TV NEWS; SOURCING STORIES AND STORY TYPES (LECTURE)

Sources and Contacts

A broadcast journalist relies on a wide range of sources and contacts in the never ending search for 'new news'. The best journalists go and find the stories themselves rather than sitting there and waiting for something. For example, search through UGC or going out and talking to people can help a journalist find the story for themselves. Fisherman (1997) called 'beats' - 'patrolling' much like a police officer on recognised chains of information to supply potential stories with 'News Values', a story has to be exciting and new; though its still news it can still very much so be treated like a drama in the sense that it is still being made to be watched by a viewer. Where to find stories

Primary Sources      - Your own direct contacts

                                - Original sources direct from source material e.g. archive material 

                                - Public Appeals

                                - Press Releases/Stats/Official Statements

Secondary Sources - Stringers (freelancers)

                                - Other platforms/media

Developing Your Story

-Copious research needs to be matched with copious note taking, be organised and ensure you keep your contacts and relevant information somewhere you can easily access it. 

-Whenever you are delivering information, ensure you attribute the information to reliable sources - simply saying 'allegedly/apparently' is not enough without saying WHERE the information is from

Setting up Your Story

-Just as with the documentary unit, the proof of your journalistic skills is the you try to set your story up to shoot it

-By the time you set it up you should be clear about:

                   -what your story is

                   -who is in your story

                   -where it is

                   -when it is to be shot

                   -how you will tell ti

                   -why you are making the story

Following Up Leads

-the contacts you make in the early stages of research should lead you to the final elements which you will include in your news story

-Inevitably there will be decisions made on the basis of availability, location, cost etc, but bear in mind thesis decisions frame your story for the audience - be sure you are including elements which are a fair and reasonable representation of the facts and stay OBJECTIVE

Television News Story Forms

-5 basic types: 1 - Readers - a short story which the presenter reds out with no video to accompany or any other screen graphics. 2 - OOVs - stories which the presenter reads which also includes video material i.e. the voice over is performed by the presenter live whilst the video plays for all or part of it, adds variety of pace to the newscaster. 3 - OOV/SOT - combination of OOV and SOT - sound on tape, good for varying pace of the programme and allows a more in depth news report, but not as in depth as a full news package. 4 - News package - full formed self contained news pieces, unlike OOVs the news presenter is not involved in the story itself but rather in introducing and wrapping up the story, the reporter takes the lead up on the story. 

                      

TV NEWS; WORKSHOP

We were given a news article entitled 'Rare butterflies booming after conservation boost'; detailing how as part of a conversation project by the National Trust, the population of  a rare butterfly species has now increased dramatically since the start of the project in 1992.

Angle; With the help of the National Trust, rare species of butterflies have now dramatically increased in population.

PRESENTER SCRIPT

Butterfly Boost

Presenter:
Hello and welcome to Nature One. Today’s story discusses the dramatic increase in the population of rare species of butterflies and this is all thanks to the National Trust and their ‘habitat specialist’.  Did you know, that the scarcer butterfly has declined in population, by 25% within the last 25 years, whereas, in comparison the Adonis Blue butterfly has increased by an equally huge 13% with thanks to the National Trust and their work.

Today we are joined with a ranger from the National One who has seen first hand, the success of the conservation projects. Hi Natasha, (she replies)

Q - So, roughly how long has this work been going on?

A - So the National Trust has been working on this issue of the decline in rare butterfly species for a good few decades, weve specifically been working at increasing this number of butterflies on farmlands since 1992, we are trying to get the numbers back to that of 1976.

Q - So, explain to us the work that you are doing?

A - So us at the National Trust have set up a lot of conservation projects in the hope to dramatically increase the population of rare butterfly species, in order to monitor this we have used results from the UK Butterfly monitoring Scheme to compare the numbers at our sites in comparison to those lands that are under other ownership. By producing some specialist habitats to house these butterflies we have successfully grown the numbers of specific rare species.  

Q - What do you think is one of the most important factors in this project?

A - Well aside from the main issue of the decline in butterfly population, i think it’s really important and extremely helpful within this conservation project that we have a wide range of local farmers and Rangers, as well as people like myself from the National Trust, all working together to achieve one common goal.

Q - From the reports, you’ve been very successful in achieving this. What’s the next step?

A - From now on, we are hoping to boost the number of farmland butterflies even further across our 200 000 acres of farmed landed, were pledging to improve butterfly habitats on land in our care with the hope of boosting the ranges of rarer butterfly species such as the mentioned Ble Adonis.  

Thank you for joining us Natasha, unfortunately that's all we have got time for today on Nature One. Next week, we look at more animal stories.  

TV NEWS; IDEAS DEVELOPMENT

After sitting down as a group and going through all of our ideas, as well as having a workshop with Jo Clark, we sifted through and decided on one idea that we would all work on and research. This idea focuses on young peo
ple and looks at their understanding of finance. The idea first came from the thought that within schools, young people are not in any way taught about taxes or credit or in fact anything to do with adult financing.

