Critical Reflection Semester Two, Year Two:

After last semesters redesign if WINOL’s online presence, the whole team have constantly been thinking of ways to improve its quality and ranking in comparison of other news sites and student material. The websites Alexa ranking in January was 33,950 and continued to climb steadily throughout the semester to 12,025. Our main competitor last semester was East London Lines which only improved its ranking slightly, going from 56,486 to 49,664. The TAB is another student run news site which has a much higher ranking than WINOL.
Each week the news editor changed, giving everyone the opportunity to run the newsroom and still produce content. This worked really well and each week the standard of the bulletin remained high, with packages improving. The most successful WINOL bulletins were during the Eastleigh by-election and allowed ‘The South Decides’ happen. The election special was made up of studio guests and discussion as it happened. There was also a live OB from the vote count, of which I was involved in.
The OB was planned as a Skype call going through the gallery at various points of the night, as well as being recorded on a camera, but there were many issues that almost stopped the OB from happening. In the end the Skype call took place on an iPhone. The quality wasn’t great but it was the only way we could successfully get the result to the newsroom live.
The features team worked together to launch several magazines for WINOL this semester, following the success of Absolutely magazine toward the end of last semester. The Volt focuses on music and features music news, reviews and a playlist of the music it recommends. The New Winchester Review is dedicated to the arts, with reviews and features on theatre, tv, philosophy etc. The Adventure and Travel magazine is where the gonzo features, car reviews and travel blogs are found. The features site have been successful throughout the semester and have had content added regularly (unlike the first semester when ideas were being developed).

This semester I was assigned the role of a sport reporter. Knowing very little about sport, I found the first week of WINOL very daunting, especially after being part of the production team. My assigned beat was Ice hockey and knew that each week I would be expected to film and script packages on league games that would be part of Sportsweek and potentially part of the news bulletin.
My first package was a skiing feature, which was influenced by the weather at the beginning of the year and chose a ‘gonzo’ style. It wasn’t the best of packages because of the lack of camera angles, but it wasn’t a complete disaster. Using the GoPro camera made all the difference, but it was hard to find footage that didn’t have the main camera in vision. In comparison to the other packages I produced, the style of this was one was very different, and could have been improved if I had spent more time planning.
My first highlights package for the Basingstoke bison was a real struggle, even after filming a game with Lewis Salter the week before. Having no real knowledge of the rules or hockey jargon made scripting the game really hard and I relied a lot on the teams twitter feed to make it sound as professional as possible. The package itself was almost a disaster because I missed the first period and the first goal. Following the puck for the rest of the game wasn’t easy either and meant that the camera wasn’t in focus at times and shots could have been a lot tighter. After this package I knew what needed to be done to improve my work.
The following week we were unable to film the game and were told that we could no longer film the Bison games because we were unable to guarantee that the games would be reported on every week. I would have liked to have had a particular sport to follow for the semester as I could have seen an improvement in my work and become more confident reporting so that I could be more creative with editing games instead of each week doing something new.
I then seemed to fall into university sporting events, the main one being Winton Weekend. Over two days, all of the current sports teams competed with those who previously attended the university and were part of those teams. I was put in charge of organising what games/matches could be filmed and interviewing the vice president, activities. Getting a team together to help film was difficult and couldn’t be done by myself as events overlapped. From researching the history of the event it was certain that no matter what the rugby game had to be filmed. I didn’t get as many events filmed as I had wanted to. Winton weekend seemed like an opportunity to boost viewing of sports week because people at the university would want to view something that they were involved in, and would be more willing to share it with others.
I also had the opportunity of reporting on the Totton vs Bournemouth game, as well as helping out with filming various football matches throughout the semester. For the Totton vs. Bournemouth game we used three cameras which allowed me and Liam to experiment when editing, particularly throughout the penalty shoot-out. Like the first hockey game, I found it really hard to script, but after listening to Liam’s previous packages I felt more confident with the overall package. 
There were a few weeks when I didn’t produce a package for sports week and I was able to help with production in the gallery. My experience in gallery from the previous semester meant that I was able to help out with all of the equipment when needed and was able to direct comfortably. I was also able to present sports week and the bulletin sport on a few occasions which I really enjoyed and would like to do again. The week I present was quite difficult because there was no one from the sports team to direct – in post-production the footage wasn’t very good and the team had to re-film on the morning of the deadline.
During our weekly debriefs our viewings were always disappointing – despite the efforts the team made to get sports week onto forums and social networking sites. This lead to the conclusion that it was the quality of our content causing the problem. This is where the idea for filming the multi-camera football match was suggested to us. Sam Sheard, Thomas Baxter, Jack Griffiths, Liam Garrahan and I filmed Eastleigh vs. Dover game. the addition of graphics in post-production made the package stand out and look professional.
As a whole, the sports team worked every week to try and achieve the best possible ratings, better than those of the week before, but for most weeks the views were really low and on a few occasions barely reached two hundred views (which was a disappointment when previous sport weeks had reached over a thousand views).
An issue within the sports desk and one we were all guilty of at some point, was putting the effort in to reach the deadlines. Once the package was edited it seemed okay to leave recording voice overs to the last minute.  
The way the final edits of the bulletin sport caused the sport to be missing from bulletin – despite being exported the same way as all of the other packages, the aspect ratio was wrong and meant that it looked horrendous as it was played out in the gallery.

