Ian Anderson visits Winchester Uni

Today third and second year journalism students were lucky enough to have a visit from Ian Anderson the (now ex) editor of BBC News at 10.

It was a great experience to hear advice and stories about the industry from someone who has been a part of journalism for 20 years. Ian originally started off as a Production Journalist for the BBC and has spent most of his time helping to produce bulletins for the 6pm and 10pm news shows. He was honest with his words when he explained that a lot of his job opportunities came down to luck and he was lucky enough to take on the position of editor and lead the team.

He was constantly reminding us all how important the content is and made a point of saying "do not take sharp corners" with the narrative. Meaning that everything should flow and should be relevant or explained otherwise you could end up losing your audience. This was exemplified in one of our practice packages where someone had tried to tell too many stories at once.

Ian also pointed out that we should make a lot of use out of pieces to cameras. He claims that the audience enjoy seeing the reporter involved and it will easily capture their attention if done correctly.

To help with our broadcast journalism he advised that we break down news packages from the local news, as well as the national, and look at their:

• opening shots
• interviews
• pieces to camera
• closing shots
  

We need to basically copy how the professionals are putting theirs together in order to be successful.

As a final interesting point Ben asked Ian what his views were on privacy laws. He answered that "as a journalist I'm against them as it's just another hurdle. Places such as France have privacy laws and it has been protecting those in high up places for far too long now". An interesting view on a highly debatable subject!

Swine or seasonal?

I have always been told that its easy to tell if you have swine flu or seasonal flu but this just didn't seem apparent last week when I fell ill.

It was Sunday morning and I felt incredibly rough and realised that I had the usual symptoms of the flu. I awoke early Monday morning to find myself feeling worse and decided to double check my symptoms to see if it could be the dreaded swine flu.

The NHS web site lists sufferers of swine flu to possess some of the following:

• unusual tiredness,
• headache,
• runny nose,
• sore throat,
• shortness of breath or cough,
• loss of appetite,
• aching muscles,
• diarrhoea or vomiting.

I immediately diagnosed myself as having swine flu but thought I'd double check seasonal flu symptoms as well. These are:

• sudden fever (a temperature of 38°C/100.4°F or above),
• dry, chesty cough,
• headache,
• tiredness,
• chills,
• aching muscles,
• limb or joint pain,
• diarrhoea or stomach upset,
• sore throat,
• runny or blocked nose,
• sneezing,
• loss of appetite, and
• difficulty sleeping.

Correct me if I'm wrong but the symptoms seem incredibly similar and lead to you more confusion rather than a home diagnoses, deeming the past few minutes a waste of time!

I decided to properly assess my symptoms using the special "national pandemic flu service" which I thought would give me a more accurate description. It didn't. It gave me exactly the same symptoms list and within a few clicks I was being prescribed Tamiflu and told that I didn't even need to pick it up myself. It all seemed so simple which is great if you truly have it but I believe a lot of seasonal flu suffers may have taken it/will take it unnecessarily.

I believed I had swine flu as I am unfortunate enough to suffer with seasonal flu every year and realised that my breathing was becoming very difficult and painful which was a new symptom to me. However I don't believe that everyone will be able to identify the differences which could lead to a lot of money being wasted on unnecessary medication.