WINOL 21/11/12. Ford's Priority is the Workforce

This week for WINOL I focused on writing a good news story for the website. I carried on following the Ford updates and received statements from John Denham's assistant, the union and Ford by phone interviews. 

I also produced an oov for WINOl about the plans to build a super casino in Southampton  I interviewed Councillor Warwick Payne about the plans and what the casino could bring to the city but also the social problems the council has to weigh up. 

The package was only used as an oov because there wasn't enough footage for cut aways and an entire package. 


Our guest editor this week was Ben Mitchell from the Press Association. He gave me some extremely valuable ideas for when structuring a written story. As a man with many years of writing news. He gave me some great advice on how to structure the piece and the type of language to use to make the piece flow. Such as adding phrases like 'he claimed' and 'he added' before a quote. The Press Association write the grammatically perfect stories and pass them onto news companies across the UK. The other companies pay significant amounts to receive these written pieces. 

I have taken all of Ben Mitchell's points on board this week. 

Here is what he had to say to the team at WINOL

Here is my written piece:
21/11/2012. By Faith Thomas, Local Politics Reporter:

Southampton MP John Denham has been banned from the closing Ford factory because he may "cause disruption to the output", according to his office.

The move happened after Mr Denham has criticised the car manufacturer for behaving “shabbily” in the planned closure of the plant with the loss of 500 jobs.

The Labour MP had been due to meet with union representatives at the Swaythling premises but has since been told that he is no longer welcome.

He had been invited at the request of the trade union to build and maintain an industrial link between Parliament and the industry.

Tom Sheppard, spokesman for Mr Denham, said: “Ford’s did refuse to let John go to the factory last Friday, giving a number of excuses varying from a fear that John would cause disruption to the output of the plant to saying that the local MP for the area should be allowed to visit first.”

Andy Cox, Unite’s deputy convener at the plant, said: “They are naive to think that stopping John coming into the plant would not attract bad press.”

He added that he was "perplexed" as to why Ford had taken this stance.

Tim Holmes, executive director of Ford said: “ Mr Denham had met with us prior to this a week before. We felt this new meeting was not necessary because we have agreed in the past week that our priority is the workforce. But we will continue to speak with him as the case develops.”  

He added that he was sincerely sorry about the closure and “we wouldn’t be having this conversation if it wasn’t for the debt crisis.”