NEWSWEEK REVIEW 6th-10th November 2017 By Rhea Cheramparambil and Meganne Gerbeau
Newsweek is week dedicated to working on the student publication Overtime. In the Hastings newsroom, second and third year students from (BA) Hons Journalism and (BA) Hons Sport Journalism courses worked together on different news desks. Each morning the news desks come together to have a meeting with the editors. For this edition our news desks were; current affairs, entertainment, sport features and sport news. One student per desk would take on the role as section editor. Three third year students took on the roles as; Editor-in-Chief, Production Editor and Chief-Sub Editor. There were also students dedicated to managing Overtime s social media pages; Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. The website, Overtime Online, was maintained by the journalism students at the Eastbourne newsroom. Lecturers take a step back from this week as the teams work together to produce, edit and design their stories. A week prior to Newsweek a plan was made to ensure there would be a clear goal in mind before we began. As well as this we assessed how what strategies were best, how we would relate to our readership and how we would review our progress. 2
Most of the people surveyed read Overtime with 57% having said Yes and 42% saying No, everyone had at least heard of it regardless of reading it or not. Our readers enjoyed the Sport section the most with 70% choosing this section over the others. News and Culture were both at 10%. Entertainment is 6% and lifestyle at 4%. Pre-Newsweek survey analysis 36% prefer to read news that is relatable to students. 32% Global, 30% National and only 2% Local. Most people have seen the Overtime Newsweek edition on their campus with 56% saying they have and 44% saying they haven t. The majority of readers enjoy the current content in Overtime with 79% saying they liked the previous years issues. Survey respondants were also asked for improvements at the end of the survey. It was clear the content was good, but visually things had to change. The main improvements we were suggested to change were the layout, consistency, design and the interactive side of both the paper and online. 3 In the focus group Chief-Sub Editor, Fiona, said the editors referred to the survey a lot throughout Newsweek. This year was the first time all the pages were uniformed and the layout was improved by changing to a magazine style.
Overtime Online analytics In accordance with the plan, we checked the online traffic for Overtime Online throughout and after Newsweek to learn about our readers. We have readers from all over the world, mainly from the United States (53), Australia (9) and Canada (9). Even India, Brazil and some countries in Africa. This means that Overtime Online is not just limited to the UK, and with it s already growing popularity it s not a small student newspaper. We have a low bounce rate of 25.29%, which means that they re not only clicking on the website but they re also staying on it reading the stories. 4
The table above shows where readers find our stories. A lot of our readers already knew about Overtime Online as Direct was 513 and Organic was 735, which means they are actively searching for us through our URL and search engines. Social media also played a big role in widening our audience, with 413 readers coming from here. These readers often come from our social media pages (Facebook - 167, Twitter - 135 and Instagram - 23) and students sharing their stories onto their own social media pages. Quite a few readers also came from our mailing service, MailChimp (38). We currently have 761 followers on Twitter, and many tweets were made during Newsweek, ranging from polls to links to articles. This shows that having a heavier online presence engages with more readers. 5 The social media pages our readers engaged with most were Facebook and Twitter, usually via the app, so it is essential Overtime Online engages with readers online more to boost the readership and appeal to more people.
