Highlights of Radio Newsweek

Me at Hope University's Radio Station
'Radio Hope'

As I have mentioned before I am a student at Liverpool Hope University studying for a postgraduate degree in Radio and On Line Journalism. The course is part time and I attend one day a week.

In December I finished the first year of my course and I am now starting my second year. At the end of December from the 12^th – 15th I underwent a week long assessment on which I had to produce and present four half hour current affairs radio shows along with my work partner Paul. The shows were broadcast live on the University’s radio station ‘Radio Hope’ (1350 Medium Wave/am)

During our shows we alternated between the roles of presenting the programme and operating the recording desk. As the programmes were speech based, presenting was quite a significant task as it was my role to engage with the listener, build rapport with interviewees and keep upbeat throughout. As presenter I also had to write the programme menu and links.

In order to meet the assessment guidelines we needed to have various items in each show. These included conducting two way interviews with presenter and a news correspondent, usually based on a story from that day and a five minute interview conducted with a newsworthy interviewee and sourced by either myself or my work partnerl. We also had to include a radio package about our own chosen subject which we had begun a few weeks earlier. Although we could choose the subject the story had to be up to date and relevant during news week. The package had to be five minutes long and include at least three interviews

As well as organising and planning or own shows we had to take on various roles for other students programmes. These roles included acting as a news correspondent being interviewed about a story from that day, a phone correspondent covering any given news story and lasting four minutes and presenting a four minute news bulletin containing news sport and weather.

It can’t be done! I hear you say....well as you can imagine this was a very hectic week with a jam packed schedule and I must hasten to add that it went right up to the week before Christmas so no one got any cards this year! But luckily me and my partner jelled really well and planning the shows was not difficult as we first though. We were successful in that each of our shows included all of the various items required and I stepped up to the mark when taking on the my roles with other groups. With a lot of hard work and planning I think I just about pulled it off.

I’ll let you be the judge of this as here I have added a pod cast of what I believe are the best bits from the assessment week. I hope you enjoy it!