WINOL: Critical Reflection 10/12/13

WINOL - (www.winol.co.uk) has fluctuated somewhat, our Alexa rank for winol.co.uk on 10th December  2013 is:

784,450 Alexa Traffic Rank

32,128 Traffic Rank in GB

Compared to earlier this year: WINOL stood at number 88,939 in the UK and 550,042 worldwide. We have excelled in the UK but worldwide we have let ourselves go somewhat. But we really aren't trying to become internationally famous, just relatively famous in the UK, so we seem to be heading in the right direction.

Our so called 'rivals' East London Lines, currently stand at: 

652,018 Alexa Traffic Rank

36,340 Traffic Rank in GB

Compared to earlier this year, they stood at 48,225 in the UK and 682,835 worldwide. So not much has changed for them. Since starting in September we have hit the ground running and we managed to get past the no doubt low views we accumulated throughout the summer as we don't update the site at all. Our  bulletins were raking in the views this semester, gaining around 200 - 300 views for each.

Our circulation might not be so good because at times we don't really have a clear audience. We are based in Winchester, so really we should be aiming at Winchester, but sometimes our bulletin is more catered to students; especially with some of the and finally's that we've had.

My role for WINOL from September to December has been the producer, presenter and editor of the brand new entertainments show called Access Winchester. This was to re-invent the old 'What's on' section and I was to bring it up from the ground along with Faith and Emma.

As the producer of the show I was in a very new position that I've not experienced before. I was the one in charge of what went into our little entertainments bulletin and I had two correspondents that I sent out to find events, as well as finding my own things to cover. The fact that I was in charge really hit home when it came to our first bulletin.

My final cut pro editing skills were really put to the test and I feel that I have really excelled in terms of production and I sort of fell into the role of being the presenter of the show, this worked out very well for me because I love being on camera and I love presenting the show. I feel like I've developed a natural comfort in front of the camera and with script writing. As I am very confident in my English Language skills I found writing the script very easy and it came very naturally to me.

The level of subbing this semester was good and I feel the second years that are in charge of it have done a very good job as they are fast to put stories up.

Week one: 2/10/13
I made some calls early that week and the next we hopped on the train to London for the Raindance Film Festival.

Overall: I thought of this as merely a draft. The presenting had to be edited a great deal to try and liven it up and make it look more appealing and overall the Raindance Film Festival footage that we shot was very poorly lit, for the most part, and the audio was a big issue. The African Drumming was a bit better, but it was too much of a puff piece - I was far too courteous and happy about being there and we're not supposed to rave about everything we cover, to try and make it seem great, we should be honest about it - poke fun but in a disarming way.

Week two: 9/10/13
This week I helped with the filming of the Coffee House Sessions tour with Ben Goddard. This took place at our student union. We had a production of Warhorse at the Mayflower in Southampton and we introduced our new gadget section - GarraGadgets and I presented Access that week.

Warhorse received a lot of praise, as it was an incredible demonstration of how getting access to these events pays off and how putting in calls early is just the best thing you can do. My presenting was praised along with the use of graphics which I included, I feel that it upped the production value greatly and made things more interesting.

Overall: A great success. The show still lacked a certain structure, we had to establish our stories very much like the WINOL bulletin - we needed "hello! welcome to Access Winchester! coming up on today's show" and so on, complete with a headline clip and this was my next goal.

Week three: 16/10/13 
This week we had another installment from the Coffee House Sessions tour - Kerri Watt a Scottish singer-songwriter and I helped with the filming again. Also on the show I went to Basingstoke's Milestones Museum for their annual Oktoberfest event and I also went to the William Walker pub in Winchester to film their open mic night. I presented the show again.

Overall: Not pleased one bit - the sound mixing was terrible but that was due to my lack of intensive editing, we had issues with the sound in the presenting; there was a fuzzing noise and we couldn't fix it. I believe that after the relative success from the previous week I may have gotten a bit complacent, I've since learned my lesson.

Week four: 23/10/13
Fantastic week for Access. Liam and I went to Earl's Court, London for the AppsWorld convention. We looked at apps, games and technology. It was the first time we presented somewhere on location. We dual presented the show and we hardly scripted anything, this made it seem more natural and we riffed off of each other. It was well received as a good show but we were seen as 'too cute'. Also I had an exclusive interview with celebrity Celia Imrie, who was receiving an honorary doctorate from the University of Winchester.

Week five: 30/10/13
This Access Winchester was a Halloween special. We piled on the graphics and effects, trying to make it look like something from 'Most Haunted', we added sound effects, filters on the camera lenses and to top it all off we filmed it in a graveyard. After last week we had a dedicated slot for headlines which runs exactly like the WINOL headlines do, we have 3 in the headlines and then a 'but first' to kick the show off. I presented again this week and we had a run down of spooky places to go in Winchester, which was just done by me presenting and talking on screen (this could have done with graphics but we were a bit strapped for time)

Overall: Another successful week I think, my presenting received a lot of praise and we were commended for using graphics, sound effects and a different bed. Again we were picked up on the show being too slow and not having enough pace, headlines needed to be quicker, links needed to be quicker and stings had be done better. Insofar as they had to be louder to wake the bitter 60 year old viewer of our show up.

Week six: 6/11/13
This week of Access was another rousing success. We had an interview with Lucy Spraggan, we celebrated national sausage week with our own version of 'Come Dine With Me' and Coffee house sessions tour continued at Winchester with Dougie Crosbie. I presented the show again.

Overall: I think it was another good week for Access, we seemed to have really hit our stride but it was still a work in progress. 

However, I think the sausage week package was a great success, we mimicked 'Come Dine With Me' which people seemed to like and we even had a voice over as the sarcastic narrator, the only thing wrong with it; it again dragged on too long.

Week seven: 13/11/13
I went out to take pictures of Winchester and then edit in, through 'Photoshop', Christmas decorations and make them spring onto the screen with as many sound effects as possible.

Overall: Very good but I think it could have been better this week, I really enjoyed what I had to do, I feel that I am very good with a camera and I took some great pictures and this helped me learn how to use Photoshop, a skill which I've always wanted to learn and also it helped my editing skills in Final Cut Pro immensely and thankfully, people loved my picture package.

