I found working on multi-format pieces of journalism to be a challenging, but rewarding and enriching experience. My first assessment which was the News Bulletin story was something rather familiar to me. I do volunteer and paid work at 2ser FM, a community radio station, where a large part of my job is compiling and reading radio news bulletins, so I sense I may have had an advantage. I perhaps didn’t take full advantage of my experience, as I forgot to include a sign off as well as any sport or weather, which I may have simply overlooked. In future I should ask more questions of my tutor to be sure of exactly what I need to set out to do. Our group assignments were a lot of fun. My partner Kathryn was a really great teammate to have, and I felt we really excelled as a team. Our first assignment we decided to take the political angle, as we felt it would be easier to get that out of the way and that it would be more timely to be writing about the Federal Election before it happened on May 18th. We decided to centre our package around the question of whether Australians cared more about refugees at the 2019 election than in previous ones. We did a lot of travelling for this one, and encountered some interesting challenges. Our first task was going out and filming at the Rally for Refugees in the CBD, where we got some great footage. Unfortunately, our mic extension played up and we had a bunch of muted footage. This was a setback that we had to deal with, and I think it strengthened our resolve. We travelled out to Penrith to speak with a Greens candidate for the Federal seat of Lindsay, which we thought would bring currency to our story as the seat was once of the key seats heading into the election. For me personally this was a challenge as I live close to the city, so getting up early and heading out west was a challenge. We worked well and we achieved a solid result for this first package, and we were both quite satisfied with the outcome. We knew the areas we needed to work on for the second package. For that one, we came up with the idea of covering the Lakemba Nights Ramadan markets. We did really well in shooting all our footage in one night, and we got a heap of great interviews. It can definitely be intimidating to go up and ask stall owners, but we put that aside and got a night of work we were proud of. In terms of the package itself, we were both really happy with it. I think we addressed the issues that Margot had raised with our first package, to bring a much improved product. I think it captured the fun, inclusive nature of the event, and we were both really satisfied with it.  In terms of the blogging side of things, I definitely feel I need to improve. I am not an especially tech-savvy person, but I can’t use this as an excuse and need to figure out ways to get better at particularly the aesthetics of my blog site. I feel if i can address this, I will do better in future in professional and academic capacities.

Nick Parmeter

Today we visited the ABC studios at Ultimo. We were given a tour by several staff members who were involved in the admin side of newsroom operations but had all once been decorated field journalists. I noticed a lot of renowned and celebrated journalists in the newsroom, including reporter Ashleigh Raper and election analyst Antony Green. We saw the main newsroom which was dedicated to the New South Wales News and 7.30. We were taken through some of the processes involved in putting together the shows, and also got to have a look at the studio where a number of programs on the News 24 channel are broadcast. We then went downstairs to where a lot of the online content is produced. There were sections dedicated to most news topics including sport, politics and a foreign department which I believe acted as a base of contact for foreign correspondents as well as a place for write ups on foreign affairs. We also saw the room where sound bites and grabs are taken. The staff member in there gave us a great rundown of the process of getting soundbites and how important they are to a TV news package. It made me appreciate how intricate the process is in selecting the most appropriate soundbites, particularly for sports matches. After our tour, we sat down and asked questions and had a really constructive chat. I asked a question about the prospects of foreign correspondents, and was really satisfied by my response. I was told that there were a lot of opportunities and while you had to work hard to get there, if you did the right things you could get to where you wanted to go. Ultimately I feel I got a lot out of our visit to the ABC. It definitely affirmed my desire to eventually work at a place of its size or similar. The tour gave us an insight into the daily workings of a national-scale newsroom, but the Q and A session we have was also really enriching and informative.    

