Second outing as an editor

The day came that once again, I was the editor of our course website: www.solentjournalism.co.uk. The last time out as an editor, I had been relatively pleased with how the day had gone so was hoping that it would be the same once again.

Or maybe not.

These last two weeks have been stressful and a lot more demanding than last time, but it all makes for good experience. Despite the last news-day being a lot busier in terms of stories being received, my fellow editors and I found this time a lot harder with attempting to get people to submit stories.

The prep day on the 26th of February proven to be the start of some issues; first of all, there was a distinct lack of three-years, but this is completely understandable - we after all have final major projects to complete, along with other big assessment before the end of our University careers. However, this was the case for the second-years, with hardly turning up. The only year for the majority to appear were the first-years and they were indeed the ones to show the most enthusiasm in wanting to write news stories. That is something that seems to be lacking, particularly in the second-year. A couple of our lecturers even had to get sarcastic with the second-years just to get a couple to volunteer to help with a story - they shouldn't have to be doing that.

One first-year came up with a brilliant story - after Team GB's success in the Sochi Winter Olympics, the dry ski slope in Southampton has received a lot more business since, particularly with snowboarder and Olympian Billy Morgan hailing from Southampton. It made way for potential for not only a cracking piece of copy, but also great multimedia content. We came up with the idea of perhaps getting someone who has never snowboarded before to give it a go, have a GoPro strapped to them and get good interviews. At first, us editors only wanted two second-years to give our first-year a hand - only for some to whine childishly at not being assigned the story. We relented, and ended up giving four second-years the story, giving them great ideas and expecting this to turn out to be one cracking news story.

Alas, how wrong were we? We turned up on the news-day (5th of March) and found not one second-year (despite four of them on the case) had done any  multimedia content. We weren't surprised, but it was hugely frustrating and disappointing; the first-year had done her part but sadly, the more experienced second-years weren't willing to do their's.

It was very much the story of the news-day, with a lack of stories and people turning up, we as editors could only do what we could do. Admittedly, some second-years did go and get good audio vox-bops but the lack of those turning up was concerning.

As an editorial team, I feel we all worked well as a team, with four of us working together beforehand. We all communicated well once again and I can go away happy with our efforts to create good content for the website. One hiccup was the lack of one of our team on the prep news-day, only turning up two hours after we had been due in University for an editorial meeting. Nevertheless, this was one small blip on what was overall a good effort from all of us.

My advice to the next team? Work hard and communicate well as a team - it'll pay off.