However, there were a few problems with production -, I wanted to take a backseat and let the responsibility fall on the presenter and this is what I noticed: Headlines weren't too great, but they were good apart from saying "Winchester Access" and not "Access Winchester". The sound mixing wasn't great, the spikes had to be louder and there were some general sound issues with the radio mics that were used.

Week eight: 20/11/13
This show was a very good one, I presented and we had an exclusive interview the Chief features editor for Cosmo Magazine, a new racing game at Beaulie, the Southampton Christmas Market and a special interview with Keith Chegwin.

Overall: Loved this show. We had a national treasure in the shape of Keith Chegwin, we had a big name in the features industry - Rosie Mullender and an awesome new racing game a Beaulieu. The stings in the show were loud and prominent and my presenting was commended.

Week nine: 27/11/13
This was our penultimate show, which is a very sad concept! This week we had Harry Parkhill take us through another list, this time the topic was silly Christmas adverts. King Alfred's Choir sang at the Cathedral to raise money and awareness for Parkinson's disease and Liam put together a package about 'Selfies' and how it had recently been crowned word of the year. We broke the selfie package into two parts, so that we could have a 'to be continued' cliffhanger in the show to keep people watching.

Overall: Fantastic show I think, no sound problems, the stings were loud and intruding, and another main thing is I sped up the transition, the 'Access Winchester' logo we use to break up the stories and since they've been sped up it makes the whole show seem more professional and snappy. This is a great addition because we really don't want people losing interest.

Week 10: 4/12/13
This was our final show of the semester. In the show this week we had a return of Garra-Gadgets, a preview of Wicked the musical and a look at Winchester Christmas Market.

Overall: Production wise, fantastic. Content wise, lacking. However, what we did have - a nice introduction to the show; it was a Christmas story. Wicked followed but the footage we had went on for a while, regardless it looked fantastic. The show ended with a review of the PS4, had some light problems with it, but overall still view-able.

I've really become part of the features team this semester with Access Winchester. The features team have progressed in leaps and bounds - ranging from the amazing fashion magazine Absolute:ly to the highly in depth New Winchester Review. The fashion magazine instantly draws you in, the images are striking  and the huge banner at the top of the page is an eye catching way to intrigue readers. 

I feel like for the features to progress that we should use Access Winchester as a 'features bulletin' to mirror the WINOL news bulletin, but have this one focus entirely on all the different features. This would be a great way to get some more circulation and exposure for us.

I have had a phenomenal time on WINOL this semester and I'm extremely proud to be part of the News and features team here, I cannot wait to see this wonderful site grow and flourish as it no doubt will over the years and I hope to see Access Winchester blossom into a majestic spectacle that is highly viewed.

Access Winchester - Week nine

Week nine: 27/11/13
This was our penultimate show, which is a very sad concept! This week we had Harry Parkhill take us through another list, this time the topic was silly Christmas adverts. King Alfred's Choir sang at the Cathedral to raise money and awareness for Parkinson's disease and Liam put together a package about 'Selfies' and how it had recently been crowned word of the year. We broke the selfie package into two parts, so that we could have a 'to be continued' cliffhanger in the show to keep people watching and again I presented this week.

Overall: Fantastic show I think, no sound problems, the stings were loud and intruding, and another main thing is I sped up the transition, the 'Access Winchester' logo we use to break up the stories and since they've been sped up it makes the whole show seem more professional and snappy. This is a great addition because we really don't want people losing interest. Harry's cynical look at Christmas adverts was very funny, Liam always delivers the very best and his selfie package was no exception and Emma's choir package was just what we needed. Overall a very good show that we can all be proud of

Access Winchester - Week eight

Week eight: 20/11/13
This show was a very good one, I presented and we had an exclusive interview with Rosie Mullender, the Chief features editor for Cosmo Magazine, the inside scoop on a new racing game at Beaulie, the Southampton Christmas Market and the Nutcracker on Ice at the Mayflower with a special interview with Keith Chegwin!

Overall: Loved this show. We had a national treasure in the shape of Keith Chegwin, we had a big name in the features industry - Rosie Mullender and an awesome new racing game a Beaulieu. The spikes in the show were loud and prominent, my presenting was commended and the reporters did a very good job this week. We had ourselves something that people genuinely would want to watch and enjoy and I was very proud of this weeks show.

Access Winchester - Week seven

Week seven: 13/11/13
This week Faith presented the show in Winchester city center - this was to link in with one of the packages which was the Winchester short film festival - it was hosted at a venue called the Art Café. Also on the show I went paint balling for our Adventure Magazine and we used a promo from that, I also went out to take pictures of Winchester and then edit in, through 'Photoshop', Christmas decorations and make them spring onto the screen with as many sound effects as possible. And finally, following the launch of the blockbuster film Gravity, Harry Parkhill took us through his best and worst space films

Overall: Very good but I think it could have been better this week, I was happy to step down from presenting the show and let someone else try, which is always a good experience for another person and I think Faith did a very good job, she was too static at times but the links were coherent and she has a good presence on camera. Emma did well in her exploring of the film festival and it was very showbiz. Harry never fails to disappoint, his fantastic use of fair dealing to review these big films lets us use footage that has cost so much money and put them in our show, it just looks amazing. Finally, I really enjoyed what I had to do, I feel that I am very good with a camera and I took some great pictures and this helped me learn how to use Photoshop, a skill which I've always wanted to learn and also it helped my editing skills in Final Cut Pro immensely and thankfully, people loved my picture package.

However, there were a few problems with production - I didn't take on many responsibilities this week, I wanted to take a backseat and let the responsibility fall on the presenter and my other reporters and this is what I noticed: Headlines weren't too great, but they were good apart from saying "Winchester Access" and not "Access Winchester". The sound mixing wasn't great, the spikes had to be louder and there were some general sound issues with the radio mics that were used.

Access Winchester - Week six

Week six: 6/11/13
This week of Access was another rousing success! We had an interview with Lucy Spraggan, we celebrated national sausage week with our own version of 'Come Dine With Me' and Coffee house sessions tour continued at Winchester with Dougie Crosbie. I presented the show again.

Overall: I think it was another good week for Access, we seemed to have really hit our stride but it was still a work in progress. 

