Ofcom coming

So for this week I’m going to be talking about our super special guest lecture we have next week which exclusive to all use super brilliant FDA students.

Lawrie Hallet of Ofcoms Radio and Planning and Licensing team main duties surround community radio and examining community radio stations to ensure their suitable for broadcast.

Looking into the realms of theory this is a good idea as according to Christ Frost ‘It is important that you should have an understanding of the codes of practice and guidance and how the apply in the media in which you work.’

This means that we should be aware of the codes and regulations which monitor our work.

But to fully understand the significance of Lawrie and Ofcom we should take a look at how Ofcom describes itself-

‘We regulate the TV and radio sectors, fixed line telecoms and mobiles, plus the airwaves over which wireless devices operate.
We make sure that people in the UK get the best from their communications services and are protected from scams and sharp practices, while ensuring that competition can thrive.
Ofcom operates under the Communications Act 2003. This detailed Act of Parliament spells out exactly what Ofcom should do – we can do no more or no less than is spelt out in the Act.
The Act says that Ofcom’s general duties should be to further the interests of citizens and of consumers. Meeting these two duties is at the heart of everything we do.’
As you can they can be desribded as the level below legal action and deal with what could be considered more menial areas of the media.
What the group primalriy does is again best taken from their website-
What we do
Our main legal duties are to ensure:

• the UK has a wide range of electronic communications services, including high-speed services such as broadband;
• a wide range of high-quality television and radio programmes are provided, appealing to a range of tastes and interests;
• television and radio services are provided by a range of different organisations;
• people who watch television and listen to the radio are protected from harmful or offensive material;
• people are protected from being treated unfairly in television and radio programmes, and from having their privacy invaded; and
• the radio spectrum (the airwaves used by everyone from taxi firms and boat owners, to mobile-phone companies and broadcasters) is used in the most effective way.

Now to back to Lawrie. As mentioend earlier Lawries job is to primarily to montior community radio. Currently one of the most key issues of his job is one if the key things Ofcom monitors which is  ‘people who watch television and listen to the radio are protected from harmful or offensive material.’ This of late has been a key issue for Ofcom, since there is no watershed for radio swearing is aloud on at anytime. However the controversy comes in that explicit versions of songs are being played and rude langague being used in general.

My plan for this talk is to actually interview Lawrie. So here are a few questions I’ve already thought of.
 

Curently on their website Ofcom list under their items they do not do which are-

What we do not do
We are not responsible for regulating:

• disputes between you and your telecoms provider;
• premium-rate services, including mobile-phone text services and ringtones;
• the content of television and radio adverts;
• complaints about accuracy in BBC programmes;
• the BBC TV licence fee; or
• newspapers and magazines. – With the current criticism and belief the PCC has failed to regualte the print industry due to it’s lack of power and body made up of editors and products able to opt out make it ineffective. However Ofcom has been given the powers to fine and regulate the media industry for at least TV and Radio.

1. How do you investigate a compliant ?
2. What powers do you actually have ?
3. How do people make complaints ?
4. Currently what’s the biggest issue in community radio ?
5. Is Siren obeying guidelines ?
6. Looking at how print regulatory body the PCC (Press Complaints Commission) is coming under scrutiny do you think Ofcom should take print regulation ?*
7. Do you believe regulation can go to far ? especially with the Stop Online Piracy Act  (SOPA) being criticised by many as given power to the wrong people ?

Mission statement dissection

For this weeks blog I’m going to take a closer look at the Lincolnites mission statement and add in a little theory to see how it fits in with professional journalism practices.

So to kick things off here is the Lincolnites mission statement, which acts as an explanation of the target audience for the website:

Mission statement

The Lincolnite aims to deliver timely, accurate and relevant information to everyone living, working or studying in Lincoln.

The one thing I noticed that was missing from this statement was any reference to social classification. However making an educated guess and looking again at the platforms they offer their stories upon. The website is available as an Iphone app and also has functions which allow stories to shared through social media, one which go further to identify the class of reader is the ability to share stories on career website Linkedin. According the NRS social model the readers of the website could be placed in the C1 category above. What has lead me to this conclusion is that everyone in this category and above are ‘administrative professionals’. Commonly these kind of jobs require high end technology and technical expertise like having an Iphone and using a computer. So since the website offers an Iphone app and is available only in the internet lead me to this conclusion.