The ‘Tuesday Takeover’ continued into the second semester following the same format, aired around the university campus, except this time we had the help of the first year students for the hourly news bulletin and benefitted us because the radio team is so small. Though, it was difficult having a new team every week and no one seemed to want to come back to help out.
As usual there were technical problems almost every week, but we still went ahead trying to meet deadlines.  The downside the radio slot was that there was no way to track if we were getting listeners, as well as being limited by Sound Radio which caused a number of problems. Unfortunately, sound radio has been shut down and means that there is no longer a ‘Tuesday Takeover’. Nadine toyed with the idea of podcasts for the WINOL, but there was a lot more to it than posting audio clips online.
I have thoroughly enjoyed being part of the sports team this semester and have put the skills I learned in the first part of the year to use. I found some things a struggle at first because of my lack of sporting knowledge but together with the team I found my way through and have become more confident in creating packages and being on camera - this I hope will be put to good use next year.

History and Context of journalism; Lecture/Seminar Five;

Key question – can good people do evil things? Who is responsible?

How could it happen?

Before world war one, there had been a hundred years of peace. After that there were many atrocities.

Totalitarianism is the control of every aspect of life, which strips away individuality. These regimes – like Platos republic – were against these ideas; contract theory, limited state and liberalism – freedom protected by the state.

Hannah Arendt looked at totalitarianism and suggests that it is a huge break away from the past. For Arendt, imperialism is what sparked the movement because expansionism was based on racism. Things were based on what people did/race as to whether or not they were superior.

There are two ways to achieve totalitarianism; ideology because it makes us compliant as it provides reason. It is a specialist knowledge and is a way to avoid responsibility. And terror which removes people of dignity.

What is our personal responsibility in a dictatorship?

Would I collaborate?

In May 11 1960, Israeli Secret Service kidnapped Nazi fugitive Adolf Eichmann in Argentina. Eichmann’s main responsibility in the Holocaust was the organisaton of the transport of millions of Jews to concentration camps.

The trial served three purposes: Trying for his crimes, educating the world about the Holocaust, and the legitimatising of the Jewish state.

Arendt agreed Eichmann should be put to death – but disagreed with the reasons. Arendt believed Eichmann’s crime was non-thinking…. Choice is crucial to the existentialist point of view.

Eichmann claimed that in implementing the final solution he was acting from obedience and that he had derived this particular moral precept from his reading of Kant. Kant’s Categorical Imperative: Act only according to that maxim whereby you can, at the same time, will that it should become a universal law.

--> The origins of totalitarianism - Ideology and Terror; A Novel Form of Government; 

Hannah Arendt wrote the Origins of totalitarianism whilst in soviet Russia. The chapter “Ideology and Terror: a novel form of government’ outlines how ideology and terror work together to achieve totalitarianism.
Totalitarianism is different from other regimes as it steps away from traditional forms of leadership, morality and laws. It uses the construct of class to create the masses that have been manipulated by one party systems ideal - their main aim; to strip away individuality.

