M&C Feb Main 2018: The Newsroom Project

S2 Assessment (20%)

Your name Jacqueline

Group members Fiona, Susan

Title of your As an international student: How should I “deal

Newsroom story with” a housemate?
Living with a housemate could lead to
embarrassment and quarrels as well as laughter
and warmness.

The Newsroom task is an opportunity for you to not only learn more about the practices
of journalism and podcasting and increase your media literacy, but also to sharpen your
teamwork skills and learn about your own strengths and weaknesses.

Grade:​This assignment is worth ​20%​ of your final M&C grade. This grade consists of your report
(​complete this document​) and your tutor’s observations. It is NOT a journalistic
assessment of your final news story or podcast, but rather an evaluation of the
process you underwent to produce these media products. Your grade also reflects
the evidence provided of your learning outcomes.

Your grade is formed from the following:

Part A:The Newsroom Meld Report 10 marks = 5%

Part B:The Newsroom Syn Radio Report 10 marks = 5%
Part C: Overall Newsroom Reflection 15 marks = 7.5%
Part D: Attendance, participation, group collaboration 5 marks = 2.5%

Due:​MONDAY 3 SEPTEMBER 11:59pm

Submit:​SUBMIT this report as a PDF via the Turnitin submission folders on TCOLE. ​Your
submitted file must include your name in the title.

Penalties apply for incorrect submission format, late submission, plagiarism

or collusion

NB: Part D will also be graded on your attendance and is also based on tutor
observations. If you are sick please explain in your report.

Ensure you check the marking criteria on TCOLE before submission

NEWS STORY

Title of your Newsroom Story:

As an international student: How should I “deal with” a housemate? 
Living with a housemate could lead to embarrassment and quarrels as well as laughter 
and warmness.  
………………………………………………………………

Place your story here. (Photos not required)

Accommodation always seems to be an essential issue for international students. Taking the
eco-social status and living habits into consideration, a large number of students are living with
housemates, sharing the rent and doing housework together. When the time flies by, a lot of
difficult situations among with amusing moments are happening to them.

Reasons to have housemates

The most common reason for international students to share an apartment with others is to
share the rent, to ease the loneliness as well as to enhance the sense of belongings.
Nevertheless, in some cases, some students actually have no choice but to share a room due to
the college’s regulation.

“Because it is ruled that we should share the accommodation for a year for the under 18
students. So I chose it because I didn’t have a choice.” Said Kimberley, a girl from Trinity
College.

A successful relationship between housemates is based on positive personalities such as

considerateness and patience. In addition, good living habits are prominent, either. Complaints
such as “he should go to sleep earlier or get up earlier” were mentioned for times. Respecting
each other’s different life styles has already became the basic etiquette.

“Weird” housemate habits

Living with a housemate sometimes can be challenging to some students if their housemates
have strange habits. As Ann reported, her housemate had this habit to put her phone on the
refrigerator and once had a hilarious conflict with their homestay family. “There’s one time … my
roommate put her phone on the fridge because she was concentrating on studying and she
didn’t want the phone to distract her. Our homestay parent saw that and she just put my
housemate’s phone into the fridge.” mentioned by Ann.

What can make things even worse is both of the housemates happening to share the same bad
habit. Taking Oscar, a student at Trinity College, as an example, he is exactly as lazy as his
housemate. “We always choose to have dinner by ordering take-out and nobody bothers to
clean them after eating. Day by day, the take-out boxes have been everywhere. Especially the
box where we place the bones of Nene Chicken, there even were worms. Until the flies have
been everywhere, we finally decided to clean it up. The rubbish filled six garbage bags.”
The last thing that he and his housemate would like to do might be cleaning their apartment.
Oscar claimed that “One day, the building manager came to our home, they thought someone
just died for its messiness.”

Conflicts

The experiences of having a roommate for most students are neutral, however, sometimes
conflicts happen. For example, they may invite friends to sleepover without informing, or never
do the housework.

Just as Kimberley said, sometimes her housemate gets drunk at midnight and doesn’t realise
that she is getting really noisy with her friends. “She was screaming at the phone at about 1 am.
And I told her that I didn’t feel happy with it, but she told me just to take the sleeping pills. That’s
what she did. Once, she even brought her boyfriend back.”

Without timely compromises, these conflicts may become more intense and finally force
students to move out. Fortunately, most students have their own methods to solve the problem.

The most frequently mentioned and the most efficient solution is to have a good communication
with them. “We will have a deep talk together and solve the problem as soon as possible.”
Stated by Andy, a Trinity College student.

However, when all negotiations fail to work, Kimberley suggests that the only way left is to turn
to the mutual agency and report the situation to them. “let them decide what you can do to deal
with it. They are always helpful”

Touching Moments

Comparing to the potential argument between the housemates, most of them have reported that
they have more touching moments together.