Looking further in the realms of theory Chris Frost writes that ‘Most national newspapers, magazines and broadcast outlets these days have very clear ideas about exactly who their publication is aimed at. This is little more difficult on the local scene, where the temptation is to aim at everybody in the geographic area.’

Though the Lincolnite may have done this in they’re new statement they do adhere to a more specific audience through their stories in the method of a local newspaper would, again Chris Frost writes ‘Newspapers need to attract on the new-stand and so will attempt a unique selling point if possible.’, the Lincolnite achieves this by having reporters cover unique stories like local card game tournaments (http://thelincolnite.co.uk/2010/12/lincoln-teens-frenzy-card-swapping-hobby/), which may not necessarily appeal to C1 and above but serves a USP because no one else covered it at the time.

When looking at rival print product The Lincolnshire Echo which covers national news like the 9/11 terror attacks places caters to all the NRS categories.

The placement issue (what i'm doing)

So for this week it’s time to enlighten you lucky boys and girls about what I’ve been doing for my work placement.

For those of you who are just tuning into my second year story my work placement at the Lincolnite.

To help exlplain what the Lincolnite is and who the cater to I’ve obtained their about us page- http://thelincolnite.co.uk/about/

About

Founded in May 2010, The Lincolnite is the editorially independent news and events website for Lincoln, with more than 35,000 monthly readers (May 2011).

Mission statement

The Lincolnite aims to deliver timely, accurate and relevant information to everyone living, working or studying in Lincoln.

Subscribe

You can get the latest from The Lincolnite in several ways:

• On Facebook
• On Twitter
• Android app
• iPhone app
• Daily email roundup
• RSS (Really Simple Syndication)

Looking at the subscribe section helps to identify the target audience further. Since the product is an online newspaper the primary target requires some skill with computer. However to break it down further the use of social media hints at ABC1 category of consumers as they have the access to devices like the apps hinting they have enough disposable income to purchase high end devices.

Now my role in the product is to produce feature like pieces once a week. To check up on my adventures visit this link http://secondyearplacement.blogspot.com/. For my actual stories heres my online story portfolio-

http://thelincolnite.co.uk/author/josh/

To show off a recent example of my work heres- http://thelincolnite.co.uk/2011/11/new-bishop-of-lincoln-enthroned/

What I’m going to do with is identify the target audience with:

Language- It may seem basic but this is a key thing. The language is kept simple and even as concise as a radio cue. The style is organized in a uniformed way to entice readers to read on by using small sentences and keep attention.

Reverend Lowson also believes a woman could take his place after his time as Bishop of Lincoln.
“I could see woman bishop taking over from me. I will be voting for woman bishops in the general Synod next July.

It also links the text to relevant stories, helping the reader get a more filling news consuming experience.

Content- For the content the target audience is represented by the questions I asked during the interview.

Do you feel religion plays a big part in the lives of youths?- This straight away identifies the target audience as young adults and to teenagers.

Do you feel religion is a big thing in Lincoln ?- This helps to geo demographically identify the products target audience, which is the city of Lincoln.

Vid and pod blogging

As you obviously know I blog. Though this form of blogging and print could be replaced.

 

To look behind my first sensationalist paragraph my point is to highlight how easy it’s becoming to use the multi platform to blog. For example looking at podcast website www.podbean.com the method of uploading audio to a standard blogging format was so simplistic it was easy for anyone with computer based skill set to manage.

Again this may link up to the fact technology is forever improving and allowing for members of the public to produce more varied media content. Just looking at my laptop and mobile phone I already see various outlets to achieve this. Both my phone and laptop offer hardware which allows me to video record and audio to suitable quality.

Famed broadcast Angela Rippon has a tip for aspiring journalist. ‘Wacth, listen and read’, it seems more and more the first two are becoming a more vital and dominant media form.

Reasoning behind the increasing popularity in these forms could be the fact it’s so attention grabbing. These forms offer a more digestible form of consuming information and in more instances are quickly absorbable compared to reading text.

Though this may have not totally took domination over the blogging world it can be seen more and more through websites like Tumblr. To prove my point this link (http://tmntmaster.tumblr.com/) leads to the promotional blog for upcoming Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles cartoon. Looking through the posts you can see that they are not text heavy and rely heavily on videos and images.

This could be down to the subject’s target audience (young boys and mature fans of the fanchise) however looking at a different website on the same subject using a different blogging tool, the content was much more text heavy thought just but stills uses a heavy media content (http://www.ninjapizza.net/).