Investigative Journalism
Updated: Feb 12
Week 1
Nottingham the Rise of Right-Wing
Defining groups
• Editor-in-chief: Eleanor
• Lead researcher: Millie
• Film director: Daria
• Camera/Studio Operator: Grace
• Sound & Podcast Producer: Aisha
•Lead Writer: Drew
•Designer/Art Director: Lily
My role will be Film director; the responsibilities of my role are coming up with variety of filming methods (angels, lightening etc.), making sure that the “scenario” is clear and easy to understand. Key thing in my role is communication, I need to communicate with the designer, editor and camera operator. To make sure our views correlate.
Idea development
As a group we came up with several ideas, which are:
• Job crisis, for all ages
•Rising rent prices
•Drug use in gen-z (recreational)
•Right-wing in Notts
At the end, we decided to stick to ‘Right-wing in Notts’ as it affects a lot of people in our community, especially LGBTQ, immigrants and local businesses; such as void and five leaves bookshop.
This topic is historically significant in Nottingham, as left-leaning businesses in the area encountered similar challenges centuries ago. Susanna Wright, a Nottingham woman from over 200 years back, is famous for keeping a gun under her counter to defend herself against large groups of right-wing people in her bookstore.
It's important for us to delve into local stories like this, especially since right-wing ideologies have been spreading and stirring up a lot of hatred in recent years. This is an issue that many people would find relevant, no matter their political stance.
Our Editor-in-chief (Eleanor) put together the PowerPoint for our group's presentation, making sure to point out the potential risks tied to this project, along with the suggested solutions. It was vital for us to pinpoint the right contacts and figure out how to get in touch with them.
We also emailed people like:
Dr Karen Salt
Dr Ana Isabel Nunes
Nadia Whittome
Alex Norris
Lilian Greenwood
Our email looked like this:
Dear ( ),
I'm a journalism student at Nottingham College, and I'm currently working on a story on the rise of far right views amongst young people. I wondered if you might be able to spare an hour to talk to us about your views on this?
We have a high quality podcasting studio at our City Hub site (near the train station), and we'd love for you to be a guest. You could use the podcast yourself however you wanted!
Do you have any availability in the next three weeks?
If you don't feel that this subject is something you're best placed to talk about, do you have any colleagues or people you could recommend?
I'm also available on
07305567760
Thanks so much,
Eleanor
Week 2
Vox-Pop Q's
I wrote some suggestions for our vox pops:
How would you describe Nottingham's political vibe?
Would you say Nottingham leans more one way politically, or is it quite balanced?
Do you ever feel like local politics reflects what people actually care about?
Interview questions:
How would you describe your political views in your own words?
(right wing) How did you come to identify with right-wing ideas?
What type of changes would you like to see in your community or country?
What's your experience with political discussion in Nottingham?
Podcast
At the start of week 2, we did not receive any responses from people we emailed so we decided to do a podcast. Eleanor interviewed me as I'm an immigrant and new to Nottingham.
I came up with questions for this interview, like:
Since you are new to Notts, how was your experience so far especially as Ukrainian immigrant?
You live in International Accommodation, do you think that could of changed your experience?
Would you say Nottingham have been more left-winging or reform?
Have you faced any discrimination?
What's your opinion on right-wing
As a slavic person, do you feel Nottingham is accommodating towards your culture?
Has any right-wing fake news impacted you? e.g. swans
Do you think people treat you differently because you are a white immigrant?
Ukraine has a right-wing news on immigration. However, you are an immigrant in different country, does that affect how you see things?
The podcast itself went really good and we now have a backup plan if we wont get a chance to do a podcast with anyone else. We decided to focus on how I'm still able to keep my culture (like food) and how I'm treated in Nottingham as an immigrant. We also spoke about how other races are treated compared to me.
Swot analysis
Aisha made our swot analysis.
Strengths:
Many people will be able to find out about incidents that are to do with this subject.
Relevant.
Has high impact.
People have a wide variety of political views.
Weaknesses:
Less people to interview.
Primary evidence is difficult to get in timescale.
Need to get a clearer definition of question.
Opportunities:
An MP might reach out to us.
Talking to interviewees.
Honing research skills.
Understanding objectivity.
Project management skills.
Threats:
Many people might not want to talk about what their views are.
Might upset the person we ask.
Safeguarding: can be a dangerous area.
No response from targeted interviewees.
Timeline
Drew (our Lead Writer) provided us with a timeline of things which need to be done.
As we go through this project, we can look back at this timeline to make sure everything we have to do is completed.
Week 1
-Create a pitch: Presentation 3.pptx.
-Diary entries.
-Research & find contacts.
Week 2
-Contact contributors:
Dr Karen Salt.
Dr Ana Isabel Nunes.
Nadia Whittome.
Alex Norris.
Lilian Greenwood.
-Risk Assessment: Can become a heated topic for some people.
-Plan structure: Article, Podcast, Film.
-Diary Entries.
Week 3
-Interview contributors.
-Vox Pops.
-Begin filming.
-Diary Entry.
Week 4
-Edit interviews & Vox Pops to develop film.
