Social Media & Subbing Editor
Being part of the social media team has always been something of interest to me. I helped out within the role in second year, but in third I adapted from this and became the chief sub for both social media and our online website. This meant I not only had to keep our audience entertained, but I also had to make sure the content online was appropriate.
I was also only rostered down to do this role once, but, due to journalist shortages, it meant that I was asked to step up a couple times more too. This was a real positive for me as it allowed me to further my skills more within the area.
In October, I was asked to move onto the team to help out, especially because that week there were stories from the level 6's to upload as well as the fact that over the previous news days, not all the content managed to get published on the website.
My first job in this role was to work out an order of what stories needed to be published on the website when and where in order to get as much interaction from audiences as possible.
There were six of us on the team. Three worked on social media whilst the other three worked on the website content. I worked with another level 6 student and level 5 student. We worked well with each other and made sure to split the tasks equally. This allowed us to get everything uploaded by the end of the newsday.
The news days where I played this role meant that there was not as much work that needed to be planned in advance to the day like others. This meant that I had a lot more to do on the day, but I felt I spread my time equally.
On the second news day when I was the chief sub, I mainly overlooked the subbing side of the role. I'd be checking all the work produced either prior or on the day, looking out for errors or omissions to work. I, with the help of the rest of my team, would work through these and then upload the content onto our website (along with having the responsibility to upload all of the TV and Radio bulletin streams.)
This day also followed the same concept as the last time I was part of the social media and subbing team where level 6's had submitted multimedia stories the day before the news day. This meant there was extra content to sub, so the team really had to be on it. I was partnered with two other level 6 students who had both played the role before, so knew what to expect.
I used my prior knowledge from the role to ensure the day ran smoothly. For example, I made sure to upload the content onto the website in a good order. Due to the election being a current news topic, I decided to put a group of those stories up last.
I believe myself and the others worked very well together. Everything was uploaded in time and one of us took care of uploading all of the radio and TV bulletin links.
The only part of the day that I found hard was towards the end when we were waiting for some slower groups to finish some of their story content such as the video or audio. I dealt with this though by using my initiative and subbing all of the elements I could earlier on in the day so as soon as the whole package was uploaded, it could be posted to the website. This really helped myself and my team with the overall workload.
