News Editor - Learn by doing?

Winol - Winchester News Online. This is a project journalism students at Winchester university are being graded on. Essentially we've been tasked with setting up our own news organisation, we have an online news and features site and weekly we'll produce a 15 minute live news program. We've just had our first dry run and blimey was it hard work. The temptation to wander around mumbling 'student', 'just learning' and mistakes will happen' is growing by the second.



I'm in the role of news editor and my tasks are to choose the right stories to pursue, manage my reporters and ensure the content is delivered on time. This week I think I failed on all accounts. So either this bizarre optimism I'm feeling is insanity creeping in or I'm confident the next run through will be many times better. Let's hope it's the latter eh?

News is a unique and unpredictable beast, no amount of sitting around planning and discussing will change local events and give us an amazing Hampshire news bulletin. We have to find the news and then report it in the most engaging and informative way possible. So the most important aspect of news journalism is also the most difficult, tracking down interesting happenings somewhere as sleepy as Winchester.

I honestly believe reporting news is much more demanding than feature writing - not to knock features or those who write them, we have a fantastic features team at Winchester that's working extremely hard and coming up with great ideas. It takes a completely different skills set to write features, one I lack completely and I admire those who do. But they do have that luxury of being able to make up ideas, try that in news and people tend to get a little narked off...

All news teams, no matter whether they work for TV, radio or print will meet frequently in a meeting chaired by the editor. They share the stories they've found and the editor decides which ones make the cut. Now being able to speak from experience - this is the make or break part of the entire news day.

If the right stories are pitched and chosen then everything after will go down like a cold beer on a hot summers afternoon. Running with weak ideas will be forced, frustrating and ultimately make for a very weak final product. The problems this week were evident: a lack of communication and preparation.

And the solutions? As the news editor I need to be available all the time, I can't go out to work on a story myself. I'll be there on the end of the phone if I'm needed and I'll keep track of my reporters, know where they are and what they're doing. But I need to trust them more rather than trying to micromanage every aspect of every story. If they pitch a story to me and I like it then I'll give them the go ahead. My team are enthusiastic and committed, everything else will come with time and practice.

We've started an online calendar of upcoming events, our news diary that we can all access and update. By looking ahead we can build up a list of news prospects that will make it easier in the Monday news meeting to find the right stories fill a bulletin. We'll also bring the meeting forward to earlier in the day, the more time we have to work on the pieces, the better they will be.

The week was as difficult as it was rewarding. It was a start and there's definitely something there that can be built upon in the coming weeks. It wasn't until I made these mistakes that I knew how to avoid them. I've tried, and missed the mark. Now I've learnt from it and now I'll do a better job because of it.