Arendt suggests two kinds of law of which drive ideology; Law of nature (based around Darwinism and the rise of Nazi Germany) and the law of history (based on the ideas of Marx’s historical dialectic that influenced Stalin). Its these laws the provide us with positive law.

Positive Law;
‘Positive laws are primarily designed to function as stabilising factors for the ever changing movements of men.’ OT

Totalitarianism defies all positive law; even to the extreme of defying those which has established itself or which it did not care to abolish. But it operates in neither without guidance of the law nor is it arbitrary, for it claims to obey strictly and unequivocally the laws of nature or of history from which all positive laws have always been supposed to spring from.
It goes to the sources of authority from which positive laws receive the ultimate legitimation, far from wielding its power in the interest of one man. It is prepared to sacrifice everyone’s immediate interest to execution of what it assumes to be the law of history of the law of nature. 

Totalitarianism's defiance of positive law claims to be a higher form of legitimacy, which – since inspired by the sources – can do away with ‘petty’ legality. Totalitarian lawfulness pretends to have found a way to establish rule of justice – something that the legality of positive law could not attain

Totalitarian lawfulness, denying legality and pretending to establish direct reign of justice on earth executes the laws of nature and of history without translating it into standards of right and wrong for individual behavior.
If the laws of nature and history are properly executed it is expected to produce mankind as its end product – this expectation lies behind the claim to global rule of all totalitarian governments. 

Totalitarian policy claims to transform the human species into an active, unfailing carrier of a law to which all beings would otherwise be passively and reluctantly be subject. Its defiance of all, even its own positive laws implies it believes it can do without any ‘consensus iuris’, and not reign to the tyrannical state of lawfulness, arbitraries and fear. 

Terror; 
Terror becomes total terror when it becomes independent of all opposition; it rules supreme when no one stands in its way.
Terror is the essence of totalitarian domination. Its aim is to make it possible for the forces of nature or of history to race freely through mankind, unhindered by spontaneous action. It seeks to stabilize men in order to liberate the forces. 

Guilt and innocence become senseless notions; guilty is he who stands in the way of natural and historical processes.
Rulers claim to execute historical or natural laws. 

Positive law in constitutions aims to erect boundaries and establish channels of communication between men whose community is in danger by whoever is born into it. The stability of laws corresponds to the constant motion of all human affairs. 

Total terror uses the old instrument of tyrant but destroys it at the same time, also the lawless, fenceless wilderness of fear and suspicion tyranny leaves behind. 

It destroys the one essential prerequisite of all freedom, which is simply the capacity of motion, which cannot exist without space. It accelerates the movement using history and nature. That is terrors only purpose. 

Ideology;
Ideology is the logic of an idea. Its subject matter is history, to which the idea applies. Ideologies pretend to know the mysteries of the whole historic process because of the logic inherent in their respective ideas. 

Ideologies are never interested in the miracle of being, they are concerned with becoming and perishing with the rise and fall of cultures. 

The movement of history and the logical process of this notion are supposed to correspond to each other so that what happened, happens according to the logic of one idea. 

Only movement in the realm of logic is the process of deduction from premise – dialectical logic. Dialectical logic is the idea that the thesis and antithesis conflict creating something new – the synthesis. The synthesis then becomes the next thesis and history progresses.  Marx uses the dialectical to illustrate the progression of class struggle into communism.
Ideologies assume one idea is sufficient to explain everything from premise. They are concerned with a forward motion – what becomes. Ideological thinking becomes independent from which it cannot learn anything new. It insists on a truer reality concealed behind all perceptible things – requiring a sixth sense that enables us to become aware of it. 

The propaganda of the totalitarian movement serves to emancipate it from experience and reality. Once movements have come to power y proceed to change reality in accordance with their ideological claims. 

The emancipation from experience and reality is achieved through methods of demonstration. The preparation if victims and executioners requires inherent legality. The most persuasive, of which Hitler was most fond of, ‘you cant say A without saying B, C and so on, down to the end of the murderous alphabet. The coercive force of logicality has a source – our fear of contradicting ourselves. 

