Global News Relay (GNR) newscast

The brief was to create a 10-15 minute news show on the impacts of climate change and COVID-19 for the Global News Relay collaborative newscast with two presenters and several packages. The newscast streamed on 6 May 2020 was part of an annual collaborative online international learning (COIL) project, this year featuring ten other universities and colleges in six countries: USA (Fresno State, Texas State, Baylor, Ryerson); Hong Kong (Hong Kong Baptist); UK (Salford, West of England); Netherlands (Breda); Indonesia (Binus); India (Asian College of Journalism).

Reporters sourced their stories from the community in and around Coventry in person or virtually, then edited their packages from university newsroom labs with desktop computers or their own laptops equipped with Adobe Premiere Pro. Our GNR newscast was put together at our modern TV studio, The Tank, with the help of tech and tech staff. It was then passed on to global coordinators in Asia and America for streaming with other newscasts from the other universities on Youtube (40:00 – 1:00:04) and Facebook on 6 May 2020.

Thankfully we filmed the main video newscast on climate change theme before lockdown happened. However, at the last minute the GNR global coordinators decided to add the theme of COVID-19 and we decided to include at least one story on the virus. Since our newscast was already filmed prior to lockdown, we asked the presenters to send in clips of them at home introducing the package on COVID-19 and saying goodbye once more.

Because students had left campus and some of the international students had travelled out of the UK, it was sometimes difficult to reach out to each other at the time of editing and refining the newscast we had recorded in the studio. Some of the students had their work saved in a computer left in Coventry that they no longer had access to. All the same, we found a way to work around social distancing challenges. However, psychological impact of the pandemic affecting the motivation and enthusiasm of some of us. 

The newscast was produced for the Global News Relay initiative featuring other university’s around the world. Target audience included students of journalism and media from these universities and others as well as young people generally all over the world. “It was a way to educate the students on the matter,” said Annalisa Romano, on her package about Green Week activities at Coventry University in collaboration with nearby Warwick University. She was speaking in a live interview with Hong Kong based hosts on streaming day on 6 May 2020.

Yes, this collaborative work would have happened under normal circumstances as has happened in the past few years. This year’s GNR newscast almost did not happen due to COVID-19 pandemic outbreak affected hosts Hong Kong Baptist University which was closed – resulting in postponement of the streaming date from mid April to early May.

There were a few challenges such as allocation of roles, something that caused disagreement before podcast. This taught us the importance of learning how to work as a team together. It was imperative for myself as an editor to make important decisions something I did.