Panda Preparation

Sitting in an office within the zoo, the sense of pride is evident. The walls are littered with framed, front-page articles from national newspapers and they all say the same thing; Edinburgh is getting pandas.

The announcement in January this year that Edinburgh Zoo will receive two giant pandas was extremely exciting, but the build-up to their arrival is even more so.

Duncan Fisher, head of media relations, has been speaking about preparations for Tian Tian and Yangguang’s arrival in September. He says that work has just gone underway on their enclosure, which used to be home to the gorillas. He goes on that “the aim is to build an environment which is as natural as possible towards the pandas’ natural habitat.” It is understood that pictures will not be released until the enclosure is finished as the zoo are working in “milestones” in order to maintain public awareness.

Receiving pandas from China is not an easy process. It requires extremely delicate discussions and careful planning. It has taken Edinburgh nearly six years to secure the deal. Historically, pandas were used by China as a political tool to forge relations with countries. It was known as “Panda Diplomacy.” Today, it is more a case of allowing the world access to these rare and magnificent creatures. When the pair arrives, Edinburgh will be the third zoo in Europe to hold the creatures, which is raising hopes for declining visitor numbers. When Adelaide Zoo in Australia received their pandas, visitor numbers soared by 70%. Mr Fisher said that the zoo did not wish to get their hopes up but they have made a “conservative estimate as to the effect their arrival will have, and that it looks hopeful.”    

A team has recently been sent to China to meet the pair and their current keepers for the first time and witness the pandas in their current environment. After introductions, discussions will be held to arrange transportation and to begin training for the pandas’ care over the next decade. Duncan explains “there will be a dedicated team with one particular main keeper in charge of daily care and who will be fully trained to ensure that it is provided to a perfect standard.”

However, there has been much criticism over China’s gifting of pandas due to the money it costs to maintain the animals. It is estimated that the pair’s stay will cost Edinburgh Zoo £6 million and this has been met with outrage by tax payers. However, the hopeful rise in visitor numbers is said to be enough to cover this on a long term basis. It is also hoped that people who visit the city for the pandas will also visit other monuments such as the castle.

With only a few months to go until the pandas’ arrival, Edinburgh Zoo will be extremely busy making preparations and ensuring that everything is perfect before unveiling these creatures. As the zoo is operating in “milestones” it is very difficult to get a clear picture of what the coming months hold. There has been no decision as to how the pandas will be unveiled. Speculation has been made around special ticket prices, extended opening hours or a raise in price for a short period of time. However, Mr Fisher made it clear that it is “early days” and that the main priority is the pandas but that “it is a very, very exciting time for the zoo and the pending arrival of the pandas demonstrates the RZSS’ reputation for animal conservation in the world”

News Round Up November 10th

Here is a brief news round up by myself and Morag Hobbs for 10th November 2010.

Educational provision to fall at Napier?

Concerns have been raised about the quality of educational provision for students at Edinburgh Napier University due to the introduction of temporary library hours at the Craighouse campus.

The university have proposed to make cuts to staff and various courses within the School of Arts and Creative Industries faculty in a bid to save around £600,000, and this has been met with the formation of the Avoidance of Redundancy Committee (ARC). Yet, with these proposed cuts and the library at Craighouse unable to remain open all day due to “November staffing issues,” has the university left itself open for criticism.

The initial proposal on the 8th June 2010 outlined a deficit of around £1.3 million from within this faculty and the imbalance of staff costs to student income. This resulted in undergraduate courses being cut or plans to some being cut in the near future, including; Publishing, Culture, Media and Society, Interaction Design and Communication, Advertising and Public Relations. Courses such as Music and Journalism are to be kept and improved continually. The university also restricted recruitment, retraining, redeployment and job sharing in a bid to keep staffing costs as low as possible. Following this, documents released on the 9th September 2010 revealed the deficit had been reduced to £600,000 through natural attrition and buy-outs with limited backfill. The university stated that they were “committed to avoiding redundancies…but this cannot be ruled out at this stage.” Proposals for reduced working hours and unpaid sabbaticals have also been put forward. The minutes of each committee meeting and the dates of those which are coming up can be found here

A spokesman for the university released a statement saying:

“Despite expected reductions in public funding we remain absolutely committed to delivering high quality education for our students – including continuing to provide excellent library services at our campuses.