Part of the weblink emailed to me by 'Money Service Advice'

Myself and Laura found a number of different people we could call; this was mainly to try and get a better overview of this in terms of the actual issue; we want to try and find out how debt and credit is a problem for young people and as it is such a sensitive issue for some people it isn the easiest topic to find true to life facts/issues online. Firstly, we called up the 'Money Service Website', a free service by which people can call up and ask for advice surrounding issues with money. The person i spoke to took my email and gave me a link to their main page around this topic, which led me to some useful information explaining the different ways young people can get in to debt. Furthermore Laura contacted the Citizens Advice service who though couldn't give us any information themselves, they gave us an email for a charity entitled "Step Change" who specialise in this topic and are hopefully able to provide us with some statistics. We have contacted them and are currently awaiting a reply. Lastly, Jo found for us another charity that are locally based who offer debt free advice, unfortunately they do not have a phone number but a contact form, so we have sent that off and are again hoping for a reply; as this is a locally based charity we think this may be a good contact for an expert interview for the news piece itself. 

Charity that we hope to interview

Other research that i found include a guardian news article and some other news pieces that focus on a similar topic. The main example that i found from the internet was from the Citizens Advice website; it tells the story of a young boy Scooby, who accidentally went £1 into an un-arranged overdraft and ending up building up a £600 charge because of it. This to us just demonstrates firstly how easy it is for young people to fall into debt, and secondly how uneducated we as a generation are in terms of money/bills/charged and all things financing.

Katie and Aimee created this brief overview of what our idea will consist of -

Finance channel based upon young people and their understanding of money. 

Live Package
¥Who? University students
¥Where? University
¥Why? Talk to the students about credit and debt- what sort of “financial solutions” they have i.e. overdraft 

Pre-recorded package
¥Who? Joel Blundell (?) 
¥Where? In front of green screen? Sitting at desk? 
GVs- people walking into a bank? Websites- bank/ signing up to accounts/ online banking
Graphics- logos of different banks, news ticker, intro for the news channel
¥Why? Introducing the subject, facts and figures 

Website
¥Channel title
¥Tag line (pitch line) 
¥Information about what our websites about 
¥Upcoming videos

Think about- theme colours, imagery (i.e logo), intro- can include audio and visual effects

To include in script- “back to the studio”, “next time”, “let’s visit ---- at -----”, 

Note- photos and behind the scenes 

Phone calls made to Money advice- emailing stuff through, c.a.b- told to call charity Stepchange- no outcome.

TV NEWS; INITIAL IDEAS

We were arranged into group of fours for the project, because the project itself is a very short one, we begun straight away by brainstorming some different ideas that we could do. For example our first brainstorming ideas included halloween and student life. We decided to all come up with one idea each that we can all look to develop, that way we can each decide on the best one and also have a few back ups should we run into any issues with the once that we choose.


The idea that i came up with first of all is the idea of christmas and how early all of the stores and websites get ready/advertise for it. I came up with this idea because i remembered when i worked in a department store and in August i was tasked with putting out some christmas cards onto the shelf, this was my first experience of realising how early stores now sell christmas gifts and cards, and how this can put pressure on lots of people to be prepared and spend their money for christmas. I looked into this issue more and found a news article titles "Halloween in August? Christmas in October? The retail trend that is here to stay" - it was then that i realised how much of a wider issue this is, how up and down the country and most likely the world, that businesses capitalise on the event of christmas far earlier than ever before. As most would agree it definitely isn't a case of the 'twelve days of christmas' anymore.


I think this idea is good because theres many avenues by which we can explore, for example we could look at the financial stress that christmas puts on to people, the pressure to get the best presents as well be ready and prepared for when the shops start selling for the festive season. Contextually we can date this back to 1952, when the very first 'Black Friday' was announced in the USA before becoming the global event that we know today. Though normally held in the end of November so not as early in comparison to other sales and christmas events others may do, however this i think is still a very big example of the chaos and stress that christmas can create.

I thought that it would be quite important within this early research stage to look at how spending for the christmas period has increased, for example £5.6 billion was spent within the UK on advertising in the run up to the event in 2016, this however generates a huge revenue in sales profit.

Furthermore, there is a few people we would be able to talk to/interview for this topic and i have narrowed it down to two different certain types of people. The first being a shop owner or manager, who could contextualize the topic for us and give us an insight into shoppers buying habits around the festive period. An example i have found is a shop called 'The Nutcracker'; a chain of shops that are christmas based all year round, hopefully we would be able to gain access to talk to a manager or worker of one of these stores and talk to them about their store. Secondly i think it would be good to talk to a normal shopper; ask them about their shopping experiences and how the pressures of the early christmas advertising from retailers affects them.

TV NEWS: UNIT BRIEFING

Digital News Unit Briefing

- This unit will build on the experiences from the first year, key skills that we will take forward include - Sourcing stories and storytelling (narrative)
             - Sourcing Contributors
             - Sourcing Locations
             - Scripting/Writing to pictures
             - Interviewing
             - Sequencing and Actuality
             - SWEFF
             - Good Coverage (GVs)
             - Good Sound (atoms, correct mic, control background and noise etc)
             - Factual Accuracy/Fair Dealing/Impartiality & balance
             - Team Work and Communication
             - Time management and Organisation Skills
             - Interpret information and find good news angles - disseminating info thereafter

- New Skills that we will take from this unit include;
             - Reporting - on screen/directing talent
             - Fast turn-around (6 weeks to submission inc this week) - get story & access quickly
             - Online platform development/branding/concept
             - Studio presentation/News anchoring (green screen possibilities)
             - Sourcing talent - IE reporters/presenters

We are challenged to develop your own original online news channel and produce content for that channel, find a brand which will fit a particular audience and provide content for the audience - niche content rather than mixed. We will all be assessed individually on both submitted work and blog work. Design your own branded digital online news channel via website such as YouTube, Vimeo etc.

Submission Date - 26th October