However, I think the sausage week package was a great success, we mimicked 'Come Dine With Me' which people seemed to like and we even had Liam provide the voice over as the sarcastic narrator, the only thing wrong with it; it again dragged on too long, but I felt that what was in there was in there for a reason, otherwise it would be too jumpy and wouldn't make too much sense, some people disagreed but others didn't, swings and roundabouts I guess. The Lucy Spraggan interview was good, albeit from the summer, it still helped because we established grounds to use some 'fair dealing' with her new single which really lends itself to the bulletin. Coffee House was here again, this time with Dougie Crosbie and also this time I wasn't able to help out, but I am thankful that we were able to use it to fill a spot in our show.

Access Winchester - Week five

Week five: 30/10/13
This Access Winchester was a Halloween special. We piled on the graphics and effects, trying to make it look like something from 'Most Haunted', we added sound effects, filters on the camera lenses and to top it all off we filmed it in a graveyard. After last week we had a dedicated slot to headlines which runs exactly like the WINOL headlines do, we have 3 in the headlines and then a 'but first' to kick the show off. I presented again this week and we had a run down of spooky places to go in Winchester, which was just done by me presenting and talking on screen (this could have done with graphics but we were a bit strapped for time), a fright filled ghost walk through Winchester at night time, a new addition to the show - 'the top 5' done by Harry Parkhill and to start off this tradition it was the top 5 horror films and we had a fashion shoot from 'Absolute:ly magazine', done by Meg Fisher.

Overall: Another successful week I think, my presenting received a lot of praise and was said to have improved, we were commended for using graphics, sound effects, a different sound track and so on, just to switch things up a bit. But again we were picked up on the show being too slow and not having enough pace, the headlines needed to be quicker, the links needed to be quicker, the stings had be done better, insofar as they had to be louder to wake the bitter 60 year old viewer of our show up and so on. I took this into account when getting ready for the next week.

 

Access Winchester - Week four

Week four: 23/10/13
This was our second fantastic week for Access. Liam and I went to Earl's Court, London for the AppsWorld convention. Here we looked at apps, new games and new technology and it was the first time we presented somewhere on location. Liam and I dual presented the show this week and we hardly scripted anything, so we could make it seem more natural and riff off of each other and we received a great amount of praise for this and it was widely accepted as a good show. Also on the show we had a review of Le Corsair at the Mayflower in Southampton, an interview with musician, Luke Concannon and I had an exclusive interview with celebrity Celia Imrie, who was receiving an honorary doctorate from the University of Winchester.

Overall: I thought the show was great, the dual presenting idea worked and it looked very nice that we were out and about in London walking around the venue interviewing all kinds of different people - it brought a lot of value to the show and it made it seem more snappy and quick and this was advice I had been given to make the show more interesting.

Access Winchester - Week three

Week three: 16/10/13 
This week we had another installment from the Coffee House Sessions tour - Kerri Watt a Scottish singer-songwriter and I helped with the filming again. Also on the show I went to Basingstoke's Milestones Museum for their annual Oktoberfest event and I also went to the William Walker pub in Winchester to film their open mic night. I presented the show again.

Overall: I was not pleased one bit with this show - the sound mixing was terrible but that was due to my lack of intensive editing. Furthermore we had issues with the sound in the presenting; there was a fuzzing noise throughout my presenting and we couldn't fix it. There was a headline sequence but it wasn't right. It was just a terrible week with little to no interest. I believe that after the relative success from the previous week I may have gotten a bit complacent, I've since learned my lesson.

Access Winchester - Week two

Week two: 9/10/13
This week I helped with the filming of the Coffee House Sessions tour with Ben Goddard. This took place at our student union. Faith and Emma went to a production of Warhorse at the Mayflower in Southampton and we introduced our new gadget section - GarraGadgets which was a part in the bulletin filled by Liam Garrahan. I presented Access that week.

Warhorse received a lot of praise, rightly so, as it was an incredible demonstration of how getting access to these events pays off and how putting in calls early is just the best thing you can do for this show. My presenting was also praised along with the use of graphics which I thought to include, I feel that it upped the production value greatly and made things more interesting.

Overall: I think this week was a great success, especially compared to our first try! The show still lacked a certain structure, we had to establish our stories very much like the WINOL bulletin - we needed "hello! welcome to Access Winchester! coming up on today's show" and so on, complete with a headline clip and this was my next goal.

Access Winchester - Week one

I usually start my blog posts off with some fantastic, well thought out excuse as to why I haven't blogged for <insert number of days / months here> but I'm going to throw an insane twist your way; I actually have no excuse. 

Starting off the first semester of third year my new role was the Producer of 'What's On?' the showbiz section which consisted of a mini-bulletin that follows the regular news bulletin. It's purpose is to entertain: it's out very own version of E! Entertainment News.

Week one: 2/10/13
The team and I decided that we wanted to go all out with this entertainments show, so when it came to events to cover for our first bulletin, I made some calls early that week and the next we hopped on the train to London for the Raindance Film Festival.

We only had 2 events for our first week - the film festival and an African drumming circle at the University. The bulletin was presented by Faith and Emma.

Overall: For our first go, I thought of it as merely a draft, our work in progress that could only get better. The presenting had to be edited a great deal to try and liven it up and make it look more appealing and overall the Raindance Film Festival footage that we shot was very poorly lit, for the most part, and the audio was a big issue. The African Drumming was a bit better, but it was too much of a puff piece - I was far too courteous and happy about being there and we're not supposed to rave about everything we cover, to try and make it seem great, we should be honest about it - poke fun but in a disarming way.

Year 2, critical reflection - Final semester January - May 2013

WINOL - (www.winol.co.uk) has only been getting better and better this semester, our Alexa rank has has completely skyrocketed, at the time of writing this (21/ 5/13) our Alexa ranking for winol.co.uk is 88,939 in the UK and 550,042 worldwide. Our rivals, East London Lines, currently stand at 48,225 in the UK and 682,835 worldwide. We seem to have had a lull in our ranking as we have only produced one bulletin since we all got back from Easter break, which was on the 7th of May 2013, over April the site would've been ignored as we were all off at home with hardly anything new being added save a few features perhaps.

