Week three was a very productive week. When I came back for the Christmas holidays I was having some bad luck in contacting some of my interviewees. This was due to the fact that they are busy people and me asking them some questions was probably on the bottom of their priority list. So, what I did was give myself a target of one week for anyone to come back to me, after one week I had received no replies. This was seriously concerning and worrying for someone like me, who wanted to have answers very quickly. What I did was re-send my e-mails to my contacts, so it was fresh in their inbox and thankfully the next day, one of the professors came back to me with detailed answers. This really boosted my confidence after this as it demonstrated that if I push myself I can achieve my goals. After another week, I hadn’t heard back from any others though, so, I re-sent the messages again and even this time had contacted a new interviewee as back up for if any worse case scenario I couldn’t get hold of my first hydrogen interviewee. Fortunately, that evening I had my original hydrogen professor contact me with again, detailed and interesting quotes to include in my articles. By Monday I had another response from my back-up interviewee, but he wasn’t as depth as the research in hydrogen wasn’t his key area but did answer my question on his storage solution which was great.

Over the last couple of weeks I have been just continuing research and presenting my plans in front of my supervisor Martin on how my articles will look and other articles I have analysed. The response was good and everyone thought that my progress and interviewees were coming along nicely. This was a major boost in my confidence as for the first time in my life I haven’t been worrying about my Final Major Project. On the 15th January 2020, I contacted James Clark, who is the Senior Manager for Toyota UK press team. He replied to me instantly as we have met before and he was more than willing to help me. Yet again, he is a busy person so I have to hang on for answers but, on the flip side, on the 15th February 2020, I attended the Toyota Parallel Pomeroy Trophy at the Silverstone race track (which is where I met James Clark last year). Unfortunately, James wasn’t there this year but another lady was there called Claire Rowley, who was one of the Social media officers and I got the chance to meet her and she would pass on a reminder to James over my request. She also gave me a very good contact for my hydrogen story, a man called Jon Hunt, who is the manager for Alternative fuels at Toyota UK. This is a another great contact in the coming weeks to have, but I am just awaiting a reply from Toyota, if I still haven’t heard anything within a week, I will be on the case as soon as possible to get all of my interviewees done, as my target goal is the end of March.

Finally I had a tutorial with my supervisor a couple of weeks ago and he said that to boost my overall grade and my analytical report I should give one of my articles to a motoring journalist organisation. I am thinking of giving my hydrogen story to Blackball media as they have given me work experience in the past and they know my writing and work. Even better would be for them to mark and even publish the article, because if they can do that, my overall grade will be bumped up heavily.

After having some positive and negative vibes from the first week back from christmas, I was determined to get as much done as possible. After I re-sent my emails I got some good news on Thursday 23rd January 2020. One of the professors had responded to my email he had given me detailed and well structured answers which really boosted my confidence, as to know I have quotes for my hybrid story.

I still haven’t heard anything back from anyone else but I have to give it time, and don’t forget that we are only at the start of February, as long as I plan ahead and structure my weeks I’m sure that I will complete my final major project in a calm a relaxed manor.

During this week I have began and nearly completed my second presentation which I am presenting on Wedneday 5th February. It is all about analysing three print articles similar to the ones that I will be writing for my final major project. I have looked at the style, structure, pros and cons and readership.

In terms of structure, Martin my supervisor wanted me to look at analysing in detail all the paragraphs used in my chosen articles. Taking into account the sentence types, grammar, punctuation and what tense it is in. So far I have nearly completed the presentation with just making an in-depth analysis of the AutoCar story, which may take some time, but it will give me a clearer understanding when it comes to writing my three articles.

After I had sent my e-mails off to my interviewees, I knew that they are busy people, so I wasn’t expecting any instant responses. When I did my first presentation back in December, my supervisor Martin told me that I should contact the car manufacturers themselves as they are the ones also doing research into alternative fuel systems. I knew that Toyota are the leaders of hybrid and hydrogen fuel cell technology and I have over the years made a great contact at the head office of Toyota in Epsom. He is one of the heads of PR for Toyota UK, I emailed him in regard to what I am investigating in my project. I got a reply from him within ten minutes, which blew me away by surprise.