If you refuse to follow the regime you have committed to, you contradict yourself. Through this contradiction, render your life meaningless; the A, which you said dominates your life through the consequences of B and C, which it logically engenders.

History and Context of Journalism; Seminar Paper

In the 1950s and 60s America when through many political, philosophical and economic changes because of the various outcomes of WWII and the Great Depression;

In the 40s Keynes stepped away from classical economics and horrified those against his ideas surrounding state intervention in the markets. Keynes used the great depression as his prime example of how a world’s economy can decline. From his analysis he came to the conclusion that the cause of the decline was ‘small and narrow’ and believed that the solution was also that. His reasoning for the depression was lower aggregate expenditure contributed to a decline in income and to employment that was way below average. His answer to the problem was to keep people employed – even if it meant filling and refilling holes – government should intervene when the economy slows because the private sector would not be able to invest enough to keep production steady and the economy out of a recession.

The greatest philosophical movement to come out of the war was existentialism, led by the writings of jean-Paul Sartre and Albert Camus. Existentialism begins with not merely a human subject but the acting, feeling, living human individual. An individual’s starting point is characterized by what has been called ‘existential attitude’ or a sense of disorientation and confusion in the face of an apparently meaningless or absurd world. Kierkegaard proposed that the individual is solely responsible for giving meaning to life and living authentically. Kierkegaard, an existentialist of the 20the century, suggested that the individual, not society or religion, is responsible for giving meaning to life and living it authentically.

Nihilism, on the other hand, suggests the denial of one or more putatively meaningful parts of life. It is commonly posed as existential nihilism which argues that life is without objective meaning, purpose or intrinsic value.

The new industrial state;

Changes to ideas surrounding economics were still going strong after Keynes; John Galbraith wrote the new industrial state which explores the ins and outs of this new economic system sweeping through America throughout the post war period. The system itself is described as nihilistic because there is no real point to it or its survival and was also seen to be technological-bureaucracy.

Galbraith suggests that it is the ‘technostructure’ that controls everything and that they subordinate the government for their own progression and self-esteem. ‘Those who run the corporations own no share of enterprise; they are selected narcissistically by boards that have been chosen by the owner.’

The innovations and alterations to economics after the Second World War were great. The most evident was the introduction of technology into the production of things, increasing and making production of products easier for corporations. But it became apparent, very soon, that the machines began replace the manpower that was needed before. Not only that, the machines had the ablity to replace human intelligence.

With these developments the dynamics of businesses began to change; at one point the corporation was confined to large scale production (steel making, petrol refining etc. ). Now corporations sell food, newspapers and provide entertainment, which was done only by small firms or individual traders. 

The nature of industrial planning;

The 'techno structure', Galbraith emphasised, was based on the need for planning so that it could survive. But planning was not positively seen at the time because of the ideological overtones of the Cold War and the way that communist countries used planning. Conveying an idea of danger, in American libertarians because they believed planning curtailed liberty. But Galbraith believed this reaction occurred at the wrong time.

It occurred when an increase in technology and the accompanying commitment of time and capital were forcing planning on industrial communities.

-          It is the instinct of the conservatives that economic planning involves the control of individual behaviour. The denial that we do any planning has helped conceal the fact of such control even from those who are controlled.

The old method of assuming economic success ( the customer - by making the offer to buy- obtains the responding action of the firm that supplies his needs) no longer works. Consumer’s needs must be predicted months and years in advance and what the consumer wants because when the day comes they may not be willing to buy the product.

Planning is also vital to control market behaviour - anticipatory steps to ensure that necessary supply is available at an appropriate wage or price. As well as planning and making sure that the price of the means to produce products are cost consistent with the price the firm buys the product for, not to mention control over what is sold and what is supplied; The industrial system must replace the market with planning. A corporation must do what is necessary to make sure that the necessary supply is available at an appropriate wage or price, which can only be achieved by planning. The concept of planning emphasises the bureaucratic nature of the system.

The technostructure;

Galbraith outlines  the technostructure in three parts;

-          Technology itself, which dispenses the need for skilled employees.