“The planned January 2011 opening of our redeveloped Sighthill campus and its new Learning Resource Centre, for example, will bring all of our health material under the one roof for the first time and give students access to over 300 computers and a variety of modern study spaces.”

A spokeswoman for the library also revealed that the temporary hours were due to “temporary annual leave of a member of staff and it was impossible to have the times covered.”

Only time will tell how the cuts will affect the university and to what extent there will infact be cuts.

Live Rolling News Day 2: The final rehearsal

It has been 24 hours since Group B’s second Live rolling news day and it went even better than the last, but there are still a few issues to be addressed.

Our editor this time around was Claire McCann and she was on top of things the whole time. Our editorial meeting lasted only a few minutes with us being told to keep it to ”A few sentences, if we have quotes and interviews.” Once we had pitched our ideas and had it approved we were straight to work and there was a buzz in the room much more powerful than the previous week. I must admit I was less organised for this day as I had been extremely busy with an essay but I still had a degree of preparation and managed to submit my copy with time to spare.

Morag had attended court that morning which was really impressive as it gave our news a court story and one which was relevant to that day. We also managed to cover sport, tourism, Parliamentary issues and general interest stories which allowed us to target our appropriate age group with a wide variety of issues. I also found that the levels of organisation with the whole team were amazing and allowed the copies to be published on time, thus meeting the all important journalistic deadline. It even allowed time for myself and Jenny to record a podcast recapping the news of the day, which Chris had collected from “The Wires”. This was great broadcasting experience for the both of us. The full news of the day we submitted can be found here.

However, we still have issues to address as a team. In both trial runs we have failed to add tags, categories, external links and that all important by-line which is essential for a good online story. I also feel that not meeting up the day before like last time may have hindered us a bit, but,  this is still a learning curve.  People who left before the 2pm deadline is also an issue that needs to be addressed as their help was needed in order to submit those final pieces of copy. For next week, the assessment day, we are meeting the day before, attending class early on the day and actively using the Facebook page which can be found here. If we all pull together, as Group B does best, take on board criticism that has been received by Kathleen and from each other, I am sure we can nail this assessment.

Call for review of Princes Street traffic

Lothian Buses have called for a review of the re-routing of the bus service and other vehicles at the risk of exceeding the European Union’s set pollution limits.

The proposal by the council and Tram service aims to reduce Princes Street from a six lane road to just two lanes in order to allow the trams to run freely. The traffic being redirected will have a new route through a residential area, increasing noise pollution, reducing air quality and affecting schools. Professor A. Lloyd informed the Council Chambers that this move would affect “130,000 homes by 2026″ and that their research found the “fastest evolution of pollution with the move.” Describing the proposal as a time bomb for pollution, he pushed members of the council to consider the evidence.

Ralph Fraser, a representative for Lothian Buses, also questioned the Council as to why Princes Street would be inaccessible 24 hours a day, even though the trams would not be operating for this period. Fraser went on to question as to why the two year proposal that had been put forward previously had been rejected. He was met with a response that “It was still being considered.”

Members of the Council quizzed Professor Lloyd in regards to his research and if comparative work had been carried out. He responded that tram systems throughout the UK and Europe already co-existed with traffic harmoniously, but that he did not know every system, and could not understand why traffic “co-existing with trams was an issue.”

Members also brought to the attention of Professor Lloyd and Mr Fraser that Edinburgh University had dismissed the issues of increased pollution in these areas, but Professor Lloyd responded that the question was a narrow one, with no evidence to support this and he would be happy to present his findings publically.

The council have asked Mr Fraser and Professor Lloyd to return in March 2011 with their full findings before making a final decision.

News Round Up 1.30pm

Here is a brief News Round up of the day so far by myself and Jenny Kassner.

Edinburgh Zoo Cuts

Following my article published on www.edinburghnapiernews.com The Scotsman have found that the decline in visitor numbers by 10% and bad weather, as claimed by the zoo itself, has led to significant losses. Staff have claimed that pay cuts are being threatened and that up to fifty jobs could be lost. The full article can be found here.

