Guardian Media Conference 2009

Today the Wessex Scene were lucky enough to secure a few places at the Guardian Student Media Conference at the newspaper's headquarters in Kings Cross. Dominic, Wendy, Daniel and myself (Carla) had a truly illuminating day out, and I think the conference went above and beyond our expectations in every aspect.

Guardian Student Media Conference

Daniel, Dominic and Wendy

I don't want to give away too much now, but the day was divided into several lectures that were delivered in a variety of styles. We heard from Guardian Editor Alan Rusbridger, Deputy Editor Ian Katz and Paul Lewis, the journalist who exposed the true events that led to the death of Ian Tomlinson earlier this year. There were many other fantastic speakers, but I would like to resist divulging too much information before I write it up at a later date in a more coherent manner. I will however say that the food was amazing (!) and it was an invaluable learning opportunity. While many media 'conferences' are about 'getting into the industry' and generally pointless for anybody who has done their research into conventional routes into journalism, today focused on those who were already in the media, albeit the student kind, with journalists inspiring us with their stories, passion for truth and prompting an immediate desire for improvement in our publications.

Journey Home

A Conference is Tiring Work...

Keeping Promises

Start as you mean to go on... and look - several posts in only a few days!

Still in the Wessex Scene office. It's been a long Scene-related day - the Vice-Chancellor's inauguration ceremony, Union Council, writing last-minute news stories, laying-up... and this is the week where I will pretty much live in the office. Although calling it an office seems almost too nice a word. More like a stuffy, claustrophobic, airless dark vault of horridness. Bar the company of course.

I really believe the paper has stepped up a level this year. Weekly editorial meetings allows the editorial team to become closer friends, more open with each other and definitely more focused on their section. Hopefully making what you think is a better paper!

We certainly have a lot of fun doing it, from throwing each other around the room (a backache remedy apparently), listening to B*Witched, the Backstreet Boys and Daphne and Celeste and making general fools of ourselves in front of each other to relieve stress. Echoing Dominic's sentiments in the previous post, I would like to say that this definitely is the best extra-curricular activity you can participate in at University. We like to think so anyway.

That's it for now, photoshop calls. Fabbo.

The Eleventh Hour

Me (Dominic) with a cutting edge news story

Carla and Gareth stressing out

Pete seriously getting stressed out

Carla and Gareth... slightly more relaxed

As a child, I always thought that when things had reached the eleventh hour, that was it; anything would always be finished within eleven hours for some reason. In the years since then I have learnt this cute piece of American slang is completely untrue. The team and I are slaving away in the media resources room, desperately trying to get yet another issue of the Wessex Scene completed and I'm sure we've been here more than eleven hours. Last night (or so the rumor has it) the server room became flooded at the university, preventing any sort of network usage; essentially rendering our thriving media room useless. After waiting most of yesterday for the network to return to us (it didn't,) the Wessex Scene has been thrown into something of a panic, trying to hit our deadline in spite of the fact that we've lost an entire day. The resulting panic has been a revelation to us. None of us had any idea of how much work the paper would take and as printing deadlines mingle further with university ones, we're all struggling to cope. My method? Pretend it's not happening and write a blog post.

In all honesty though, the amount of work required to get every issue out is phenomenal. Next time you pick up the paper, don't just read it, really look at it. You see that line? That took one of us 30 minutes to fit EXACTLY in the spot. Notice how all the stories end on the same grid line? 1 hour of editing, and re-editing the story, seeing if it fits perfectly with or without a pull-quote, if it's all in article text and not accidentally all first paragraph. You see that spelling of Novmember? Um...yeah, I don't know how that happened.

In spite of this, being part of the Wessex scene is probably the most rewarding, career enhancing extra curricular at Southampton University (providing you're interested in going into publishing, journalism, editing, etc) because nothing will give you the level of hands on experience we all develop. Working with industry standard software. and absolutely no training wheels, we're all slowly training ourselves to become professional editors. We might have reached the eleventh hour this time, we might be struggling now, but the stress and the trauma all vanish into nothingness as our sports editor (Daniel Webb) reveals to us the hole in the crotch of his trousers and we remember; maybe it's best we slip into the twelfth...

Dominic Falquero
News Editor

Vote

The next issue of the Wessex Scene will take a look at the Copenhagen Conference and how the decisions made there by world leaders will affect Global Warming. We will also be taking a look at a proposal made by lecturers at the University, that hopes to urge the Vice-Chancellor to place a greater emphasis on sustainability as well as research.

Please vote in the poll to the right, the results of which will be published in the Wessex Scene.

Technical Difficulties

It seems that the University's server always decides to crash over laying-up weekend. As ever it seems that the deadline will have to be extended as members of the editorial team were unable to do anything productive today.

However while waiting for technical happiness to return, Carla, Dominic and Wendy re-enacted the nativity scene in the Wessex Scene office. The nativity play, the favoured event of the year for many infant schools, was an important part of many of our childhoods. In our desperate times we returned to the mentality of our young selves and acted our little hearts out. Gareth, aka G-Man, did his best to capture the event on film, but did not successfully press the record button until 3 seconds before the end of the dress rehearsal. Details coming soon of a finer-tuned performance.

Editorial Team 2009-2010

Editor - Carla Bradman
Assistant Editor - Lydia Teague
Design Editor - Jacob Deane
Photography Editor - James Eley
News Editors - Dominic Falquero and Jazmin Sherman
Politics Editor - Pete Apps
Features Editors - Gareth Brading and Wendy Oloya
Lifestyle Editors - Sarah Colah and Jennifer Palmer
Travel Editor - Polly Bennett
Fashion Editor - Hannah Pratt
Arts Editor - Caroline Evans
Science Editor - Emma Stuart
Sports Editors - Daniel Webb and Charlotte Woods
VP Media and Communications - Jamie Ings

The Wessex Scene aims to keep content, especially with regard to News and Politics, local or student-related. The first two issues of the 2009-2010 academic year have also seen a transition from tabloid to broadsheet journalism.

The number of people currently involved with the Wessex Scene on a non-editorial basis has risen dramatically since last year. A team of sub-editors have been trained and are trying to help maintain factual and grammatical consistency throughout the newspaper. A new format for regular writer's meetings is being implemented and a wide-range of students are now contributing on a regular basis.

Wessex Scene Blog

As you should have noticed by now, the Wessex Scene is printed every three weeks at the University of Southampton. We do our best each issue to ensure that the news stories are as relevant as possible, but inevitably there is a delay of a week between the sending of the issue to the printers and the date it hits the stands.

Facebook is of course one way to inform students of the latest news on campus, but a blog is a more suitable outlet for Southampton students to check for news between issues. It is also a way for us to upload any video interviews we conduct with an array of (famous) faces for your viewing pleasure.

There are no rules for this blog - we will upload it with anything worth knowing when there is something worthwhile for you to know. Feel free though to send us in the gossip from campus, and anything ridiculously funny that you overhear around the University.

Carla Bradman
Editor