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This semester I completed JOUR311: Newsroom Practice. I found the subject to be a way to gain very practical experience in a newsroom situation. It was a very helpful subject for allowing me to learn about the ways news stories are uncovered, created, edited and ultimately published. It was helpful to see this process in action in our classroom. It helped me to understand how journalists and editors really work.
Through Newsroom practice, we were given the opportunity to source stories and assess them based on their newsworthiness. We then were required to seek out credible sources and find multiple perspectives on the event or issue. As students acting as journalists, we were faced with the task of writing accurate, informative and unbiased stories with the time pressures that would be relevant to professional journalists.
Through this process I grew to understand how important (and challenging!) it is to produce news stories in a very quick time-frame. The internet provides journalists with the ability to catch on to a and spread messages at a rapid rate. This is an essential aspect to consider when writing a news story. As ours were being written for online publishing, we also had to consider how an online audience would be receptive to our writing. When beginning to write a story, it was not only important for us to ensure the story was fresh and recent, but also that it had not already been reported on the Wikinews site. On several occasions, students in my class (myself included) either commenced researching or writing a story, only to discover through conversations in our newsroom that another had already been writing on the same story. The caused me to realised that journalists cannot work alone. In a newsroom especially, communication between reporters is essential to avoid this problem.
Another reason why this communication within the newsroom was important was because other journalists and editors were able to suggest alternate angles for stories or share new sources they had found. This was particularly helpful as on a number of occasion for me, other students sent me through sources they had stumbled upon which gave me interesting insight into a story I had been researching.
Within our newsroom we had students acting as both journalists and editors. This gave me first-hand experience at what a newsroom is like as until now, I had not witnessed the way journalists and editors work together practically. Collaboration is an essential aspect of news writing. Journalists and their editors must work together to source stories and find reliable sources. Working together gives journalists the opportunity to create a story which is strong, accurate, informed and credible.
The collegiality between journalist and editor is what made this subject so different from others. Rather than being given information and being expected how to use it, our tutor encouraged us to find our own stories and construct our pieces ourselves with our classmates. The classroom was full of discussion as journalists and editors shared ideas with one another and offered to help each other out. I spent many weeks writing and re-writing story attempts in the hope they would be published by the wikinews editors. During this time I worked with several other classmates who acted as my editors. I found that the collaboration between my classmates and I would be similar to the work of journalists and their colleagues. I found interacting in this way a helpful and beneficial way of gaining alternate views and additional input into news stories.
Navigating around the Wikinews site took some getting used to. Initially I was unsure how to insert pictures or links into my stories, so I began with none at all, or only until my editor would show me how or do it for me. In writing stories specifically for the Wikinews site, it was also important in my work to follow the set guidelines of Wikinews. Initially the aspect that I most struggled with was writing in an unbiased voice. It was so easy to write about negative events in an angry tone, I found! It took some hard work for me to write the news as facts, and leave it up to the reader to interpret for themselves.
Through the story-writing process, I practically learned how there are certain aspects for journalists to consider. A news story, as already mentioned, needs to be fresh. In working with my editors, I often found that if a story was not published within the first few days of its posting, the Wikinews reviewers would edit it and label it as “stale” (or in other words, old news). This was quite frustrating when some stories that had been re-written and re-submitted for publishing a number of times eventually were reviewed and rejected.
I also learned that a news story needs to have a clear and interesting point. This is often a recent event that has just occurred. When researching my stories, I tried to find news that had happened in the last day at most. For example, one story I wrote focussed on a young girl who had qualified for the US Women’s Golf Championship, at only 11 years of age. This event is interesting and relevant to readers around the world. For another story, I wrote about school girls who had been taken captive in Nigeria by a militant terrorist group, Boko Haram. I followed this issue and continued re-updating my story over a period of a week and a half. Every few days some new event had occurred: more girls had been kidnapped, a video released, or comments made by the US. This meant I needed to continually re-focus my story on the latest update in order to have a chance at getting the story published.
In writing an effective news story, it is also very important to have a clear story pitch. This is the very first step to take when beginning to write a story. On a few occasions during this semester, I did some preliminary research and then came up with and idea for a possible story. When I had a story pitch I presented it to my tutor and asked for his advice. He often helped me to get a clear idea of an event I should focus my story on. I was initially quite picky about the stories I wanted to write, looking for issues or events that related to fashion or lifestyle. But after the first few weeks I began to open my mind to other kinds of topics to, such as sport and other world news events (still avoiding politics because I don’t understand a word of it). I wrote and edited stories including one about the young female golfer, an FBI agent who was arrested in Pakistan, and a former Masterchef contestant who was acting like a playboy. This was a new and interesting learning experience for me.
A news story also needs to be informed, accurate and well-written. These are features that Wikinews editors look for, and are also essential in any good news piece. For a story to be informed and accurate, a number of credible sources should be referenced. From the beginning of my practice in this subject, I made a conscious attempt to find sources that were trustworthy. A number of sources is also preferred, and shows the writer has done significant research on the topic. When writing on news event that had taken place in another country, I searched for sources from that country as opposed to stories on Australian or US news sites. For example, I edited a story about three anti-corruption activists who were recently sentenced in China. I noticed the writer of the article had not included any sources from Chinese news websites. So I found an article on South China Morning Post and used some information from the article to further information the story.
I enjoyed editing other stories in addition to writing my own. For some other students in the class I was able to read through their work and instantly notice language faults or awkward phrasing which could be simply re-worked. I found the same when other students edited my stories – often it just takes another person to read over your work to notice something you have missed. I also enjoyed fact-checking other students work. Occasionally I would find a new report on an already written story and include the information to update it.
In the newsroom, we were required to work as journalists and editors would by applying to ethical and legal standards. For one of my stories, 11-year-old Qualifies for U.S. Open, Anastasia acted as my editor. One of the changes she made included sourcing and posting a picture up with the story. As Lucy Li had not been in the media much prior to this event, Anastasia struggled to find a photo of the young girl which was not copyright protected. Instead she posted a photo of an older, recognised female golfer name Kerrie Webb and included a caption beneath the image explaining clearly who it was. I thought it was a creative and effective compromise. However, when the article was reviewed by the Wikinews reviewers, they claimed the image caused the reader to think it was Li and removed it.
In conclusion, Newsroom Practice was a beneficial learning experience as it provided me to work in a hands-on way in a newsroom environment. I learned practically about how news stories are uncovered, researched and reported effectively, how to work within a strict timeframe, and how to work in collaboration with colleagues who have the same purpose and end goal for their work. I also learned how to write news for a specific news site, attempting to abide by their set guidelines, and adhering to ethical standards. Although I have not yet had a story published, I feel more equipped to writing accurate, unbiased and well-written stories in the future.
Edited Stories
Story 1 in progress:
Finished story:
Story 2 in progress:
Finished story:
Story 3 in progress:
Finished story:
Story 4 in Progress:
Finished story: