Meeting 15

This week my meeting took place at 4pm at Sparkhouse studios and as usual it took place with my editor Daniel Ionescu. This week I pitched two stories-
Inca trail- A woman at the university is doing a sponsored walk around the Inca city. My objective is to interview her and obtain a picture. This is exactly what Daniel is looking for. He has said in pervious meetings he wanted me to look for stories which involved someone doing out of the ordinary. This is also a academically viable story as Chris Frost writes 'Whether it is a local charity, the Scouts or Guides, a church group or a social society, these are local people doing what interests them in the community and some of it at least can be turned into news or features.', this can be also seen as being interesting to the community as well since it's a unique task the woman is undertaking.

'm learning to juggle in under a certain amount of time- For my radio show project I'm going to the Lincoln juggling club to learn how to juggle in a short period of time. A bonus of this kind of story is that I will be recorded doing it. This will be USP for the Lincolnite and will stand out since not many of their stories come attached with audio. Though something I need to be wary of with this is background noise. I have previously been down to the club and now it will be noisy, however I don't want to record the story in a quite room as Chris Frost writes 'background sound can add authenticity to a story.' what I will simply have to do is 'beware of background of noise effects that detract from the story.' I will aim to be get more background noise then my previous audio about the war hero (http://thelincolnite.co.uk/2011/03/pilot-recalls-world-war-2-experiences/ ).

This week I'm going to look at the idea of developing personal contacts. Already I have a collection of contacts from starting the Lincolnite and various work experience, though I was thinking that I hadn't produced any contacts of value I suddenly realised I had. As Chris Frost writes 'Every reporter lives by his or her contacts- it marks the difference between a good reporter and a great reporter.'

've already seen some promising marks about my cultivated contacts as 'no matter what is happening, they will know someone who can tell them all about it- our at the very least give them a name of someone who can tell them about it.' Two examples I can think of include Hobb Whittons has messaged me recently about him starting his second book (http://thelincolnite.co.uk/2011/06/blue-fire-burning-for-local-author/). I have another one which is not Lincolnite related but was when I did a radio shift at Siren FM I was following up a story about tourism, so our usual port of call would be the city's tourist information centre, however they were unable to help us but since I had been in touch with them before they were able to give me the contact details of someone else to contact.

Critique- It's been a while since I've produced this part but now I have a published story to talk about (http://thelincolnite.co.uk/2012/03/in-pictures-lincolns-exotic-pets/). This was the exotic pets story.

My editor was impressed with the photos I took as I took his advice on board about going for detailed close ups of the animals and not being afraid about getting close.

Focusing on the copy however I believe their is room for improvement. I was happy about the transferable content of story meaning it had more value. As Chris Frost writes about the nature of the on-line journalism format 'are more likely to be receiving material gathered for one of the more traditional media and sent for an on-line news site.' 

Also looking at the quotes I have for the story looking back through my notes I think I have found a quote which would have produced a clearer angle for the story concerning the classification of exotic pets. 'Exotic pets aren't just alligators or giraffes they can cover snails and even hamsters.' If I had included the part about hamsters it may as Chris Frost writes it may help 'to align such shared value' thus making the story more appealing for a wider audience.