WINOL: week 2

WINOL is now in full swing, and I'm now very familiar with what is required of me as Managing Editor. There was very much a sense of relief and comfort buzzing round the newsroom this week as both the second and third years settled into their roles.

For me, this week has a somewhat bitter-sweet taste to it, as I felt frustrated and elated at times with both my downfalls and successes respectively. First thing on Monday morning I met with Tim Moss of the Student Union to finally get an advert for WINOL on SUBTV. Everything seemed great as he informed me that as soon as I edited an image with layered strap lines, that he would put it on the TVs. However, when I got to the newsroom, he sent me a message saying that WINOL would need to pay a fee if it was to have such advertisement rights! I explained that it would be difficult to raise such funding, so I offered the Student Union (him) free advertising on Winchester News Online as opposed to paying the financial installments. He agreed and the rest is history.

Other advertising included putting signs out advertising the bulletin and the website, and a competition to encourage traffic to the site. I decided to have raffle tickets attached to every leaflet Paul and I designed, as I felt that the fact that there was a raffle ticket on the flyers meant people would immediately become interested as the semantics of raffle tickets and winning prizes is so strong; I went on the theory that everybody loves to win prizes, so they will visit the site). After we decided on the format of a competition, "Win With Winol" was filmed.

Additional promotion included getting the Faculty of Arts to circulate emails to students within the faculty, putting a message on the portal, announcing the bulletin through Facebook. On top of this, Brian had given me a lesson on Search Engine Optimization. The idea is to essentially increase both WINOL's page ranking and Alexa Ranking. There are numerous ways of doing this, including getting relevant websites to link to our own URL so that we can increase the number of valuable back links, thus increasing the traffic of WINOL. SO I have now embarked on a mission to get as many back links, from as many well-respected websites, as possible.

On Monday I attended the usual Features, News, and Editors meetings. But, as Veronica was away filming a feature package, I stepped in her place as features editor and relayed all the information she requested as well as reaffirming deadlines and listening to new ideas for features. After the meetings I forwarded her a run down of how they went and also gave her all the new information I had acquired at them.

On Tuesday, I filled in for Catherine - who was up filming in London - as editor. I wanted to use this time to really assert myself as a capable manager and someone who could fill Catherine's shoes. However I felt that despite me being Editor for the day, not much needed being done editorially; and where an editor was necessary people - upon realising Catherine was unavailable - would go to their respective editors instead of me, which disappointed me somewhat. I look forward to the next time I can assume the editor's role (preferably either on a Monday or a Wednesday).

Other "managing editor" roles I performed this week included: distributing a features timetable, setting all news deadlines, assembling and distributing the bulletin running orders, emailing all students to link their blogs to the WINOL URL, ordering new toner and fixing the printer, keeping the news room tidy, and collecting the newspapers every morning.