lasts from 4th of November until the 21st of November.

Website Link: http://www.intofilm.org/festival

In the above photo, we see that the festival is holding events that involve screening films in local theatres.





The event has a variety of activities that you could choose from, ranging from educational resources to a wide choice of films to watch, and even filmmaking classes


The next step would be to produce a news article. This would begin with a script.

The script was designed to feel authentic. It needed to feel like a news report.

With the script set up, we went through with developing the news recording. Our main technique was to record everything in segments, so that editing them would be much easier. There is a downside to this, as it potentially makes it sound less authentic.







This is the completed recording of the guest and presenter. They are in separate tracks so that we can have both the presenter's and guest's audio together. The tracks are labelled for convenience.







For our news item, we needed to add background audio so that it fits in with the context of the article. The festival is targeted at school children, so we searched for "children talking" on Freesound, and got a variety of results. This was the one we eventually settled with.







Here, we are importing the audio of children talking into our news item. This is raw and unedited.





We quickly discovered that the audio we imported was too loud for the presenter and guest. It's meant to be background noise, so we had to change the amplification to a much lower level. This was so that the guest's audio would not be drowned out by the children.

Tools we used:

Audacity have many different tools which help us construct our news item, the tool above is a Trim (left) and Silence (right) audio. 

The Trim audio tool allows you to cut the both sides of the selected piece of audio, which then only leaves the middle. This makes it easier for us to identify which part we would like to delete and keep. It's more effortless than manually having to highlight each side and delete them.

On the left is the original audio, with the middle highlighted.
On the right is the resulting piece of audio after we trimmed the sides, using the trim tool.

This is the completed second news item, which is about the Into Film Festival. We discuss the importance of the event and how it affects school children in a way to help them expand their knowledge on the film industry. We used a new tool/website in creating this, and that was Freesound, which was used to get the background audio of children talking. We used audacity to edit the recording to make it fit for a radio broadcast, and to record voices.


Freesound is a website in which you can download audio, and said audio can then be imported into your audacity file. The audio can then be edited accordingly.

Third news item

Website Link

http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/dec/04/grand-theft-auto-5-kmart-target-pulling-game-sale

We knew we had something special when we found this news article. I personally am very fascinated by the video game industry, and I love seeing how the public reacts to certain games. We knew this would appeal to a younger demographic, because this was indeed "The" game of 2013.

This article consists of Australian retailer Kmart removing the critically acclaimed, yet ever so controversial game Grand Theft Auto V from its shelves. Three women argued that the game should be pulled due to its alleged misogyny, violence and aspects of rape culture. They created a petition online which garnered 40,000 signatures.

Below is the script we were to use

Editing

This is all of our recordings complete, and touched up. As you can see, we have named each of our tracks (i.e presenter, vox pop, spec. reporter) to make them easier to edit. Without these names, we would have to play a clip each time we wanted to know what it consisted of, which could be rather tedious.

These pieces of audio appear quite stretched. This is because we had to amplify them. the naked recordings were far too quiet, so we used the amplify tool to make the audio easier to hear.

We are yet to move them in order at this point. If you played  the tracks now, they would all play at the same time and it would either be painful to listen to, or it would be hilarious. Either way, it wouldn't be fit for our radio broadcast, so it couldn't stay that way.

Using the time shift tool, we moved all the tracks into their correct positions. Now they would play in a chronological order, and would not play simultaneously. This was how the audio looked before we saved it and uploaded it to soundcloud.

Completed Third news item

Fourth News Item

This story is very timely, as it has happened recently. This makes it ideal for the audience because it's current rather than in the past, which would be irrelevant. It creates the effect of being precise and accurate and leads to a more authentic news product. This news item has an impact on the society. It shows, or at least implies that old men are voiceless and vulnerable in today's society. The proximity of the event makes the item less relevant but the event itself hits close to home. Since it happened on a public train, it affects the local area because almost everyone in Kilburn uses public transport, and it could happen at any station, including Maida Vale Station. This is also bad news since not only was a man abused, but the man was blind and elderly. It shows the respect people have for the elderly nowadays, which is great for news since it's been a common stereotype for years now, and would appeal to people.