However, earlier in the year we were thrashing East London Lines, our site was being updated every day with new stories being put up as soon as we heard of them, it was a phenomenal turn around for student Journalist and our weekly bulletins were raking in the views, gaining around 200 - 300 views for each of our bulletins.

We brought further success by conducting a live show dedicated to the Eastleigh by-Election, this ran all night and had the results announced live as they came through from our team sent to the counting. This was a massive political feat for students to accomplish - we had political guests in the studio, a fantastic team of presenters who overcame the obstacles of presenting live and phenomenal reporters out there getting the information.

My role for WINOL from January to May has been the Community Correspondent, for a couple of weeks a political reporter and I got to put my grammatical and English language skills to the test by being on the website side of things for a change as I was acting as a dedicated sub for the website which means I was checking the language and format of articles being submitted to the site with Sam Ashton.

As Community Correspondent I was in a very similar position as I was last year as the Entertainments Reporter but I found that this role was far more diverse, which I found very appealing. This year I got my first stab at real news stories - my main news story was about Hampshire Council petitioning to ban wind farms on Council owned lands. I did this story as an update, two reporters had done it previously - Felicity Houston and Ellen Millard, their work allowed for me to cover this story which I am very grateful for.

Being very confident in my English language and writing skills I happily put myself forward to aid in the act of being a 'website sub' this meant that when reporters would get their stories every week they would write it up and submit it to the site through a very wonderful system which checks the facts and potency of the story - it is all done through WordPress and is a very nice touch.

This submission process was a great addition - what we do as subs for the website is read through the information that the reporters have filled out in the provided boxes; ranging from the source of the story (so we can see if people are lifting stories or not) to a ranking of how good of a quote the reporter has received from the story. From there we read what they have written and then we must thoroughly check the story they've written for any fatal errors, format problems and to make sure they are using the correct grammar, we make any necessary changes and then put them up on the website.

I myself have subbed many stories for the website and have done so with complete confidence they are correct I wouldn't have been able to do this without the work put in by Sam Ashton - he created a how-to guide for the website; it included format, font, tags and just the overall style of the website so it is consistent, for example how we enter numbers - the number or the spelling of the number - and where the reporters name goes; at the top or the bottom of the story. It is an invaluable asset of information and I'm confident it will help the website for a very long time.

This semester I found that again I was filling the 'and finally' spot of the bulletin - a highly sought after place in the bulletin. However, the first story this semester was a proper news story, but it fell through entirely. The story was that there were plans for a new school, a super school. I had 2 fixed interviews cancel on me thanks to the adverse weather and I was not allowed access to any pictures of the plans. This was a horrendous start to the semester and it put me back on my heels a bit.

The week after I my story was about the wind farm ban on Council owned lands in a place called Bullington Cross. This story would not have been possible if it wasn't for Faith Thomas being able to drive me to the location as it was a good 20 miles outside of Winchester and I had no way of reaching it. This goes to show that WINOL is very much a team effort, we all depend on each other to an extent and we all can work as one hell of a great team when put together. I receive good  feedback from my peers with this story, I started with a piece to camera which is usually not necessary but it was praised, said to do it's job very well. My interviews had balance - I spoke to two environmental groups; one the Friends of the Earth spokesman and the other, a spokesman from Keep Hampshire Green.

Previously, my voice was dreadful, I had so many problems with sound and projecting my voice, maybe it was due to being somewhat shy at the time but I definitely have flourished this year in terms of my confidence and it has shown through in my contributions. Some other criticisms I've had were with filming, however, over this semester I took my time to learn all the camera functions and just kept practicing with it and my affinity with the JVC cameras has reached great heights.

Hampshire was hit by a storm, a storm in the shape of Chris Huhne and the massive scandal surrounding him. This was phenomenal for us as a news outlet - the subsequent by-election brought the biggest political names to Eastleigh. I conducted a poll, the WINOL 100, around the University of Winchester to find out who, if students could, they would vote for. I did this poll two weeks in a row and both times asked 100 people the same thing. In previous elections people had gone for the Liberal Democrats, but my poll found the vote for Labour revived and a huge collapse of faith in the Liberal Democrats.

Chris Ship, our Guest Editor on Feb 3rd 2013 and Political Editor for ITV advised me to match my words with the pictures. To begin with I was talking about the Labour vote in my poll when the Conservative data was showing and so on. So I re-tried until it was perfect to which he praised greatly - it had good tempo and it was bang on with the timing.

The story I'm most proud of covering was of Derek, a teddy bear sent into space.

This particular 'and finally' may well be my crowning achievement. I was so happy to cover this, the key thing to this story was the access I was given by the team that organised it. They allowed me to use the footage of the journey that was captured which made the story but I still put in the work to receive it. People in the news room we're genuinely interested to see this and I had people crowding my desk to watch. This story gained 148 views, which is my highest viewed packaged that I've produced for WINOL.

I thoroughly enjoyed this story, I went full throttle with it because it was just so amazing, it had reference to 2001 Space Odyssey in the intro, the Moon landing and it was riddled with puns - really everything an 'and finally' should be.

Derek was a tough act to follow for the spot of 'and finally' but I'm confident I pulled the rabbit out of the hat on this one... almost literally. My story was about Heidi, a Continental Giant rabbit that has arthritis and so has been encouraged to take up swimming to help ease pressure on her joints.

This proved a challenge to get to though as the story was all the way in Milford, quite a distance away from Winchester - I would have never been able to get there if it wasn't for Matt Spencer being able to drive me there and I would not have been able to film it if I didn't get in touch with the owner as early as I did - my organisation for this story set the precedent for me really, all of my stories should be this well planned ahead and I will now continue to do this.

I am brimming with pride on this 'and finally' it just delivered on all fronts, it was adorable, it was funny and it pulled the heart strings. It was a wonderful thing to witness as well, I enjoyed myself so much. I was especially proud of the puns I worked into the scripting of the voice over and I've been credited by my peers as to being great at scripting.

Along with everything else I've done this year, we all had a week each to be the News Editor for WINOL. My time as the News Editor was exceedingly rewarding to me. I got one hell of an experience from it. The week I was the Editor we had lined up for the bulletin the power houses of political figures - we had Miliband, Prime Minister Cameron and Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg. If that wasn't enough to make a phenomenal bulletin we had rumors circulating our people that the Mayor of London, the one and only Boris Johnson was going to make an appearance in Eastleigh.

