Week 9 update

Justice Gap

In recent media there has been a few reports on criminal investigations into the treatment and care of mental health sufferers who have died in police custody. I felt this was an issue that the justice gap should cover following the alarming coverage of police misconduct in the press. The charity INQUEST which offers free advice to bereaved families has carried out a lot of casework which covers deaths in all forms of custody and detention, including prison, police, immigration and psyciatric detention. I spoke to the co-director of the charity who was preparing a report to brief MPs ahead of a parliamentary debate that day, she informed me of this therefore I wanted to address it to get fresh quotes rather then using the press release statement that was issued online.

INQUEST calls for action on ‘depressing regularity’ of deaths in custody

WINOL

WINOL this week was a huge push to get the second years to fill the bulletin, with the third year reporters all covering their own private projects it was down to the second years to bring in the stories. It has to be said that there was a disheartening attempt to bring in stories, and to see some reporters settle for an OOV when we were extremely light on packages made the editors job even more difficult as we had to find solutions to fill the bulletin. Luckily we had a reporter turn around a 2 minute package on the day which covered our award success; this was extremely efficient and appropriate considering it's not everyday we win awards. The biggest improvement this week was the use of case studies. In previous weeks this was a major disappointing factor that was addressed as people were broadcasting stories on job losses and cuts but there was no case study to illustrate how it was affecting people directly. Taking this on board reporters brought in two case studies this week which worked really well in adding human interest. Case studies add a depth to the piece which address the opinions of those involved, rather then just reporting on the facts. I thought the new editor this week did a good job in pushing reporters to continue to find another story if it fell through, consistently coming up with suggestions and solutions to encourage reporters.

I think the fact we now have a front page editor, and strong subs, the articles on the website are improving, and the regularity of changing the news around to suit what is receiving the most traffic is helping to lift the site. It feels as though there is more of a 'live' feed of news, compared to static stories that don't change until the next Wednesday. This can only continue to get better as reporters get into the habit of text stories.