Sustainable Journalism

I’ve been quiet on the blog front the past month or so. That’s because student life is fast becoming a thing of the past; I’m soon to be evicted from the safe confines of Cardiff University Journalism School to practice the art of journalism in the real wide world. It’s placement time, and I started my five week window with a night shift at GMTV on Monday 5th April into Tuesday 6th April.

When I told my non-journalist friends I was working a twelve hour night shift for nothing they thought I was mad. Yet I couldn’t have chosen a better night for it; it being the eve of the start of the 2010 election campaign. It was all hands on deck in the newsroom and that’s when my Avid and Newscutter skills came in handy. Rather than merely shadow, I was put to work to cut some pictures and get some scripts outlined for the morning bulletins.

With the news that Scrabble’s rules were going to get a revamp for the first time in 60 years, I got myself involved with a bit filming; my hands are now famous as we filmed some shots of my dubious Scrabble skills. I also kept an eye on the wires watching news break on the worst mine disaster in America, where hour by hour more fatalities in the West Virginia explosion were announced.

Of course, the election coverage took centre stage and in the morning there were live outside broadcasts to come from 10 Downing Street, Buckingham Palace and the South Bank. It was fascinating to sit in the gallery and see how logistically such a complicated live TV programme goes out. Here’s one of John Stapleton’s live links and a package that was broadcast that morning.

So what did I learn? Well I suppose that I’m not that far off, and that studying Broadcast at Cardiff has given me all the practical skills I need to slot into a busy newsroom environment. Not that I doubted it for a minute, but it’s a confidence boost to know that I’m not a million miles away. It was great to see the inner workings of a vibrant and dynamic 24 hour newsroom (not two words I’d have described myself to be at four thirty in the morning if I’m honest), and a great buzz covering internationally breaking stories. Moreover, it was encouraging that I was able to get stuck in and had the skills to all intents and purposes do the job.

And the 6am sunrise over Central London was worth the all-nighter alone.

Alright so I used some artistic license – I couldn’t see this from my desk but it was a stone’s throw away!

The snow dusted Palace of Westminster currently looks like a scene from a fairytale, but we’re barely a week into 2010 and the pantomime of the forthcoming general election is seemingly in full swing, with rumours of sinister plots and leadership coups all over the headlines. Some have the misfortune of a giant David Cameron gawping at them on the daily drive to work from 1000 billboards across the land, and the policy tittle tattle has begun in what will no doubt seem like an excruciatingly long election campaign.

However after a report I read in the Sunday Times, the wait this general election could be made even longer, as government spending cuts look like they may scupper the traditional intensity of election count night.

You see, results from the Electoral Commission watchdog have suggested that 1 in 3 constituencies won’t be able to declare their ballot count until the following day, due to the fact that local authorities don’t have the room in their budgets to employ temporary staff to count throughout the night. You may be wondering why I’m harping on about this in terms of journalism. Well with this delay it will certainly take the drama out of the election television coverage that gives a blow by blow account of which seats have been lost or won into the wee small hours and beyond. And it’s not only in the world of journalism that this potential future stumbling block is causing ripples. Here’s an example of the BBC’s coverage of the last general election in 2005.

When we started our Broadcast Journalism course we were told how lucky we were that it was a general election year, as it’s a great time to learn the ropes of live reporting. We’d get in as runners on the multitude of  various television and radio programmes broadcast throughout the election.

So the live drama after polling booths close at 10pm, whenever that day may be, looks set to be a rather more drawn out affair. This seems absolutely baffling considering the strident technological advancement of our digitally orientated world.  Whilst our ‘online networks’ are getting faster, it’s madness the democratic process in this country is getting slower due to lack of funding and bureaucratic red tape.

The article states that new rules surrounding postal ballots and almost 3.5 million voters being disenfranchised by not being included on the electoral register are two areas for blame. Alarm bells should be ringing in Parliament that its high time they revolutionised the way people can cast their votes and move some of it online. Okay, it’s been attempted before with the pilot held in 2003 for the Local elections in England heavily criticised, but rather than learning from it and developing it as a system, it was steadfastly abandoned. There are many arguments about voting security and the risk of vote rigging and hacking, but its obvious there needs to be a step change to encourage more people to cast their vote and help combat the general public’s apathetic view of the political process.The Conservatives certainly see developing an online network as paramount to future success> With the offer of a £1 million prize for the creation of a new social platform with which they can carry their message, they are moving in a progressive direction, but is it really a holistic approach or just a facebook or bebo in a politically biased skin?

Back to the point – the tension of live television coverage should not be degraded or robbed of the blow by blow account as it always has done – this would be an absolute travesty.

Perhaps the bright side for us lowly runners is that we may get more tea and fag breaks throughout the night. And boy are we going to need them as it could be the longest election night coverage in history; especially if the rumours circulating from the BBC have any truth to them.