-Film B-Roll if needed.
-Create transcriptions.
-Diary Entry.
Week 5
-Create a draft of the article and select images and quotes.
-Create a magazine spread of the article.
-Diary Entry.
Week 6
-Final edits on all pieces of work.
-Submit the final project.
-Diary Entry.
Research:
Our Lead Researcher: Millie, and Lead Writer: Drew did a research on specific cases in Nottingham:
Interviews:
We secured two interviews this weekend. After meeting with Ross, the owner of Five Leaves Bookshop, Millie and Eleanor scheduled an interview for Thursday at 11:30 am. Given our existing link with Ross, we’ll handle this interview together. I will serve as floor manager, with remaining roles to be assigned on Tuesday.
We also received a response from Chris Tragenza, and he offered to come in on any afternoon next week. Eleanor suggested 2 pm on the 27th, and we have booked the studio (hopefully, he is actually free that day). For this interview, we will have two other people in the group interview him, and we can assign that for Tuesday.
Further Details on Interview:
Eleanor and Millie also inquired with various shops in Hockley to see if they had encountered experiences similar to 'void'. Fortunately, most responded negatively, as they aimed to stay out of politics, although a few stores had their own insights to share.
Cow - A religious group frequently preaches outside on Saturdays, promoting very 'traditional' values (homophobic, anti-feminist).
Curtis and York - A trans-friendly space, known for its highly LGBTQ+ inclusive exterior design, faced criticism from YouTube 'troll' Charlie Veitch, who targeted the shop for its decor and labelled them fatphobic over a meme featuring Donald Trump.
Rough Trade - They reported no incidents directed at them; however, one employee allowed us to record an audio segment where he recounted the events involving the void clothing.
Void - An anti-trans demonstration occurred outside, with YouTubers inciting the situation; one employee confronted them and ultimately threw beans at the protestors. Right-wing trolls then flooded their reviews with negative comments. According to the workers, the shop continues to be inundated with 'people being cunts'.
Editorial Aspect:
Lily (Designer/Art Director) wrote some ideas for our editorial side of the project.
Week 3
Preparation for the Interview
As we got in touch with Ross Bradshaw, we scheduled an interview with him on Thursday 22nd Jan.
Eleanor and I came up with questions for the interview→
You've had 2 major incidents, involving fascists trying to bring down your shop. Would you like to go into more details?
Do you think there was a rise of right-wing in Nottingham?
Are you worried there will be an incident like this in future?
How would you prevent/stop the incident from happening?
Has this affected your business financially?
As for the interviewers (Millie and Eleanor), they came up with how they could start and interview:
'Good morning, Nottingham college. My name is Eleanor,'
'And I'm Millie,'
'Today, we are here with Ross, from five leaves bookshop.'
'We are looking into the rise of right wing in Nottingham'
Interview with Ross Bradshaw
First thing in the morning, we started to to prepare for the interview. Even though my role was Floor Manager, I made sure all the cameras were in focus and set up. Lily was on auto cue, Aisha was on sound + mic's, Grace had to make sure cameras were all in right position ( but I ended up doing it).
Our lead writer (drew) had to make a transcript for the interview. However, due to her leaving early, our designer/art director (Lily) did it instead.
Transcript of the interview.docx
During the interview, Ross did not only answer the questions but he also gave us information which you cannot find online. He talked about how in late 90's Void was actually very racist and fascist.
Overall, even though my general role is Film Director, I was helping with things like: setting up cameras, coming up with questions and meeting Ross before the interview.
Post Interview:
Even though our interview went great (from the studio point of view), the rest of the group who were in the gallery left before we could even get to the gallery and did not save the video. Also, most of the time camera was only facing Ross, so it made it look like our interviewers haven't done enough of noddies. To make the final video of interview look more nicer to the eye, we going to add a B-roll.
Week 4
This week we had a second interview incoming with Chris Tregenza. Unfortunately, Chris was not receieving emails which out Editor-in-chief Eleanor sent, so we had to ask Matt to provide us with Chris' phone number. The calls still did not help, and we just waited until he response. Luckily to us, he reached out to Eleanor 2 hours before the interview.
Chris Tregenza is an artist, activist and author.
He participates in any protests,
takes photos of it and publishes to media for people
to see and be aware of what is going on.
Prep for the Interview
Me and Eleanor are going to be the interviewers.
Millie and Lily came up with questions which we can ask Chris.
Have you ever received any backlash from your photography?
How did you get into this career path?
What's been the worse part of your job?
Have you ever had a scary or disturbing encounter?
Have you ever had family members or even friends disagree with your work due to different ideologies?
What message are you hoping to portray to your audience with your photography?
Do you think your photography has made an impact on your audience?
What is the worst protest you've been to?
Interview
During the interview, we had used all of the questions which are shown and to make interview feel more "alive", Eleanor came up with some relevant questions on the spot which extended and made Chris' answer be in more detail.