Having a housemate can make you feel that there is always someone to back you up and cheer
you up. “Before we become housemates, one day I was locked [out of my apartment], I can’t
[couldn’t] get into my formal house and she accompanied with me until the locksmith had come.”
Said by Andy, at Trinity College, who also mentioned that “we cook by turns, so everyday I can
have a place to eat.”

There are also plenty of daily moments that you might get used to it but is actually rather warm.
“He always remember to bring me a take-out if I am at home alone” mentioned by Aaron who
also studies at Trinity College.

Recommendations
The most common recommendations given by the interviewees were to try your best to get
along with your housemates and establish rules for them. “You don’t have to always be friends
with your housemate, all you need to [do] is to be ok with each other without getting trouble to
one another. So before you settle down everything, you should firstly talk about the rules”
advised by Kimberley.

Similarly, Ann suggested the other students to “make sure that all of your private stuff are locked
safely because you will never know who will enter your room and during that time you would
lose something.”

Generally speaking, the advantages of having a housemate overweigh the disadvantages. It is a

perfect opportunity for the international students to have some special moments with
housemates while they may encounter embarrassing or annoying problems. For those who live
in the suburbs, having roommates will also make them feel safer. On contrary, bad living habits
lead to conflicts but it could usually be solved by negotiating with each other and making
concessions when it is necessary.

To sum up, although various problems may come up during living with housemates, the majority
of international students still recommend the life with housemates because studying oversea can
be rather harsh if they live alone.
PART A: PRINT NEWSROOM REPORT & MELD MAGAZINE

Your assigned role in the group:

Weekly Reflection:​ ​Ideas to comment on in here could include

- individual and/or group challenges,
- methods of problem-solving
- something you were particularly proud of
- examples of collaboration within your group
- key learning points from the lectures and how you applied these to your newsroom task

NB: If you were absent please include this in your weekly reflection.
Among the five given chosen, after discussing with my group members,
Week One we reached an agreement that we would choose the ‘housemate’ topic
(9/07 – 13/07) for its convenience for interviewing and its commonness among
international students, who are the exact target audience. Then, we had
a discussion on who we were going to interview. I found it really hard to
decide the interview targets, since there are not lots of special cases.
Thus, we finally decided to interview some students that we know having
interesting stories and some other random students. Next week, we
planned to start our interviews.
After the discussion with my partners on how to distribute tasks, we all
Week Two agreed that we ought to participate in every part of it to learn fully. In
(16/06 – 20/07) other words, we wrote interview questions together, interviewed students
separately and write the final story together. During this week, I have
interviewed three students. In the three interviews, bound the tips given
in the lecture in mind, I prepared well and remembered to keep eye
contact. The main barrier for me is to ask whether they were willing to be
interviewed, since I am actually a bit nervous. However, when I finished
the interview with the first person, it felt much better after. Next week, I
am supposed to interview more people and start writing the story with my
partners.
Finishing nine interviews altogether, we decided to transcript the records
Week Three first and then share them to determine which of them will be chosen in
(23/07-27/07) our story. Then, it’s time to write the article. We found it quite difficult to
reach an agreement which interview content to choose and how to make
our story interesting and inspiring at the same time. Therefore, we finally
chose to be on voice call during the period of writing to take everyone’s
thought into consideration. Since it is a piece of soft news, we
remembered to apply more flexibility, more creativity and more
attention-grabbing words to the lead. Out of our surprise, we finished it
on Wednesday. On the tutorial on Thursday, we asked for advice and
added some subheadings. In the next week, we planned to do some
revisions on the article.
 Since we have finished the article last week, all we did this week is to
Week Four revise and submit. On the class, we asked for advice from the editor of
(30/07-03/08) Meld Magazine. As he suggested, we shortened some interview quotes
which are too long, check the grammar again and find some more photos
attached to the article. We also planned to change the lead, however, we
have run out of time.
PART B: BROADCASTING NEWSROOM REPORT & SYN RADIO

Your assigned role in the group:

Weekly Reflection:​ ​Ideas to comment on in here could include

- individual and/or group challenges,
- methods of problem-solving
- something you were particularly proud of
- examples of collaboration within your group,
- key learning points from the lectures and how you applied these to your newsroom task