Naturally, I wanted him to get into the bulletin at any cost. It was cut so close in the end, I had a team of reporters - Matt Spencer, Faith Thomas and Luke Garratt on standby to race to Eastleigh when they caught wind of Boris. There came a time nearing our deadline that things were looking dire, there was no sign of Boris and our reporters were being fed false information. It was cut so close that I was ready to forget putting him in the bulletin, but just as I was going to tell them to come back, to forget it, they called me up and they had been successful.

The features section of WINOL is astounding. The features team have progressed in leaps and bounds - ranging from the amazing fashion magazine Absolute:ly to the highly in depth New Winchester Review. The fashion magazine instantly draws you in, the images are striking  and the huge banner at the top of the page is an eye catching way to intrigue readers.

The New Winchester Review just oozes culture - it is an amazing addition to WINOL which shows a very profound and romantic way of writing - it contains the likes of Theater and Opera reviews, something that you will most likely never find in a student lead operation. The font, the logo and the layout are all very striking - they will be remembered and they will be looked at. It's as they say: people come for the news and stay for the features.

I have had a phenomenal time on WINOL this semester and I'm extremely proud to be part of the News team here, I cannot wait to see this wonderful site grow and flourish as it no doubt will over the years.

The New Journalism

American Journalism, late 20th Century: This saw the inception of the 'Penny Papers'  in America and in turn American Journalism - though at the time this was ran b politicians and or merchants who were pretty subjective and bias. This did mean that the public people could write news and mid 19th century objectivity became a factor in journalism because of the creation of wire service. The associated press believed news should be objective and neutral - to please the highest number of people.

Developed along this line was the Yellow Press and this had the idea of shaking up the papers, adding sensationalism* and pictures - going for the shock and awe approach - to reel people in. This sparked a circulation war between two rival papers - the first owned by William Randolph Hearst and the second by Joseph Pulitzer. Hearst focused on drama, romance, crimes which is really the inception of tabloids.

*Sensationalism - huge, emotive headlines =, massive, striking images. This was the Yellow Press and the first wave of real journalism. Yellow journalism focused on sin, sex and violence but there was also good journalism; investigative for example tried to route out all corruption.

Journalism is very formulaic, insofar as we are constricted to the facts, a story must have so many paragraphs, the top line must be 20 words and so on. New Journalism was an attempt to record events by mirroring the language and style of the way the events happened - this was referred to as 'letting it bleed into the copy'.

Political and cultural scene: America in the 1960's and 70's was a highly bad time There was a great deal of social and political upheaval because this was the time of the highly unpopular Vietnam War and President JFK was assassinated. He was a man who embodied the American dream and was outstandingly popular with everyone - to quote Forrest Gump: "Then one day, for no particular reason, somebody shot that nice young man"

The Vietnam war happened by proxy pretty much - America had beef with Russia and they were allied and this meant that people were being conscripted into the army without any choice. Also during this time period there was a huge change to the demographic of America - the baby bomb. So many children were being born and this in turn created a youth culture that had access to political powers and the state had to keep in check - young people of this time were the voice of radical political change - free love, hippies and so on; this created an age clash like you wouldn't believe, it was very much young against the uptight old and this did not sit well.

Sexual revolution: This was all about sexual freedom - in the mid 1960's women had the access to, and the choice to use, birth control and regulation. This is exceedingly important to existentialists as I have mentioned previously - choice to them is everything, no matter what you do you must choose, you must have the freedom to do so. For example, you could choose to have a sexual partner who you didn't end up marrying; this is what Reichman was talking about with free love - you must constantly satisfy the ID - said that Freud had it wrong, we should always express ourselves and not bottle it up, bottling it up made things so much worse - we need to let it all hang loose. This was our way to happiness, by having great sexual experiences.

The student movement: This movement was highly militant and radical. University's became the center of radical politics, so much so that the police conducted raids on schools and tried to quell these ideas by bashing some skulls in. This movement saw women and black people marching vehemently for political rights - groups like the Black Panthers or Malcolm X. This is when LSD was created by the CIA and distributed around in an attempt to try and control the minds of young people and radicals - getting a bit 1984 on us there, guys. All these attempts at control and the general upheaval created underground sub-cultures such as hippies and so on, the general feeling was that all sub-cultures were deviant.

Music played a vital role in counter-cultures and according to Sartre music like Jazz was highly authentic and if you choose to listen to it you are not living in bad faith. The music of the time was an outright attack on the establishment, for example iconic bands such as The Doors - their music was all about being against the state and Bob Dylan was massively influential and popular for his anti-establishment songs. This type of music was fuel for the movement, it fed the people and was political.

Influence of Existentialism: Heidegger's authenticity, Sartre's bad faith and the key ideas that came with them - freedom and choice. Fanon held the view that in order to walk a path to freedom and happiness was attained through choice - our choices create our life. Think of an existentialist x-ray machine, you go through the machine and the data that will come up will be every single choice you have made in your life. Fanon believed that the act of violence is essentially the extreme expression of choice - this being choice that had a real and immediate impact, put simply violence always gets us to the point faster. Gotta love violence.

New Journalism: The anti-establishment feeling came into journalism and this was the feeling that "there is a police officer inside your head and he must be destroyed". Journalists question whether writing stories that had come from press releases, official statements and conferences was objective or not. This paved a way for new forms of journalism to emerge.

Journalists, being formulaic, always looked towards the setting, plot, feelings. quotes and images and had to take into account all the facts and the truth. Writers like Truman Capote, a favorite of mine, were new breads of journalists. Capote's phenomenal book In Cold Blood is still on of my favorite books of all time - I love the way it's written, presenting the facts and telling a story in the form of fiction, the personal accounts, and the overall journey. But most importantly, to me at least, the sympathy that Capote demonstrates throughout the book is both terrifying and enthralling.