-          Needs the power of a group of people for planning. They need to understand and manage technology so that the technostructure runs smoothly.

-          Co-ordination of specialised talents, developed to examine the information required to make decisions.

The ultimate power in decision making is firmly embedded within groups of a corporation’s hierarchy.

The goals of the industrial system;

Galbraith outlines the goal/objective of the technostructure, like any organisation is survival. These are the way in which it achieves that;

1.       The first essential tool for survival is to preserve the autonomy on which its decision making power depends.  This relies on it having secure minimum earnings; so long as earnings are enough to make payments to stockholders and provide supply of savings for reinvestment the organisation will survive. If the earnings are less they will have to appeal to outside suppliers of capital, reducing the autonomy of the technostructure.

2.       System is social policy. Emphasis on inherently and functionality independent character. It is the private enterprise system. It needs to ensure that it is accepted wholly.

3.       The industrial system must achieve the greatest possible rate of corporate growth as measured in sales. The technostructure is self-interested. The expansion of output means expansion of the technostructure, meaning more responsibility, more promotion and compensation. Growth as a goal is consistent with the personal and economic interest of those who participate in decisions and direct the enterprise. It is also protection against contraction. Contraction of output becomes much more painful and damaging as the techno structure rises. Costs cannot be reduced by laying off workers.

4.       Technological expertise serves the need of its members. Progressive technology means jobs and promotion for technologists and capacities for expansion rely on capacity for innovation. Technical innovation that the firm holds and recruits customers for its existing products and expands to produce new ones.

The industrial state and the state;

-          Qualified man power is decisive for the success of an industrial state. Much scientific and theological innovation is funded by or comes from the state

-          The state regulates aggregate demand for products of the industrial system. The state provides wage and price regulation - without it the industrial system is unstable.

-          The industrial system is inseparably associated with the state; ‘the mature corporation is an arm of the state. And the state is an instrument of it.’ Though people accept that there is a line between private sector business and the state. The line between public and private authority in the industrial system is imaginary - the detestable association of public and private organisations is normal.

-          The increase of unionism drove the state to dominate business, by encouraging it to adopt roles in the management of aggregate demand, controlled wages and prices (Keynesianism).

-          The government adapted itself to the needs of the industrial system, but the industrial system was incapable of gaining an alliance with the state.

-          The industrial system comes to influence government by integrating itself seamlessly with outer functions of government that it becomes artificial to draw a line between public and private sectors – the technostructure makes government decisions.

WINOL;

Semester two -
week one;

My role in WINOL thissemester is sport reporter - despite knowing almost nothing about sport. My assignedbeat is the Basingstoke Ice hockey team and so  I amexpected to report on league home games.

The first week didnt have the bestof starts – the snow prevented myself and Lewis booking out cameras headingdown to the Bison game, though despite how daunting sports are to me, i was looking forward to it. 
This meant that I had no input into the first sportsweek. 

The second week bought some joy; I successfully managed to line up two packages a skiing feature influenced by the dreadful weather and the highlights of a Basingstoke Bison league game.
Filming ice hockey seemed incredibly easy - just follow the puck - but when it got down to it following the puck was harder than it looked, so Lewis helped out. I did thoroughly enjoy the experience and was happy I hadn't being given football to cover!

The skiing feature I produced was not the best, for a first attempt, it wasn't awful. The package was a gonzo piece all about my very first (and last) attempt at skiing - my tumble down the slope made a few people laugh, so its good for something. On reflection Id most definitely take more than one camera (even though I did have a GoPro camera for action shots). Having the camera stationary and zooming in when needed effected how easy it was to edit. 

In week three I returned to Basingstoke to film another bison hockey game. This wasn't the most successful trip as I managed to miss the first period. Luckily I managed to catch the rest of the game and the rest of the goals that were scored. This package was interesting as I had no clue what hockey was about or any of the rules so I struggled writing a script even after a bit of research. I hoped it'd get easier as the weeks went on but the following week we were told that we could no longer film the games because we were unable to guarantee that the games would be reported on every week.

