Reflecting on the finished product

Well, its not too bad overall. It may have been better had I done a better interview with the Youth Coalition Director, and could present more precise views on the issue.

I'm not confident enough to call it broadcastable. It could probably have been done a bit more tightly, but I suppose that comes with practice. It might have helped if people had been willing to talk to me in the first place, and I could have had a little more time to work on it.

Still, in racing the deadline, I couldn't help but think a real radio journalist would have done it in ten minutes, so not enough time isn't really an excuse.

I think I need to be more pushy when getting interviews, I think they're unwilling to let you down if you show up in person. Its harder to reject a hopeful and friendly young woman. :)

Scripting the intros

I had a bit of difficulty trying to get conflict into the piece. Essentially, the groups were arguing the same perspective. However, the UCSA president had a couple of views on the issue, so I incorporated this into the stories.

The first was the positive aspects of the case. The second was negative, and invovled some consequences of the changes. The last story was a negative, but hopefully panned the issue of the gap year students, and that particular aspect of the Youth Allowance issue.

Editing the bugger

Editing was good this time. I listened through the interviews, and took notes on the time and the good stuff that was said, before deciding on using it in stories. And audacity worked like a charm, I had no worries in getting the cuts I wanted.

There was one problem with the grab I had for the president, because he awkwardly raised his voice at the end of the part I wanted to use, but I made it a bit quieter to make it sound marginally less awkward.

i also had a whale of a time trying to record my own voice for the voicer and the wrap package. I still hate that my voice sounds so high. I think this in part comes from the nervousness in recording so that I don't breathe properly and this restricts my voice. And I have a stupid voice. Ah well.

I found as well in reading my parts that I stumbled over words, and found that the words I had written didn't make sense or the sentences were too long. Its hard to get the emphasis right when there's so much sentence. It ended up being editing and recording at pretty much the same time.

Actually doing the interviews

Monday was pretty hard. I got my phone interview with the Youth Coalition Director. I had a little sound difficulty, but I fixed that. I think I ended up recording her interview without enough volume, but I fixed it in editing. :)

She was also not exactly up-to-date with the changes to Youth Allowance, and the impact that might have specifically, but she had a bit of an idea, and was unimpressed with the lack of consultation to people concerned with the changes. I was a bit nervous about the interview, but interestingly, sitting in a booth and staring at a mike was very calming. I even managed to question her in a way to clarify her answers a bit, without offending her. She was very nice to interview.

I was a bit stumped for the second interview. My first attempt at talking to someone in the UCSA ended with an email address, and no phone numbers, despite asking. I duly sent the email, but again, had no response. Knowing that I couldn't go the day without one, I went back in and hassled the desk guy again to find me anyone who would do an interview, and lucky me! He pulled out the president.

He was quite informed on the topic, and took hold of the mike and gave great responses. He also understood that when he stuffed up sentence (which he did a couple of times), he did his own re-take, so I could use it as a grab. That was really helpful.

And I had two interviews! Yay!

Chasing down people

Come friday, I was pretty desperate for an interview, and discovered that there were no edirols left that I could borrow. Fortunately, I learned how to use the booth in building 9 to record phone interviews.

This was good, but I didn't end up getting any interviews that day. I spoke to the very helpful switchboard woman, and learned how to dial a local number without bothering her. I think the instructions need to be updated.

Still, I had a bit of luck, the director of the ACT Youth Coalition was happy to talk to me on monday. And I had booked an edirol for monday, so thats all good, to hopefully catch the President of the UCSA.

More research, and preparing to go into the field

Well, after having consulted my tutor on what topic I should refine it down to, I definitely stuck with science funding. I didn't know much about what they had received from the budget at this stage, but I wondered that it wouldn't be a great deal.

Turns out, they got heps of money. Billions. And universities to do science research and development too. Which was good news for them. However, I was trying to find a story with conflict. I don't anyone had an issue with the vast amounts of money they were receiving as a result of the recommendations in the 2020 summit. The science community was chuffed.

I attempted to get in touch with them anyway, and this was the start of my problems. In order to contact anyone, details have been restricted to an email address. Which means easy screening of uni students, and no-one has to reply. I got a phone call through to FASTS, who represent the science community, and the friendly guy even took my details to give to the Executive Director. I didn't get a call back.

That didn't matter, because I had decided to chase an issue with more conflict, one that was close to my heart. The changes to Youth Allowance. I was pretty aware of what the changes would mean, and had a pretty good working knowledge of all the ins and outs of it all.

Turns out, there were a lot of changes, and I actually think many of them were good. But I needed conflict. And I found it in a particular set of changes, the ones that had specifically barred me from getting the youth allowance payment. Grrrr.

So, I found a couple of articles that said people were concerned with these changes, and tried to get in touch with the relevant organisations. An email to DEEWR sent me to Julia Gillard, (at least they replied), but I knew she wouldn't have the time of day for a uni student. A phone-call to Centrelink, which got an answer, said I should go to DEEWR. Not helpful.

I figured I was aiming too high. I thought I might get in contact with the UC student assocation. I talked to the friendliest woman, who even gave me the phone number of the Association Vice President (which I found out later they're not supposed to do). Still, I tried calling, no answer.
This awesome lady also told me that the President would definitely be in on monday, so I tried to keep this as a last resort.

First Assessment 3 post - News Story Research

I started off looking about a month ago at all the then-current issues in federal politics - the boat people crisis, and maybe the issue of getting rid of temporary visas; how successful the alcopops bill was, whether government was actually going to announce if Australia was in recession. It looked pretty interesting, but I realised straight away that getting a comment in person from anyone in federal politics was going to be difficult.

Anyway, by the time it came along that I was actually starting the assignment, heaven sent me the budget. :) It had plenty to go on, and is big news. There were lots of things to look at, increase in pensions, increase in infrastructure, science funding, art funding, education reform, as well as the Oppositions response to the budget, which in my opinion was pretty pathetic. One change to medicare rebate in exchange for a cigarette tax hike. Then they ranted on about how Swan didn't actually say how much they were in deficit. Big whoop.

I decided on doing science funding research, because I'm sick of doing art, and I think I might like to go into science reporting.