New Journalism's 'objectivity' is pretty much trashed in subjunctive experience, for example Tom Wolfe wrote an article about a bunch of big time fat cats inviting members of the Black Panthers to a fancy shindig and simply observing the situation. Wolfe admired the writer Emile Zola - he thought that the way he wrote was the correct way to write - you observe people and describe how they act, Dickens also used this style. Zola was exceedingly descriptive, like a Sherlock Holmes level of perception, spending many many pages explaining every individual part of a person - the way they walk, the watch they wear, the shoes and so on.

Wolfe describes Zola: "Zola crowned himself as a first scientific novelist, a naturalist to use his term, studying the human form"

Dialog became increasingly popular and people started to use this - Dickens and Zola's technique of writing and description seeped it's way into feature writing. For example there was a feature which depicted a boxer, well past his prime, and he has just stepped off a plane to meet his wife - then conversations ensue and this is the dialog - the key is to attempt to reciprocate exactly what they said and how they say it onto a page, every single detail. This is a very time costly process and can take days, weeks even years to accomplish. There are four stages according to Wolfe about how features should be. He claims that features should be done:

1) Scene by scene, you need to be there and you need to make the reader feel like they're there.
2) They must reflect the realistic dialog - this allows us to read into the people but capturing the dialog perfectly is wicked difficult
3) You must get into their minds, learn everything you can about them - their thoughts and emotions and more importantly the reader should be able to as well.
4) Attention to the fine details - their whole world, their characteristics - how they walk and so on. You gain insight through attention to the detail.

Totalitarianism

Origins of Totalitarianism: It is important to understand how such regimes can come to fruition - for example the control of language (Orwell and propaganda) can make a huge difference as well as restraints such as prohibition. I personally believe that humans are inherently and unavoidably evil, all things we do are for some sort of person gain.

It is widely believed that we all have a personal responsibility to speak out again dictatorships and strike away from following forced orders - but then again look at some people, they would not make a choice (and from an existentialist point of view would therefore be living in bad faith, a false life) and just go along with the regime because they don't want to die or risk anything happening to them.

People would probably say that they would not conform to such things, to refuse an oppressive authority and actively say what's happening is full on wrong but to me this is exceptionally idealistic - if your own life is on the line you will do whatever you can to preserve it, in this case it would be following any order given.

Pre-WW1 and 2 we had 100 years of relative 'peace' these being the years following the Napoleonic war. Humanity had  sorted all the majority of crap that was hindering progressions and became more sophisticated, in a manner of speaking. For example, Germany had some damn fine intellectual minds they were bounding forward in terms of culture, science and so on, sometimes colloquially referred to the German century.

Hannah Arendt and Totalitarianism: Totalitarianism literally means controlling every single aspect of life: Hobbes touched upon a near totalitarian state explained in his writings - life is nasty, brutish and short - people are bad and will always try to have more, regardless of who they have to hurt to get it. This meant that the state had to have some control over how much freedom people had, but this was a social contract and would never encroach on their freedom totally, so there would never be absolute control.

Hannah Arendt claims that totalitarians regimes are a complete and utter break away from all of our traditions, she then goes on to say that dictatorships and oppressive regimes can happen because of imperialism in the 19th century and this created grounds for it to happen - imperialism was established by race.

However people such as Mussolini believed that outside of the state there can be no individuals or groups of people - the state is everything and if you live in the state you are part of it - it should be everywhere, in your house and fully encompass all of your life. You must always think in a way that is consistent in the state anything else is a rebellion against the state.

The emphasis on race and not merit is a recurring theme in dictatorships - once this has been established it became very easy for dictatorships to take it up and make it their own and from this is just gets worse, always seeing one particular race as better than the other, where is the line in the sand drawn? If at all.

Following this train of thought of building on what was already there and making it your own - The Boer War and General Kitchener; this brought about the inception of concentration camps and the Nazi regime took this idea and adapted it. For a dictatorship to succeed there must be no individual. Us being individual makes it very hard to be controlled - so that we can be part of the state, not away from it, and from this the state tells us what we need to think.

Hannah Arendt says that destroying the individual will cause a state of terror. The aim is not to kill people but to break them down like dogs - the terror is not just murdering vast numbers of people it is the act of isolating people, making them feel like they have no say, right or ability to question the government. George Orwell demonstrates this in  his novel 1984 - big brother, you are always being watched, the thought police will catch you at any sight of rebellion - this feeling of always being under observation, a police state, creates mass paranoia.

This creates an ideology - people start to believe that this is the way, why not speak out against this? well because this is how things are, this is the natural order. This is drilled into the heads of people under a dictatorship and goes hand in hand with the terror and removes the capacity for individual thought and experience among the executioners themselves - this provides somewhat of a defense for these people, for example well it's not my fault I was just following orders, they would've killed me otherwise, a highly weak attempt at absolution - personally I think if you make the choice then stick to your guns, don't be such a coward.

This leads to a breakdown of the stable human world and means a loss of the institutional and psychological barriers that we would not normally cross - an example is becoming numb to seeing utter devastation and strife which was frequent among concentration camp workers; one man arrived and broke down into tears at the sight and later would see it as normal and just became numb to it.

There is a certain frailty within civilisation which I agree with. It is shocking how quickly people will turn on each other if they are threatened, people go into a survival mode and will do anything they can to make sure they survive - my example would be from the TV show It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia (though satirically done) it provides a decent setting - two people in a small rubber dingy lost out at sea with one source of food, a leg of meat soaked in rum. The food gets thrown overboard and they start to become paranoid of the other one eating the other in order to survive, going so far as to try and kill the other in order to eat him.

Control Language - George Orwell: Mind control is highly possible if you have control over language - what words people can and can't use, which words are prohibited and so on. Language is exceedingly important because the language you use daily is what defines you really, the words you choose and so on.

The Eichmann Trial: This was a highly important trial which concerned a German bureaucrat Eichmann whose job it was, during the Nazi regime, to make sure that the trains carrying hosts of Jewish prisoners ran efficiently and made sure they were on time. This trial served three key purposes:
1) to try him for his crimes
2) educate the population with what happened
3) to legitimise the Jewish state

Hannah Arendt was shocked by Eichmann because he was just a regular Joe, nothing exceptional or odd about him, who was following orders for the sake of self preservation. She concluded that it was not necessary to possess some sort of great wickedness to commit great crimes, simple put; if you are in danger you will do what you will to make sure you live, regardless of what this is - this is the *Banality of Evil.