Toyota were more than happy to help me, so, I gathered some questions that I wanted answering and sent them off to Toyota, it is now a waiting game to see what happens, but in a couple of weeks I will be attending a trophy/competition and I will see the people from Toyota there. If I’ve had no response between now and then, I will bring up the subject to start pushing myself and getting the answers that I need.

After one week of sending the emails over to my interviewees, I have had no replies which was a little bit disappointing and nerve racking for myself and it brought on a lot on anxiety. But, deep down I knew that they were busy people and that I have to be patient. So, what I did was re-send my emails to make my email again at the top of their inboxes to make them see that I need answers for my project.

For my final major project over the Christmas holidays, I decided that I would contact a variety of my interviewees. I thought this would be a good idea to contact them earlier rather than later, because I know that some of them will be busy and take longer to respond to me.

I decided to contact an environmentalist, two professors, one in hydrogen research and one in hybrid research and I also sent a message to the media enquiries to Shell about hydrogen research. I wanted to ask them questions that I would think link up to my investigation on my three print articles, I wanted to ask them questions related to their research and expertise.

Also I have been doing more research into my topics and one topic that I found was really interesting which I’m a little disappointed I am not researching is the development of synthetic fuels or Efuels as they are know. They combine a mixture of carbon and hydrogen and together they can make synthetic fuel, which not only is renewable energy, but it also means that transportation such as planes, ships, boats trucks and cars with internal combustion engines can drive carbon neutral which will be a ground breaker for the automotive industry.

For the last three weeks I have been working on my Final major project and in that time I feel that I have had some success. First of all I have clarified my three articles, so I know exactly what I am now covering in my investigation. I also went and saw Dan Scutt, who is our Journalism librarian if you like who can help me with different reading resources and interviewees.

I made an appointment to go and see Dan as I was just struggling with other potential interviewees for my third story on hybrid vehicles. He was very helpful and I manged to find a vast amount of people who I could talk to for my articles. I have currently contacted four people and have had four responses and all giving me quotes and answers, so I have learnt that there are people out there who are interested in the topic and are willing to help me with my investigation.

Last week I had my presentation, which I presented to my supervisor (Martin Buckley) and second set of eyes (Chris Richards). I produced a 20 slide, 10 minute PowerPoint presentation, which covered what I would be covering in my Final major project, why I chose the subject, who I will be writing for, potential interviewees, hypothesis, egal and ethcial considerations and even a fishbone sturcuture of how I am willing to plan my three articles.

I decided to bring in a couple of example magazine for whom I’d be writing for (AutoExpress and AutoCar) as this shows that I am keen to learn more about the topic and that I do read their publications, also I won’t lie, but I was nervous about presenting because even though I had done a mock presentation in front of Martin a couple of weeks ago, some small criticisms like, make it look more attractive and stop stretching out your images made me really want to improve my presentation to the best it can be.

I felt that my presentation went well, I do find when I’m put on the spot and under pressure that I do talk very fast and I get confused with my language and Martin did pick up on that. I also went slightly over 10 minutes as another thing I find when I’m nervous is I talk too much and get sidetracked with what I’m talking about. I struggled with answering thew questions because they were unexpected and I was thinking that the questions that they would have asked me would be do with how do electric and hydrogen cars work? and not with the the circulation on my publications are, especially when the figures are not available online.

But despite some criticism, I achieved a 68 or B1 which is very good, I was a little bit disappointed that I didn’t achieve a first which is 74, but I wasn’t far short and knowing that I had done my best is fine by me.

For the Christmas holidays I intend to carry on contacting further interviewees to start building on my second and third story.

This week I have managed to contact four of my potential interviewees and I have had all four respond. One, I am still waiting for answers but she has agreed to answer my questions. One thing I found was that, one of my interviewees didn’t respond, but with a polite reminder e-mail I had answers from him within an hour which is quite interesting to behold for future interviewees.

My presentation is going well and I have listened to Martin’s advice from last week when I did a mock presentation in front of the class. I need to add more slides with less information and the idea is for the viewers to quickly glance at the screen and focus back to me. The whole point is for me to present and demonstrate my knowledge and expertise in my final major project. I have included more photos and less info to make the presentation stand out a bit more and I am hoping to present my final major project pitch to Martin and another member of staff by 5th December. Overall, this week I have made a lot of progress with my final major project.