I would just like to add that when I saw this story on the front page of The Scotsman I was both annoyed and filled with confidence. I was annoyed because I had found the first part of the story with the zoo struggling and the figures I had found matched those a respectable newspaper had used. If I had of followed the story closely I may have broke this myself and had an even better story.

However, I was filled with confidence because I had found an original news story by myself and made contacts in the process of researching it further. When it comes to finding another story I will hopefully be able to take it further.

Recession has mixed effect on Edinburgh Tourism

Nearly a month after the close of Edinburgh’s Fringe festival, the figures are in, and, once again, records have been broken. However, this was not the case for all tourist attractions.

Figures released, which claimed that two million tickets had been sold, a 5% rise from 2009, blasted critics who suggested that the festival would suffer due to the recession. This could possibly sway the planned budget cuts for the coming year’s festival. However, it has been revealed that, tickets given free to visitors, were included in the numbers, possibly suggesting that the festival did not do as well. Fringe spokesman, Neil MacKinnon defended this decision, saying that: “We’ve been quite consistent with our methodology in adding up figures at the Fringe, and we have no plans to change that. Despite this, visitor numbers on an annual basis are still rising, with Paul Allison, a senior insight analyst for Visit Scotland, stating, “Visitor numbers have risen by 118% in the past ten years.”

Despite the Fringe’s apparent success, Edinburgh Zoo has suffered at the hands of the recession during this festival season. Claire Richardson, a press officer for the zoo, told me that “visitor numbers had fallen by 10% this season” but went on to defend this due to possible adverse weather conditions. She continued that the “Three yearly budget did not leave room for this.” The zoo did not wish to comment further.

The mixed affects of the recession this year will not be fully apparent until a full list of figures are released in early 2011 and with the current results, it is not clear what these will reveal.

 

One of the many free performaces during the Fringe.

Live Rolling Review

It has been just over a week since Group B’s first live rolling news day and, after receiving feedback, I have been able to reflect on the build up to and the day as a whole. Our editor Morag Hobbs was assisted by Andy Mackie and myself, who took on the role as sub-editor, with Chris Melvin accepting the job as picture editor. With the roles decided, we set about preparing for our news day.

The team had met the day before the conference with ideas and plans. Here we were able to decide what would be classed as newsworthy and what would not. Having achieved this in the morning, the team were able to investigate and develop stories over the next 24 hours. We were also available to send Ollie and Graeme to visit Parliament the next day. We had a rough idea of the agenda laid out and ready to finalise in the morning.

On the day everyone arrived early and were rearing to go. Stories which had developed overnight had replaced older content on the agenda and, with Luke and Sean watching the wires and Twitter, we had a story published as it was developing; The Scottish Terror Alert. This was rewarding for the team and we received information at the same time as other news organisations. I feel that the range of stories we provided targeted our age group of around 25 – 35 by covering stories such as the recessions’ affect on local tourism, terrorism, new Scottish laws, the church, a survey and sports.

I feel that we all pulled well together as a team as we met prior to the day to arrange stories and pitch ideas in order to be ahead of the game. As sub-editor I felt I achieved my role by helping colleagues arrange their articles and helping them to articulate their points better. However, I felt the pressure towards the end as most were submitting their work at once, which is an issue we should work on when it comes to meeting the 2pm deadline next time. I also feel the team, including myself, did not come with enough pictures to match their stories and this should be addressed. However, the original story ideas, ability to develop them further and obtain interviews really made the day a success and I look forward to the next one to see how we have improved and evolved as a unit.

Here we go again

After a long 5 month break from university, the new semester has kicked off and there has been no waiting around for the assignments.

With Multimedia Reporting 2 being on the agenda once again, it will be interesting to see how skills develop this semester when compared to this time last year. With more court and parliament visits and personal evaluations of my work, I will hopefully become more aware of current affairs and able to critically analyse my own work and the news on a daily basis.

I have also taken on shorthand in order to develop an essential skill for the practice of journalism. After one class I realised it was going to be challenging, but hopefully I rise to this and achieve 100 words per minute by the end of Year 2.

For Global Current Affairs I have chosen to study China and how the western media report on their culture and news. It will also be interesting to investigate how the west allegedly reported negatively on the Bejeing Olympics.

I will be updating this blog throughout the year with my work, comment on the news and critical analysis of my work.