Nick Parmeter     

I looked at The Guardian Australia’s and Nine News’ coverage of the Federal Labor Party’s reshuffling of their shadow ministry following their election defeat and leadership change. The Guardian throughout the week in which Anthony Albanese became leader and announced the shadow ministry would often have the latest developments out of the Labor Party as their lead story on their online site. Focus was strong on Kristina Keneally, who broke party lines to become deputy Senate leader and Labor’s first Shadow Home Affairs Minister. The Guardian took a look at Labor’s intrinsic issues with factionalism, and a number of Facebook articles were dedicated to analysing this issue. They also dedicated a number of opinion pieces to where Anthony Albanese would take the ALP on the political spectrum, and looked at his upbringing and his affiliation with the left faction of the Labor party. On the night the various portfolios were announced, The Guardian went through the high profile portfolio appointments. The main focus of the article published was again Kristina Keneally as well as outgoing leader Bill Shorten, who picked up the NDIS portfolio. I think The Guardian created a compelling, informative article, and was right to focus on prominent figures within the ALP. Not only is that important for the relevance of the article, but it also plays into the intrigue factor which many political observers enjoy. The focus was also on Kristina Keneally being a woman, and several female lower house members ruling out running for leader or deputy due to family commitments, and what that meant. Nine News Online had the story much further down, and it only lead on their site once or twice throughout the week. This is understandable, as the 9News focus isn’t as finite and specialised as The Guardian’s political coverage may be. The focus of the stories surrounding the portfolio shakeup had a lot of similarities to The Guardian ones. They focused on the prominent figures of Shorten and Keneally, but definitely went in on Shorten particularly. I think Nine is more focused on the Shorten vs Morrison debate, and now the Albo vs ScoMo one, so this may be the reason for the focus on Shorten’s new role. Whereas The Guardian article went through almost every major ministry role allocated, Nine’s articles only focused on a few key appointments and axings. I think overall The Guardian probably provided better, in depth analysis, but I also think that Nine’s mandate isn’t to be overly extensive, and rather bring a highlights reel of major news, so to speak.   

Nick Parmeter

ABC News Online is a well designed online news site. The general outlay of the site sees news divided into clear tabs related to their category e.g. ‘politics’, ‘world’, ‘sport’ and analysis to name a few. This enables a user to navigate to specific areas of news that interest them the most, or looks for a specific story they saw a glimpse of earlier and want to read in full. There is also the option to select your location, which sees news stories altered dependent on their proximity and priority to your specified location. This is a good way for users to consume news that is most relevant to where they’re living. However, it’s possible that some users may find this feature slightly frustrating, as they may be interested in an overall national focus, or want to hear about things happening interstate, rather than seeing their feed heavily focused on their own state. There is also a features tab which offers more in-depth, longer reads in to issues ranging from serious political analysis to lifestyle and pop-culture pieces. This offers a break from hard news stories and offers content with more insight, allowing users to delve into stories they are really invested in. Some people could potentially argue that the purpose of a news site is solely news, and that this tab distracts from the matters at hand. On the right-hand side there are tabs for news ‘just in’, as well as some for ‘Did you miss?’ and ‘popular now’. These tabs all offer different stories that have made headlines in recent days, but I feel as if there are a few too many and it can be a bit overwhelming navigating the page as a whole. As you scroll down the page there are more and more tabs for different topics, some being ‘My Topics’, ‘Best of ABC.NET.AU” and “Photo Galleries”. I find that these tabs are too far down the page for them to be seen, and there are too many stories on display, which makes the lower half of the page quite convoluted. At the very bottom of the page is a site map. I feel it is rather counterintuitive to have a navigation tool at the very bottom of the page. Overall, I think that it encapsulates the biggest issue with the ABC News site. There are too many tabs and topics all over the place that if you scroll past the original news feed, it is very difficult to navigate. Despite this, the ABC news site remains a good site to find the leading news stories, and its initial news feed and tabs make it a navigable site.

Nick Parmeter

During the month of Ramadan, thousands of Sydneysiders break their fast at Ramadan Nights. The markets offer food and drink from all corners of the Muslim world, as well as song and dance. We spoke to vendors and festival goers alike to get the verdict on the most popular stalls.

https://t.co/hVBtJQHb3X

You could argue the debate on immigration and in particular, refugees, has raged in Australia since federation in 1901. From those fleeing Vietnam during the war in the 1960s & 70s, to Sudanese fleeing civil war in the 21^st century, political discourse has always been fuelled by the way we treat those seeking refuge. So after all this time, has our general concern for offshore detention grown. Is the issue more significant at next month’s Federal Election than any before it? We went to the Rally for Refugees in the CBD and spoke to Greens Candidate for Lindsay to try find out.