History and Context of Journalism - lecture/seminar three;

Existentialism - Heidegger and Sartre;

Nihilism is the idea that there is no point to anything; there is no god and no order in life. Existentialists take this idea further – what do you do if there is no point? Make choices because we have the freedom to do so. 

Nietzsche;

‘God is dead’, by this he means that there is no longer any certainty and we are all faced with a crisis – we need something to sustain us. This crisis is in fact not a problem as it means we have freedom. Nietzsche believed we have our own morals and that human nature is not universal. This opposes the position of natural rights (Locke) and credits Fanon’s violence. His idea of the Ubermensch overcomes what defines us as humans and renounces it. 

Heidegger;

Being and time was highly influential and highlighted Heidegger's interest in what is means to exist and the problems of human life. Before we know this we must investigate the nature of being as such and to do this we must question the nature of being. This he calls Dasein and is in all of us.

Heidegger directs his philosophy against Descartes. Cartesian dualism is something that makes philosophy impossible and understanding ourselves impossible. How do we get out of our minds to know the world in itself? (skeptics like Hume doubted we could ever know the world.)

In place of consciousness and subjectivity, Heidegger talks of Dasein. Existence is in our engagement in the world. Dualism is absurd - for Dasein to exist it must exist in the world. Therefore wouldn’t exist without the world.

Das man self – the inauthentic self – is a social contrast of the self, based on facticity rather than the potential of the choices there is to be made. Existence is possibilities and choices. The inauthentic self is turning existence into an object by no making a choice.

Facticity – events that bought you to this place. We are thrown into the world ‘throwness’ and where we end up is pure luck. It is the choices we are faced with that determine our existence. In existentialism the future is most important and living by past events is denying the freedom we have to choose, making you inauthentic. The past is irrelevant.

Transcendence = the reaction we have to facticity. 

Sartre;

Sartre believed that existence precedes essence; we create our own purpose. There is no guiding spirit, no teleological driving force. Stuff happens without reason; life is ridiculous and absurd.

The life of a person is not determined in advance by moral laws or by god, the only thing that we cannot escape is the need to choose. The possibility of recreating oneself is frightening – people try to avoid this freedom. This is bad faith.

The alternative is to take responsibility for your actions and be defined by your choices. The next choice you make could recreate you.

For Sartre, humanity is;

ABANDONMENT; god is dead – there are no divine set of rules to follow; we are alone and there is no one to guide us.

ANGUISH; humans are fundamentally free ‘ condemned to be free.’ We are responsible for everything we are, no excuses.

DISPAIR; the realisation that the world may prevent us from getting what we want, but we still have the choice of how we react to the setback. We are the totality of what we do.

Bad faith;
We are radically free - we have no obligation. People are making a metaphysical mistake - turning themselves into an object.

The moral ascent in Kierkegaard;

Kierkegaard’s moral system is similar to Schopenhauer in many ways;

-          They have a pessimistic view human kind’s ethical condition.

-          They have spiritual career which leads to renunciation.

But Kierkegaard’s ideas evolve against a background of protestant Christianity. Schopenhauer’s are built on aesthetic metaphysics. He believed that renunciation is the high point of the ethical life and is only a preliminary to an ultimate leap of faith.

Kierkegaard aim to put the individual in full possession of his own personality as a unique creature of god. 

The ethical;

An aesthetic person is governed by his feelngs and is blind to spiritual values. He is portrayed as one of two protagonists. He is cultured, law abiding popular in society and not without consideration for others.

The aesthetic person is distinguished from serious moral agent – he avoids anything that limits their pursuit of what is immediately attractive.

Kierkegaard believes he aesthetic person is deluded when he thinks he was free, really he is limited. He also believes this person is in despair – no hope of anything other than his present life, ‘they pawn themselves to the world.’

Kierkegaard believed the first step to a cure is realization. The aesthetic person will be faced with the choice of abandoning himself to despair or moving upward by committing to an ethical existence.

Kierkegaard attaches great importance to the concept of self. In the aesthetic stage the self is undeveloped and undifferentiated. To enter the ethical stage is to undertake the formation of ones true ‘self’ – self is a freely chosen character. It is a duty.