As this was our 3rd interview overall (2nd during this project), we had it go more smoothly and more organised. People who were in the gallery switched the camera's more (improvement), we had a more professional greeting with Chris and took some pictures (as we didn't do it last time). Also, the interview felt more settled down and not in such a rush as the previous one. As I said earlier, Eleanor and I were the interviewers, Millie was a floor manager. In the gallery, Grace and Lily had a job to work on vision mixing, start and end the interview and make sure the sound is nice and clear. Aisha and Drew were also in the library, Aisha was taking pictures of the process and watching the interview. While Drew was working on the article (which ended up not being completed and later on Matt helped her start it). As for setting up cameras and making sure they had good focus in the studio, I did it once again.
Post Interview
This time, interview went pretty well and much more professional as the previous (due to us getting more experience each time). After the interview, we slowly ended little chat that we had with Chris, to make it look like we are in the rush of getting him out of the studio. Also, Eleanor sent him a thank you email and informed him that we will send the interview video as soon as we get it edited and published onto our YouTube channels.
Article Draft
Drew (our Head Writer) had to start draft for out article. With Matt's and Millie's help she copleted it by Friday. If talking of Mllie's help, she made a powerpoint with some reaserch on our topic, which helped Drew write a draft. When looking at Drew's draft, I can tell that she used many technnques and styles of journalism writing. Such as: narrative (primary source of our research in interviews) and op-ed. Later on she will edit it and put it in a magazine spread.
Magazine Spread
Lilly (our Designer/Art Director) and Grace (our Camera/Studio Operator) are working on magazine, right now they are coming up with some ideas for it. But they cant fully do it untol drew will send them the draft to format it. I also participated in coming up with some ideas for the magazine, I already started the layout and will try to complete it asap.
Interview Editing
Eleanor already started working on editing our interviews, but she asked me to do them instead. She also provided me with some ideas, like adding B-roll to the interview to not make it seem too "boring" to watch.
Camera Work
Eleanor and Millie started doing some B-roll on Friday. Due to some clips being too shaky, Me and Eleanor will film some more B-roll on Tuesday in the morning.
Week 5
Podcast Editing
This week we learned how to edit our podcasts. John went through how to fix the audio, make cuts unnoticed, rearrange frequencies and how to add music to the podcast without getting copyrighted. He also showed us some shortcuts which we can use to make the editing experience seem more clear and faster:
Ctrl+S = Save.
Ctrl+Z = Undo.
+/- = Zoom in/out.
<----- -----> = Move cursor a bit.
Ctrl+K = Splits at cursor.
Ctrl+G = Group
$4
All people in our group did their own editing on podcast but we decided to use mine as the final piece of it.
B-roll
Eleanor and Millie did do the B-roll during week 4, but due to iot being poor quality, we decided to re-do it. So, Eleanor, Millie and me went to places like: Hockley, Market Square and Lace Market to film our B-roll. Due to me being a Film Director, I decided to engage not only on what we should film but also film some clips myself.
During the recording of B-roll, we also recorded an "opener" for out final video.
The development of our Magazine Spread
Grace was in charge to finish our Magazine Spread, on Thursday she had finished it but Matt said to add 'the Rise of Right Wing in Nottingham' to the title. Due to her not being in on Friday, we couldn't get a full access to the Magazine Spread to quickly make that little change so Eleanor and Millie started another Magazine Spread.
Magazine desigin right wing.indd - Grace's Magazine Spread.
right wing magazine cover.pdf - Eleanor's and Millie's Magazine Spread.
Vox-Pop
While three of us were recording B-roll, Aisha, Lily and grace went out to do some Vox-Pops. Sadly, no one wanted to talk about politics and the only person who agreed wasn't educated on this topic to answer the question.
Editing the Final Video
I was in charge to do the video editing. So it means, that i need to put all of our work in a 10 minutes video; work like: interviews, B-roll and Vox-Pop.
As I was editing, I took some screenshots of the main bits of it:
Right now I'm nearly finished with the editing and just need to add simple stuff like background music. I will be coming in during my day off on Monday next week to finish the editing of the whole video.
Article
(lowkey dont know what is going on there, i was focused on editing)
During this week, I finally got a chance to work with something which relates to my original role, like filming and setting up the right angels for the B-Roll.
Week 6
This week was our final and we had to submit all of the work: Final video, podcast magazine spread and article.
I was working on the editing side of our project, so I edited our podcast and final video.
While working on editing our final video, I faced two problems: high exposer on clips taken on iPhone and not being able to type text in lower third. But I ended up fixing it with a help of John.
Final video:
Compared to video, when editing podcast I found it more easy and entertainment. Even though I had to do many cuts, I tried my best to make the cuts seem unnoticeable.
Final Podcast
For these two projects, we had to have soundtrack, so I used website called FreeMusicArchieve to get copyright free music. (https://freemusicarchive.org/)
Article
We formatted our article:
Magazine Spread
Millie, Eleanor and Grace had now finished with our magazine spread and saved it to pdf files. We faced a problem with Grace's piece of magazine spread, we couldn't download it, so we decided to take a screenshot of it.
Overall, I think I did a pretty good job in editing podcast and video. I really enjoyed editing our Podcast and final video, and I think that by editing, I gained more skills in it and it will help me with future projects.
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