Script

This is the final script which is to be used for the fourth news item. It will consist of a presenter, co-presenter and a vox pop of two or more people from the public. In the timing and effect clump we've included a caption of when the background audio is going to be inserted, then we are aware of what to do when editing the track

Freesound is one of the handy websites we use when producing our news items this is where we find all of our background audios. This particular audio is the sound of a busy London underground station where you will hear people talking from every direction and announcers speaking, it creates a feel to the atmosphere and to the interview because of the location of where it was recorded. After being downloaded into the computer we had to import it into Audacity and place into the 'Background Audio' track. The audio will go in sync with the interview as a background track.

Before importing the downloaded track from freesound this is the uncompleted news item, but every recording has been edited and placed under their named track. It has a Presenter, Co-Presenter, Vox Pop and Background audio. All recordings have been organised but it's just missing the one recording (background audio) to complete the full track. 

The screenshot above shows a highlighted recording from our Co-Presenter playing it back, we have noticed that it was too quiet and we wasn't able to hear him speaking. Since we have a background audio every other recording from the interview needs to be amplified so everyone can hear them, this means we had to amplify the Co-Presenters recording to 0.2 db this will make it loud enough to be overheard by the backing audio.

Fifth News Item

The fifth news item is focused on the killing of a teenager in Westminster where a 16 year-old was arrested. Not only does this have proximity but it also has timeliness, the news wasn't too far away for our target audience but it wasn't too near therefore it was ideal to use because the location of the murder happened near the area so it would catch people's attention. 

It was timeliness because it didn't happen last week, but happened within the present. Therefore the news was fresh to use which gives us a reliable source because we know that it wouldn't lose our target audiences interest, but instead inform them on what is currently happening within their area. So it gets to the audience faster than word of mouth. 

Script

This script is our guideline to conjuring out fifth news item. We included the running length of each recording so that we know exactly how long the news item is. We wanted every script to be laid out on a table, in order for it to be clearer for our vocalists to understand and read.

This is our fifth news item where it has considered news value like impact, proximity and timeliness, so we decided to research background music that will be content with the news. So we typed in "serious background music instrumental" YouTube and I found the perfect track to use, called "Epic and Dramatic Tailer Music"







Sixth news item

Website: http://www.mirror.co.uk/3am/celebrity-news/zayn-malik-quits-one-direction-5365313

 This piece of news was obviously going to hit the headlines. One Direction is one of the most commercially successful bands in recent history and this news could affect people from businessmen to adoring fans. This news item is timely, and is really good because it affects damn near everyone to a degree. Even if you don't care about the band, this topic will be everywhere for weeks to come, and will likely come up in conversation a fair bit.

Script

Above is the first draft of our script, and on the left is the finalized script. The final script is shorter because we wanted to keep it condensed, and hard hitting. We wanted to get straight to the point rather than beat around the bush.

We also had to include a vox pop including voices from many different demographics.

Seventh News Item

Website: http://www.mirror.co.uk/3am/celebrity-news/jeremy-clarkson-flee-uk-close-5373635

Our seventh news item focuses on well known top gear presenter Jeremy Clarkson who was recently fired for being accused of hitting a producer, Oisin Tymon. From the accusations, it has been going around that he is on the verge of being sacked. His response towards this verdict was unpleasant as he used the F word countless of times this showed how frustrated he was after hearing about this and that they have now 'F***** Top Gear'.
This particular news item has news value of entertainment and elites because it involves a big time TV presenter and it's been spoken among many social medias, mostly twitter.

 SCRIPT

We created a short script to keep the news item simple.

EDITING

The Editing part of this news item was the most easiest out of all because it only consists of a presenter and a specialist reporter. This is our shortest news item amongst all eight. 

OUR SEVENTH NEWS ITEM

EIGHTH NEWS ITEM

CANON RADIO NEWS

SCRIPT

EDITING

Completed Show

This is the final cut of our show, and thus it is the end result of our script-writing, recording and editing.
You will find that this may be different from the individual news items we published. This is simply due to last minute changes that we thought were necessary. For example, I am no longer the main presenter. It wasn't my decision, but such is life in the studio. Nonetheless, I am happy and satisfied with the final product.





Here is the final script for the entire show.