Arendt takes an existentialist stance with this and says that Eichmann's biggest crime was not thinking. Thoughts and choice is crucial to existentialists because no matter what you do you have to make a choice - otherwise Sartre will accuse you of living in bad faith. In Eichmann's case he was mindlessly following and used the defense that he was abiding the law (whilst breaking the law at the same time) claiming it was his duty. When really he should have made a decision for himself

*Banality = Ordinary, can happen to literally anyone

The New Industrial State - 1960's America and Economics

Galbraith explored the economics of production in the 1960's looking in detail to how companies could exert their power and influence over the state - this was called The New Industrial State.

Galbraith and The New Industrial State: Galbraith illustrates in his book “The New Industrial State” that the base structure of American economics shifted to being controlled entirely by the state. Galbraith outlines other important power shifts over the years stating that the second shift in power has been building and swelling over the years and it is still in the making. Galbraith talks of the “techno-structure” of the New Industrial State. This outlines abandoning individualism and beginning to depend on 'experts' or other corporations, leading to a change in bureaucratic hierarchy - it is now about focusing on the group rather than the individual.

The United States of America in the 1960's: In the USA this meant that everything was to be made available pretty much on demand whenever needed. This meant that people would be encountering problems every day and be able to easily solve them with little to no hassle, which lead to a sort of routine falling into place - this is our first world society. We have all come to take things for granted; flowing water, instant access to the internet, education and the list goes on and on.

In Max Weber's version of this, the rise of bureaucracy people would start to be ruled by officials who gain their positions of power and authority by being pretty much amazing - charismatic for example, and then this bureaucracy would continue to rise and grow creating a massive hierarchy. Weber  argued that bureaucracy was a highly efficient way of administration, but did not believe that it was necessarily a great thing to have happened - for example there is now little room for personal expression because you start to follow these constricting rules of an organisation - this is bad for existentialists because freedom of choice and expression is everything, otherwise we are essentially being oppressed; no room for any other values.

Democracy is thought as a meritocracy - everything is morally the same and we are based on our merit only; the military industrial complex was based on this specific structure - there was a leadership model and people were not judged on their political affiliation. This system is technically aimless, it becomes essentially nihilistic and Heidegger predicted and named the 'pragmatic technological bureaucratic'  meaning that the corporations and people involved in this new industrial state are ran by an 'elite' or 'expert' if you will.

Keynes: Based on the principles of supply and demand  The New Industrial State would have been welcomed by Keynes - it is a controlled economy, but one that is meaningless; he makes of it what he wants. To Keynes, war is the best thing that can happen to an economy - during the depression, capitalism nearly came to an end because there was just no money circulating, the war got things moving, created a base need for everyone.

Contra: The managed society that Keynes suggested was opposed by Hayek, who predicted that it would ultimately fail - it would lead to high levels of corruption that everyone would be some sort of bureaucrat with their only goal being to vehemently strive for promotion, selfish gain and, of course, more power.

Existentialism continued - Frege and mathematics

Logic and mathematics: Frege believes there are natural numbers; used to count things, these natural numbers are just concepts, many things, more than one thing etc. Counting creates an abstract category or group - for example with plurals - you can have a pride of lions, a murder of crows, an unkindness of ravens (natural numbers, abstract concepts) This is used to refer to a number of things where you cannot physically count them all out, like trying to count the number of people in a football stadium, you just know there is a hell of a lot of people there.

There are three attitudes to language, most importantly numbers:
1) they are natural and can be empirically observed
2) they are intuitions of a harmonic, platonic other world - you can never find the noumena, the essence of a number
3) they are abstract logical objects constructed purely from syntax*

*Syntax - results of modifying the meaning of one object to another. For example, verbs and adjectives - house can be syntactically altered to blue house.

Numerical naturalism / Evolutionary psychology: Apes and Neanderthal tribes appeared to be able to judge simple empirical plurality, typically for example, the absence of a banana or something else of importance.

Noam Chomsky: People are born with an innate understanding on syntax and language, he argues otherwise how do we know this? Contra John Locke who thought we are born with a blank slate - we have nothing innate.

Pythagorean-ism / Platonism: Numbers have heavily influenced Christianity, for them numbers are like an insight into God (prime numbers) the belief behind this is that 7 essentially cannot be thought up, primes can't be divided. Numbers are believed to have like special powers, people hold them in high regard like choosing numbers for the lottery, you, for some obscure reason, believe picking certain numbers that you believe to be special from the others increases your chances of winning when really it doesn't work like that - pretty much superstitious nonsense.

There is a religious significance regarding the number 3. Three is apparently the magic number - three acts in a play, three movements in a symphony and in a waltz, the big three in religion being the father, the son and the holy ghost. This also creeps into journalism, with terms like rule of thirds.

Primes are held in high regard by Islamic believers, Islam exhibits cults around plural primes four, five and seven. Babylonians exhibit a similar obsession with numbers - the 12 Zodiacs, each representing a month of the year, commonly known as star signs.

Pythagoras regarded plurals as the only real natural numbers, starting numerically at 2 because a number that is 1, not one or nothing are completely different categories. Odyssey telling the tale of Odysseus & the Cyclops; the cyclops asks if there is anyone there to which the reply is there is no-one there. This utterly confuses the cyclops because nothing being there is a fully ineffable concept - the process of there being nothing there is flawed, there cannot be nothing as the nothing is something. Used again in this example which perhaps illustrate the point more - there is nothing on the road, well yes there is because the road is there and also nothing, being something, is present. This does not mean the same thing as the road being empty, or clear of obstructions.

Problem of zero and nothing: Zero came from India, later via Islam. Whole Arabic numerical systems were introduced in the middle ages after the fall of Rome. Zero is an intrinsically difficult concept, as expressed earlier; zero = nothing but nothing = something.

Contra to Aristotle's law of contradiction solved by Leibniz's monads - an object can contain it's own negation. Modern philosophers of mathematics assert that zero is a natural number. This is because if you have: zero + one = one, making something out of nothing.

