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.