In this week, we went to the syn radio. It was the first time for me to be
Week One in a radio room and make podcasts. First, we were taught the routine to
(06/08 – 10/08) make introduction, which should clearly include the radio name, our
names and our college, and we practiced several times. However, the
moment I sat in front of the microphone, I still found my hands sweating
and almost fell panic. However, after rounds of conversations with
Fiona and Irene, the nervousness seemed to ease. Generally speaking,
it was really a lot of fun in this visit of syn radio.
This week’s tutorial focused on the reflection on the experience in the
Week Two syn radio last week and the preparation for the recording the week after
(13/08 – 17/08) next. In particular, we should remember to be engaging by having a
warm greeting and finishing with a laugh. At the meantime, we should
also try our best to express the story and points of views in a clear and
authentic way. Keeping these in mind, our group plan to finish the draft
before next week’s tutorial.
Keeping the key points of podcasts in mind, our group started a voice
Week Three call on Wednesday and worked on the script together by sharing a
(20/08 – 24/08) google doc. In the script, we remembered to cue each other all the time
as well as intro and outro properly. At class, after showing Jo what we
have written, we devoted ourselves to practicing orally. We record every
time we practice to listen to and figure out how we can improve. After
several times, we showed Jo our record and were given advice that we
can add more laughter to this piece of record. Thus, we even add
footnote “laugh” in the script’s particular parts in order to remind
ourselves. We are going to the final record next week, more practice
are undoubtedly needed.
After practicing over and over again and adjusting the script to make it
Week Four sounds fun, it was finally the time for us to do the record in syn radio. All
(27/08 – 31/08) my group members come on time. Based on the experience that we
came last time, I reminded myself that I should keep about three fingers
away from the microphone and be engaging. At first, to be honest, I was
quite nervous and I can’t help speeding up a little bit at the overall intro.
However, with the encouragement of my group members, my
nervousness eased a lot. All of us remember to laugh more. I really
appreciate this experience.
NB: If you were absent please include this in your weekly reflection.
PART C: YOUR NEWSROOM REFLECTION

Write ​no more than 600 words in total ​reflecting on:

1) Group work
Comment on the process of working in a team to meet the goal of creating a news story and
podcast. What strengths and weaknesses did this bring out in YOU? (one paragraph)

2) Newsroom practices
● What did you learn about being a journalist through your ​Meld Magazine​ experience?
● What did you learn about being a podcaster through your ​Syn Radio​ experience?

Ensure you use newsroom industry terminology in your written response.

Write 2-3 paragraphs per Newsroom medium
Use 1.5 spacing, 12 point font, Arial or Times New Roman.

The process of working with Fiona and Susan as a team is really inspiring and happy. Since we
are all fully focused on the work, we always finish both the news story and podcast script in
advance, which can earn us more time to revise, practice and ask for advice. The strength that
this group work brings out in me is the ability to collaborate and negotiate with others. In case
other group members don’t agree on what I write, we participate in every single part producing
the final work. For example, based on our timetables, we find the time periods that are
convenient for all of us and then start a voice call during writing both the news story and the
podcast script. When they disagree on my ideas, I will ask them the specific reasons and then
make concession if I find them make sense. As for the weakness that it brings out in me is my
lack of creativity. For instance, although I can p
Lusually adopt the knowledge taught at class to my work, I’m not that good at proposing novel
and interesting ideas such as the idea of reading Twitter post in our podcast, which Fiona
proposes. I hope that with the process of learning, I can be more creative.

In the process of writing news story for Meld Magazine, I learn several things being a journalist.
Firstly, journalists play 5 essential societal roles. Specifically, they are not only mirrors reflecting
the society, but also roles exposing the powerful individual and institutions to the public in order
to keep them accountable. In addition, they should also advocate the good of society as well as
protect the democracy and keep local audience informed of global news.
Secondly, there are many requirements on how to write news. For hard news, it should strictly
follow the inverted hard news pyramid in a simple writing style with high credibility. In other
words, a lead that summarizes most newsworthy points comes first. The explanation including
what, when, where, who and why among with strongest quotes comes next. Some least
newsworthy details, which are interesting but not crucial will be put at last. For soft news, its lead
should be more flexible, attention-grabbing and creative, but also follow a partially different
inverted pyramid. For instance, it can contain a quote or a question.

In the process of making a podcast in Syn Radio, several points should be kept in mind. Firstly,
there are some tips on script writing. To make the podcast sound more natural, the script should
be written like a speaker. To narrow the gap with listeners and make them feel more familiar, we
should always use short sentences and contractions as well as use active instead of passive
voice. In addition, using inclusive language like “we” can also connect with your audience. To
remind the audience of what is talking about, some key details can be repeated. To make it easy
for podcaster to read in the radio, the script should be clear and ordered.

Secondly, the tone when we podcast is prominent. Since listening to radio is a blind activity
which only involves the hearing sense, the only factor that can evoke the feeling is the voice of
podcasters. Thus, the breathing, posture and articulation are all rather important. First, the
breathing should be always under control, which means podcasters should practice a lot to ease
nervousness and make more use of lung’s capacity. Second, sitting up straight can help us
breathe better. Third, podcasters should avoid mumbling, speaking too quickly and swallowing
the ends of words.
ENSURE YOU COMPLETE ALL SECTIONS OF THIS REPORT