Articles:
- Ministers and experts warn against booking summer holidays as pandemic continues
- Police appealing for information after ‘unexplained death’ of teen in London
- London leads retreat on coronavirus pandemic as cases by borough revealed
- Record low February temperature in England as new weather warnings issued
As part of my role as reporter for the news website, I was responsible for pitching ideas to my editor. I prepared in advance and researched some stories that would be relevant to the date of publication. I was liaised with Cat about what topics she would like to focus on and began looking for an interviewee for one story. If I were to do this role again, I would make sure to have 2 or 3 stories prepped and interviews ready for them as I underestimated how much I would have been able to write.
I sourced a relevant interviewee for my summer holiday article who gave me some great quotes. If given the opportunity to this role again, I would also try to talk to a travel expert to shed some light on the topic instead of just relying on a case study to illustrate the issue. Additionally, I would also aim for 1-2 interviews for each story so as to give the audience an overview of the story with case studies and expert opinions.
I contributed to the live blog by writing a short post on the likelihood that children could return to schools in March. If given the chance to do this role again, I would try to write more for the live blog, so as to support my team further.
After I had submitted my articles for review and liaised with the editorial team, I began updating my published articles by checking all appropriate news sources to see if there had been any developments. I came across a statement that had recently been released by Jet2 which was relevant to my story. I hyperlinked the original statement and explained the development in my article. If I could do this role again in the future, I would keep TweetDeck open so that I am able to keep up to date with anything new happening that could be relevant for any of my articles written. I also would keep looking at a range of news sources so as to update all articles with the newest information.
David bought it to my attention that part of one of my articles (drop in London coronavirus cases) had an issue. I had said something that was not attributed to any source, despite it being a fair assumption, it was cut from the article. In the future, if I were to be an online reporter again, I would ensure that all my stories were full of attributions to their original sources and not based on assumptions as this is not in line with professional, ethical journalistic values.
At the debrief, David mentioned that there was an inconsistent reporting style in terms of tenses and dates. To rectify this in the future, I would keep a close eye on my writing, referring to the Guardian style guide if I have any queries and thoroughly read over my work before submitting it for review.