This week I started my first presentation, which is due to be handed in on the 5th December. I started a few slides, but Martin said that I need to cut the bullet points down for each slide to around 7-8 words on each line. This is to make my presentation short and straight to the point, so that when presenting, my audience look at me for a majority of the time. I have contacted a few of my interviewees and had responses, which is a really positive start.

I decided to contact the interviewees for my first story, which is a local angle on the infrastructure and investment into electric cars in Hampshire i.e. Portsmouth and Southampton. My first interviewee is based in Portsmouth and the motoring magazine I’m writing for (CarDealer) is also based in Portsmouth, so this has great links to the story. I have also had a response from an electric car owner who is a former journalist and publisher, I will be talking to her in the next couple of days about living with an electric car in Hampshire and what are the positives and negatives.

This week I completed near enough my project pitch. I covered everything I wanted to know and investigate whilst finding out enough information for when I come to present my first presentation on the 4th December. Martin, my supervisor and lecturer had a look at my project pitch, he wanted me to look at my syntax, as he was saying that I was writing without knowing the meaning and I could if I was going into the profession be brought down on it, or in some cases liable for misrepresented information. An example in my project pitch was when I said ‘this is contributing to climate change’. This doesn’t make sense and it is very misleading to think that cars are helping the earth’s climate to cool down. It would have been better for me to have said ‘in a bid to reduce the chances of climate change’. I should have read back my work more thoroughly, because if I had, he wouldn’t have picked out this silly mistake.

On the whole though, Martin seemed pretty impressed with my work, which gave me great confidence and made me prepare for my first presentation. This weekend I will start the process of contacting some of my possible interviewees. My first interviewees I will contact will be for my first article which is the local angle towards electric cars and the infrastructure across Hampshire and Dorset. I will be contacting Cllr Steve Leggett, cabinet member for green city in Southampton, Katie Heskett, electric car owner and former journalist and publisher and Ryan Carter, environmentalist in Southampton.

This week I have been focusing on getting my project pitch done, this is primarily due to me wanting to get everything done in enough time for me to plan and structure my project over the coming months. Martin my supervisor told he wants my project pitch done by the end of this week and if so, I can then go through it with him and we and tweak it where necessary, so it can link and I make a good presentation for him in December. He also this week wanted me to go a look for further contacts, I have found people in research for hydrogen fuel cells. They are professor Robert Steinberger at the University of Birmingham and Mike Copson, who is the business development manager for hydrogen at Shell. These are two possible contacts for my hydrogen story who will be targeted towards an AutoExpress audience.

For my first story, I am targeting at a local audience and angle, hence why I’m looking into Hampshire and Dorset’s electric car infrastructure and I have found Councillor Steve Leggett, who is the Cabinet member for green city in Southampton. He would be a great interviewee at a local angle as he would know where all of the charging points and future points are being places and what else cities like Southampton are doing to contribute to the electric revolution. I am writing this story in the style of my work experience magazine, which is CarDealer.

This week I have been writing up my project pitch as I want to start early on my project so I can time, plan and structure my way through my final year of University. I have decided for my three print articles that I would focus mainly on electric and hydrogen cars. The first article would focus on a local angle towards Hampshire and Dorset on what is being done in terms of infrastructure for alternative fuelled cars, I have also found a couple of possible interviewee’s for this article including a councillor for Hampshire dealing with the environment and what is being down to help electric car owners in Hampshire. There is also an Environmentalist I found in Southampton and I know an owner of an electric car, so she would be a great person to talk to about charging times, range anxiety, prices and what her electric car is like to live with.

I am aiming my target audience at an Autoexpress audience and judging by their features and stories they have around 1,000-1,500 words per article and around 2-3 interviewee’s per article. Martin my lecturer said to me this week in a 1-1 tutorial session that I can aim for a first for my major project which gives me great confidence and shows that Martin believes in me, that if I push myself to my best ability I will succeed.

My second article will focus on hydrogen cars, why they haven’t really caught on with private buyers, why there are so few hydrogen filling stations in the UK and what goes into producing them.