Head of News at Shock Radio

Soon we'll be heading into second semester, which means I have been Head of News at Shock Radio for one semester and I haven't written about it yet!

After a shaky start with the new year of the station, due to our move to the new studios in University House being delayed, Shock is back on air and I'm delighted to be part of the committee.

I am also very happy with my news team this year. We consist of about 15 members and, like I mentioned in my first post about Friday First, it so great to first years getting involved but most of all watching and helping their progression.

We cover 2 bulletins a day: one at 12pm and a second at 5pm. At the moment, we are very much 'churnalists' as oppose to journalists. Each bulletin is written from news websites covering national, local, entertainment, university and sport news. From doing this the team have been able to gain knowledge in writing for the radio and how to structure a news bulletin.

This semester, I want to encourage the team to develop their own stories, interviews, vox pops and packages in order to create more innovative news for the station but also allow every member to have fun and experiment with creative ideas.

The Saturday News Show has been successful this year. I am very grateful to have been joined by Joe and Emily, who discuss and debate the news from that week with me.

One example of a feature I'd like to explore more in the show, is a 'for and against' debate. We have used this a couple of times; for example when students changed their Facebook profile pictures to the French flag overlay in support of the Paris terror victims, Joe and Emily argued against each other whether it was a good idea or not.

I'm looking forward to more people being on the Saturday News Show this year so they have more experience with a news show format.

You can listen to Shock Radio here.

Listen to our first Saturday show here:

Shock News - 21/11/2015 by Shock Radio on Mixcloud