WINOL 03/03/10

Unfortunately last week I wasn't able to come forth with a package because I was off ill all week. However this week I feel like my contribution was a lot more promising. I found a great story about how the Conservatives are proposing to send the army in schools across the UK to regain discipline and authority, if they are to win the next election. I chose the story because not only is it education related, which would be of interest to academics, it addresses the forth coming election.

My initial plan was to interview the local tory MP, Steve Brine, which I did and also a lecturer from the education department at the University. However, the education department turn out to be the most unresponsive group of people I've dealt with so far. Plan B came into action this morning, which was to interview some trainee teachers, however turned out they were in lectures all day. Plan C was then pulled out of the bag. With only an hour until deadline and no transport facilities, I was inclined to phone up the Lib Dem office in Winchester to get a quote from the group leader. Kelie Learney was more than co-operable and gave me a great quote. The only thing lacking was the fact that she wasn't on camera.

After putting together the interview, GV's and quote sequence together me and the news editor, Tom, discussed what was going to happen with the story. What I have in terms of interviews doesn't do the story justice. What I have is a good start, so we decided to spike the story until next week. This allows us to try and get an interview from someone in the Army, GV's of students in schools, and hopefully a stronger angle. Angus has just given the go ahead for this plan of action...and I have got straight on the case of arranging to get into a school sometime during the rest of this week.