Focus group We spoke to the Newsweek editors about how they found the experience. We covered a variety of topics ranging from how they found role as editor to the challenges they faced. Kieran was the Editor-in-Chief, Adam was the Production Editor and Fiona was the Chief-Sub Editor. They liked the lecturers involvement this year. It was the most independent Newsweek, and the least stressful. However, Adam felt there was a bit of a clash of opinions between the lecturers on Friday. But in general they thought it was a good experience as it let everyone think for themselves. Fiona said it was good to learn what you re good and bad at. Adam learnt a lot about InDesign and communication, such as trying to get things across without hurting peoples feelings and suggesting things in a way that people will actually take on board. Being more open with your team by suggesting things to each other and being open to constructive criticism. Adam said he wouldn t do anything differently, he was happy with how everything looked in generale. The change of the old newspaper layout to magazine was better design wise. Changing style also made improved the content as not all the stories didn t have to be local and we didn t have to worry about whether our story would still by relevant by the time of publication. If Adam was to do anything differently, he would be more prepared. Deadlines were a big problem and he wanted to find a way to communicate with his team and the news desks in a more authoritive way. 6
Fiona thought being easygoing was her downfall, she responded better to lecturers letting her do her own thing so she wanted to do the same but she wishes she had been more strict as some people needed the guidance more than others. They think the section editors should have more of a role within their teams as themselves as editors had really heavy load. The editors were looking for finished pieces but they recieved unfinished articles which were incoherent and unstructured, believing that the section editors should have been responsible for polishing these pieces. Kieran said he was trying to find the right balance between being the nice guy and the strict guy so he was trying to be encouraging as he didn t want anyone to be discouraged and not return for the week so he found himself being softer than he should have been. The other issue they faced was a liable problem. They still ran with the story but they just had to find a way to work around it. They left the social media editor in charge of the social media accounts completely. They didnt think it ran as well as it did last year. It didn t integrate well with Eastbourne. The Twitter platform was good but every other platform was pretty poor. The social media is crucial to get traffic so a few more students should have the password so it s updated regularly. Perhaps someone in Eastbourne should have also been appointed social media editor. Adam thought Overtime lacked uniformity and identity so this year was an improvement and he thinks we need to make that true for all the platforms. 7
Proposals 1 Section editors should have a bigger role within their team. This is to lessen the workload that the editors were faced with at the end of Newsweek. They were looking for finished pieces so they could focus on the InDesign. Next year we suggest that reporters within their team should send their work to the section editor for them to proof, sub and polish... and then the section editors forward the finished piece onto the editors to put into InDesign. This means section editors will be taking on a greater responsibility by stepping up and they can practice their subbing and proofing skills. As the section editor will know more about the stories they re checking, technically it should make the process a lot easier. 2 Social media editors should be based at the Eastbourne newsroom as well as Hastings. This year our social media editors were based in Hastings, this meant that for the beginning of the week Overtime s Twitter and Instagram feeds were full of polls and questions relating to the Hastings newsroom. There were a few tweets about the Eastbourne students, however they were dedicated to online so really there should have been more coverage about what the Eastbourne students were working on. Also once Overtime was published a link was only available via Twitter, a photograph and link to the finished paper should ve been posted on all three of Overtime Online s social media pages. For next year we propose that either; the social media editor in Hastings spends half their time in Hastings and half their time in Eastbourne, or that there is a social media editor in Hastings AND Eastbourne. Also we think each article, whether it s online or print, should ve been uploaded to all three social media platforms with a photograph and link to the story. 3 Not everyone is born a leader and some can find it difficult to take a management role, especially if who they re managing are their classmates! From a reporter point of view, we thought our editors rose up to the challenege really well but when speaking to them they wished they had been more strict. Perhaps next time the editors could hav a tutorial or a workshop from a lecturer or a guest speaker before Newsweek starts to help them prepare for the big role of managing their peers by giving them some tips and guidance. 4 Use the template used from this year for the next publication. To make Overtime successful we believe uniformity is key. The magazine style layout turned out amazing when seen in print, Adam suggested that the editors next time around use the template they did for this publication. 8
5 Online should be more consistent throughout the year. It s obvious we have the readers and it s great we can get high numbers, but we only do Newsweek twice a year. Imagine how much more Overtime Online could grow if it was reguarly maintained - website AND social media. We already have a Sports Writers Society set up at the Hastings campus, perhaps their stories could be posted to Overtime and someone from that society is dedicated to social media? As we have first year journalists in Eastbourne, perhaps a society for all journalists could be set up to link the two campuses together whether the prime focus is Overtime Online? 6 Continue with pre-newsweek surveys, the editors found it really useful to refer back to. By doing more surveys like this we could expand Overtime and Overtime Online to students on other courses and get them involved if they want to whether it s submitting articles and we journalists sub them, or the Photography students could be responsible for the images in Overtime? Our university spans over five campuses (three in Brighton; Grand Parade, Moulsecoomb and Falmer, as well as one in Eastbourne and one in Hastings), if we had students from all campuses involved our numbers could certainly improve. 7 Lastly, we noticed A LOT of our readers were accessing Overtime Online through their mobile phones. We have an online magazine version of the print version of Overtime but it s only accessable through desktop. With such a high number of mobile phone users we suggest that next year the online magazine of Overtime is available for mobile phone viewing. On the topic of mobile phone viewing, we should ensure that everything done online is mobile phone friendly. 9