Wimbledon and Wandsworth Guardian - Work Experience

The experience was a great learning experience in the world of journalism. My main experience of local reporting is through my reporting at university and a day I spent documenting the Basingstoke Gazette.

So this was my first time getting hands on with a real local newspaper.

Firstly I was surprised at the size of the team. Although the office was quite big, both the Wimbledon and Wandsworth Guardians had two reporters each alongside an assistant editor and editor for them both.

For my first two days the reporters were working towards their printed paper which is produced on Wednesday. I was given a couple of press releases to turn on my first day to turn into news stories.

On my second day I was given a few nibs to write, and also a story to follow up. It involved writing a 300/400 word piece, including calling the people involved, for more information, and also organizing a photo shoot with them. The story was then

It was interesting seeing the process of producing a local paper, particularly with stories constantly changing and new stories turning up.

On Wednesday morning I went to court in Kingston with one of the Wimbledon guardian reporters. Court can be quite hit and miss, and unfortunately we didn’t get any sentences. I then did some work on a leisure piece about activities for young children during the start of July.

On Thursday I worked for the sport team. This included conducting a phone interview with a non-league football player that had signed for his local club. 

I worked on some more news and sport stories, including one about Laura Robson promoting sports and activities with local school children.

http://www.richmondandtwickenhamtimes.co.uk/sport/football/hamptonandrichmond/hamptonandrichmondnews/10499297.Brewer_finds_the_love_for_the_Beveree_once_again/?ref=rss

http://www.yourlocalguardian.co.uk/sport/10501391.Robson_takes_time_out_to_send_a_message_to_schoolchildren/

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Will Vine revolutionise Video Marketing? [Guest Post - Silverbean]

This article was written on behalf of Silverbean.

Since January of this year, there’s a new app available on Android that’s been taking the market by storm. The Twitter Vine video sharing app works in a similar way to the popular social network but in a different medium. Whereas Twitter limits you to 140 characters of text, Vine instead gives you the ability to create a video of up to six seconds in length and share them with other Vine users, as well as users of both Twitter and Facebook. Users can then share videos, look up trending content and find friends.  

The rise of video content on the internet has caused a shift in internet marketing, with advertisers branching out into creating videos catered to an internet audience. However, research has revealed that people’s patience with internet videos are on the wane, and customers no longer have the patience to even read a video’s title before clicking away. What does this mean from a marketing perspective? Is Vine the next step in revolutionising video marketing, or even the thing we needed to keep video marketing alive?

At the moment, it’s difficult to say what impact Vine will have, if any. For one thing, there’s a similar app to Vine that’s been available on the internet for longer but has gotten less people talking despite working in much the same way. Tout describes itself as ‘a real-time information network’ where users can post and share videos of up to 15 seconds on whatever subject they like; you can even engage in conversation with other users. Generally it’s made less of an impact on the public consciousness here in the UK than it has in America, where it was founded, because it seems like not many people have actually heard of Tout, and the ones that have seem a little perplexed by it. They wrinkle their brows ask and ask, not unreasonably, ‘what’s the point?’ Other view it as simply being a fad that will die out as quickly as it started.

The question is whether this indifference will have the same effect on Vine. The fact that videos can only be six seconds or less means that marketers have little to work with, which is both a blessing and a curse. It’s a curse for obvious reasons; marketers are left to figure out how to make six seconds of content memorable content, but the blessing comes from the fact that the content itself will be entirely relevant when produced. Social networking is a simple and effective way to get your video circulating too. The short nature of the videos should prevent someone with the shortest attention span from getting distracted, but if more and more people are actively avoiding marketing videos, does that really mean anything? It’s becoming increasingly clear that the medium of video is incredibly limited and this is where the problem arises. Instead of catering to the impatience of consumers, marketers should instead be looking for ways to reinvent and revolutionise the content that they’re producing.  The success of vine is currently in a suspended state; only time will tell if it’s set to become as core to our internet experience as Facebook or Twitter.

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