13 Dec Arun Matharu – Critical Explication
I believe the JLDN “brand” to be one that aims to provide authentic and engaging stories in a ‘Blue Peter meets BBC News at Six’ style to the public, especially students. LSBU being a diverse university, the demographic at which the weekly shows (both radio and YouTube streams) are targeted towards cannot easily be categorised into one box; a diverse group of people aiming to produce relevant content for a diverse audience can sometimes prove difficult (whether that includes bulletins, VTs, social media segments or live Skype calls).
The live show that I have chosen to analyse was broadcast via YouTube on 24 October, 2019.
This week’s show contained content on Meghan Markle, Brexit, a social media segment, news bulletins, air pollution and student jobs (in that order). There were a number of reasons as to why these stories were both chosen and run in that order.
The Meghan Markle VT was run first due to the credibility of their interview with the royal correspondent for Harper’s Bazaar US. Despite not being the most hard-hitting of news stories, I believe it boded well for the live show that this story was run first – it was engaging, credible and reported/edited cleanly.
The live Skype call from Westminster and the Brexit VT were, I believe, crucial to delivering a legitimate journalistic live show. It is important to provide viewers with the most important political/social/economic issues directly affecting them. With LSBU viewers being comprised largely of international students or those coming from working class backgrounds, the current political Brexit stance/position was an important segment to be covered. The Skype call was conducted in a concise and easy-to-understand manner; it led on cohesively to the following VT which was more specialised towards students.
I felt that the content for the news bulletin stories could have been improved. The abrupt change between sexual assault to pumpkin farming stories felt uncomfortable to watch and potentially may have been confusing for audiences to understand the tone of the bulletins segment. I believe the bulletins may have worked better had they have steered closer to harder news stories (potentially specialising in global stories) and had left softer news to be covered through VTs and the social media segment.
One aspect of the bulletins that did work well was the level of impartiality that was kept. When wording hard news stories, it can sometimes be easy to mislead viewers into forming biased opinions, or even looking as if a particular news-house has biased views. The bulletins were delivered with balance, accuracy and obvious consideration for maintaining objectivity and respect (especially considering our work at JLDN is not regulated by Ofcom).
One of the more engaging segments of the show is always the social media segment, which allows for a more unscripted, natural, comical and light presentation style. It also directly connects the show to its potential viewers and gives the show chance to highlight stories that may fall somewhere in between ‘hard’ or ‘soft’ news. Unfortunately, there were numerous technical difficulties with this week’s show which resulted in the audio facing glitches.
As the social media presenter, I worked alongside the social media editor to choose relevant and trending stories that may interest different viewers (such as smoking, science or pets in Halloween costumes). I believe I was engaging and overall the segment was moderately comical and easy to watch. I prepared around eight stories; this meant that should the rest of the show end up less substantial, I would be able to pad out the social media segment to carry the show up to 15 minutes.
I also ensured to message all users whose content I wanted to use (as not to infringe on any copyright laws). This was a difficult process to do last minute as many users did not reply in time for the live show.
In reflection, it would have been better to look at a wider range of social medias. A way to improve the show in future may be to look at ways to engage a wider audience outside the conventional means of Twitter or Instagram. Another way in which the social media segment could be improved is by interacting with the co-editor more; we attempted to partake in some dialogue but due to timing issues we were unable to fully commit.
The main issues that I believe we encountered during this day would have been avoided with better communication. There was difficulty in addressing production mishaps especially due to a stressful, last-minute feeling throughout the newsroom. This meant that managing directors and floor managers had to sometimes resort to shouting, which is never a good atmosphere to have to resort to five minutes before a live show. It also meant that the show’s biggest downfall was arguably the production. General timekeeping was not practised throughout the day meaning production was not sufficiently practised.
Going forward, I feel that morning meetings should remain concise and clear; everyone should be setting small achievable goals to stick to throughout the day. The use of a group chat via WhatsApp could be better utilised to communicate with people who may be out filming or researching to ensure everyone is in-the-know of important deadlines.
