My Sky News placement

I have now completed my three week work placement at Sky News New Media. During these weeks I have learned a lot about writing copy, picture cropping and using a content management system.

Although I consider myself more than competant with Adobe Photoshop CS2 and Adobe Photoshop Elements (used at Sky, I have been taught some nice tricks involving creating borders. There are many picture sizes and it is important to attach the right ones! I can use Getty Images, Mediapoint and Reuters to find images and resize them in Photoshop, before adding them to a story or picture gallery.

I have also learned how to write headlines and keep them short. This is a relatively new skill for me, but one I am now confident with. I am able to keep banner headlines to a certain length. I can also caption pictures and source older material to link.

I have used a video camera to film outside shots, and have accompanied a producer and cameraman to a technology show, where I watched them film several interviews.

Sitting in the Sky News studio is a real experience. The computer I was using today was only twenty pages or so from the reporters on air.

I hope to return to Sky News someday and am cemented in my belief that online journalism is a good career.

Another benefit was being able to recieve feedback and discuss journalism with Editoral Development Manager Rob Kirk and the New Media Team.

As with any work experience placement, lessons can be learnt and improvements can be made.I must work on identifying and writing for my target audience, as well as checking the HTML before saving and making sure I always use Wordpad when needed. Banner headlines also need to flow from each other.

Some people have asked me "did you speak to Eamon Holmes?" No.

Next week I will be working on a magazine project. My next placement is at The Architects' Journal in June. I will be doing more online placements after that.

I graduate in early September.

This post can also be seen at http://brennybaby.blogspot.com