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