Digital News Production - Brief, Ideas and Research

Group - Sei-Kai, Illy, Tim, Hannah

This project, we are required to research, plan and produce a short new or current news item for multi-platform transmission. We will need to be able to engage with broadcast journalism encompass effective multi-platform production skills on location and in a studio.

Ideas

Our group had a meeting on 26th September and discussed ideas and topics we wanted to produce on our news production. Hannah wanted to produce something to do with animals because she thought that animals do not get much coverage on the news much. Tim suggested to have a look at the Rochester Air Field and the Chatham Football club. We discussed and I suggested that all our ideas sounded like they were community based topics around the Medway area. We all agreed that our news channel should be a community channel, and aimed at 18-28+.
I mentioned that if we were going to look at the Rochester Air Field we could find out if they were preparing anything for remembrance day which would be coming up in 9th November. We all discussed about this year being 100th Anniversary of the WW1, and together with the Rochester Air field could become the main topic of the news. The Chatham Football club and Rochester football club could be a feature, possibly at the end of the news.
Talking about the animal sanctuary, we decided that it would be the lighter subject in the news, a breather for the audience as the World War topic would be quite heavy. We could also research about wildlife in Medway as the location is Kent also known as 'The Garden of England'. Other topics to do with wildlife could include smaller news such as looking after or improving wildlife at home in the garden, or looking out for pets or other little creatures in need of help as the weather is getting cold.

As a community channel we also discussed that we needed to include the community in the channel. We have assigned Illy and Hannah to research Museums and Theatres and look at what is on in the Arts area.
Tim has been assigned to look at Medway council to find out any new news going on in the community.
I have been assigned to finding out about nature and looking for wildlife professionals or nature at home.

Later through the week, we all went through different topics going back and forth looking for stories. At first there was the christmas lights event in Medway, then we saw a event called 'Christmas at the home front'. Discussing this with the group, we had to find a story and we wern't sure if there really was a story behind these events. So we all went off to research and find any other new stories for our news. We all agreed to meet on Monday to discuss what everyone has found.

Monday 6th Oct

Tim and I turned up to the meeting. Unfortunatley Hannah and Illy were not able to show. We looked researched for stories together. The first we found was a Knitting for Charity event which was raising money to fund for a new machine for breast cancer. There were questions like who are this charity, what are their aims and purpose of this event? How are the people involved, connected with breast cancer? (If they are)

Second topic we found was a regeneration project in Medway. This project covers the whole of medway. We found that the council were going to spend £120 million on the regeneration over the whole of Medway, and a further £160 million on Pentagon shopping centre alone. This is a huge news story, but found we could focus on regenerating Pentagon shopping centre story.

We also found that Medway wanted to bring more tourists and bring people back to the town instead of venturing off to Bluewater to go shopping.

Questions could be, what are they spending the money on exactly?, will the new shops push local and independent stores off the high street?, will jobs help residents permanently or temporary?, will the historians like a modern medway? Or will it clash with the old historic buildings such as Rochester Cathedral?

Later that week, Hannah found a article about some people trying to raise money to keep and turn a historic building into a museum which is one of 2 buildings of its kind in Kent. 

Questions to ask and find out is... What is the building, why is the building so important that the community want to keep and transform into a museum, are there any timescales that the charity has to raise £20,000 withing? Also, how and where and what are they going to do to raise funds?

It's a will they or wouldn't they get the funding to achieve transforming the building?

After spending a few days contacting people, the knitting group called back Hannah and said they would love for us to find out more about their project. So we had made arrangements to meet the group and see the location. Also, the friends of Milton Regis had gotten back in contact to arrange a meeting with the group to find out more about what our aim is and for us to find out more about them. Hannah had also been exchanging emails with Mike Whiting, the Councillor of Swale to see if we could have a meeting with him to find out how much the council is involved with the project.

As we did not want to waste any more time, we agreed that we had two great stories that fit our channel which we were looking forward to report on.

Shooting Script

I had started working on the intro of the news with the reporter and worked on the knitting script. As, I was away, the rest of the group collaborated and worked on the rest of the script together using a tool on google where you can edit live together.