Common sense view of numbers: There are logical objects according to Frege, his book the Grundlagen is a philosophy of the logic of numbers. For Frege, maths is just a language and all the same analytically.
- Languages have three things:
1) vocabulary of objects (words and numbers)
2) syntax - modify the meaning comb-grammar
3) grammar

Frege's work was adapted - Bertrand & Whitehead - Principia Mathematica - going to assume this is the principle of mathematics

Frege's Method: Axiom - all things identical are equal to themselves, this is asserted apriori; deductive, true by definition. Follows all things which are pairs are identical to all other pairs (regardless of what they are pairs of) they are still pairs nonetheless. The class of all things  which are pairs - logically can call it two, it does not matter. Large numbers can be built as logical constructs as along the lines of 'the class of all things which are pairs of pairs' - we can attach any symbol we like, for example four. Furthermore, one is the class of all things that are not in a pair, eg, lost sock = not a pair, just a single sock.

Seminar Paper - Existentialism, Phenomenology, Heidegger, Sartre and Husserl (Updated)

This seminar paper will take us through the workings of existentialism from Sigmund Freud to Jacques Derrida, this will include Husserl’s phenomenology and Heidegger and Sartre on existentialism.

Freud and Psychoanalysis: Philosophers seldom described themselves as ‘Freudians’, but all who were engaged in teaching philosophy of the mind, ethics or philosophy of religion were forced to take account of Freud's novel and proposals. He had an all encompassing theory of everything. His work casts a long shadow as it addresses the whole human condition, which is highly contested. Freud states that we are always unhappy because we are divided, even alienated from ourselves. Freud himself was a psychiatrist and claimed to find the reason we are unhappy. He claimed to have found away into the part of our brains that control us - the thing is that we don't know we are being controlled and we have no actual control over our actions. If we think that we are doing these things, for example, if I think I'm sitting in my room blogging on my own volition then I'm very mistaken, because it's actually my brain that is controlling me; basically we don't make our own decisions and we have no idea that this control is even happening. Think about when you choose what to wear, your sub-consciousness will tell you to wear blue because you associate that with looking fierce. This is explored greatly by psychoanalysis.

Freud used to use hypnosis in his treatments but he moved away from this and replaced it with a novel form of therapy which he named psychoanalysis, which was just talking between the patient and doctor. The premise of the treatment is that all people harbor these deep seated feelings or trauma that has to be addressed by talking about your feelings. The patient would typically be lying on a couch and is encouraged to talk about whatever was on their mind, which we’re usually traced back to childhood trauma or sexual issues. Freud collaborated with Josef Breuer, whose works laid the foundation of psychoanalysis and Jean-Martin Charcot is work greatly influenced the developing fields of neurology and psychology. He was the foremost neurologist of late nineteenth-century France and has been called "the Napoleon of the neuroses".

Existentialism: Nietzsche claims: "God is dead and we have killed him" this is meant in a metaphorical way and it demonstrated the ever growing aversion to religion - it means that it is an end to something to pray to, something to guide is through life and give it some meaning - this is all religion (to me) is; people being too scared to believe that we are not being guided by some higher power. This now means that we will have more choice - no more control from religions, we can make up our own minds as there is now nothing to influence or affect the choices we make, we are alone and must choose for ourselves, albeit forced - this is known as the 'Trans-valuation of all values' as we find the value in us and it in turn makes us free.

This freedom of our own choice is key to Existentialists - choosing is everything, it defines who we are and if we are not making choices for ourselves then we are living in what Sartre calls 'Bad Faith'

Edmund Husserl’s Phenomenology: Husserl’s phenomenology stands in opposition to naturalism, which is to be approached with natural-scientific methods, which are inclined toward empirical facts. Phenomenology turns directly to the evidence of lived experience - of first-person life - in order to provide descriptions of experiencing, rather than causal explanations.

Husserl has been likened to Freud, insofar as they both devoted a majority of their lives to a personal project that was intended to be the first really scientific study of the human mind. Where Freud was exiled due to Nazi anti-Semitism, Husserl had his books burn by German troops marching into Prague 1939. Husserl is often credited as the founder of phenomenology, and he addressed the body throughout his philosophical life, again likened to Freud. Husserl was highly influenced by Franz Brentano in Vienna between 1884 and 1886 by attending his lectures about philosophy and this is what got him interested in it. Brentano’s book, ‘Psychology from an Empirical standpoint’ brought up the data of consciousness, and this comes in two kinds - the first physical phenomenal and the second being mental phenomena. Physical phenomenal are things like colours and smells, whereas mental phenomenal is thoughts and these are characterised by having a content, or object. This feature by Brentano reintroduced the term intentionality (essentially the target of a thought) - this is the key to understanding mental acts and life.

Husserl still focused his attention on mathematics and his habilitation thesis was on the concept of numbers, and his first real book published 1891 was the ‘philosophy of arithmetic’ and this sought to explain our numerical concepts by identifying the mental acts which are our psychological origins, for example our concept of plurality, was supposed to derive from a process of ‘collective combination’ which group many items together. However, after a great deal of criticism, Husserl maintained a sharp distinction between logic and psychology , however Husserl saw the psychological side as philosophy's rightful home, as opposed to Frege who followed by the analytic tradition and placed himself on the side of logic.

The aim of phenomenology was the study of the immediate date of consciousness, without referring to anything that the consciousness may yield to us about the mental world, for example the concept of a Unicorn, the intentionality of my thought is the same, regardless of whether or not a Unicorn exists. Husserl prefaces this by saying “it makes no essential difference to an object presented and given to consciousness whether it exists, or is fictitious”

Martin Heidegger’s Existentialism: Heidegger was a German philosopher whose work is perhaps most associated with phenomenology and existentialism. Heidegger's philosophical development started when he read the work of Brentano and Aristotle. The demand placed in the Metaphysics by Aristotle, the idea to know what it is that unites all interpretations of being is the question that sparked off Heidegger's philosophy, and from here he delved deeper into the work of Kant, Kierkegaard and Nietzsche.

Heidegger insisted that the first task of phenomenology was to greatly study the concept of Being, which was prior to the divide between consciousness and reality. To gain a clear concept of the nature of philosophy it is assumed we should go back, however Heidegger claims that simply going back to Aristotle and Plato will not yield us the answers we seek. Heidegger decided to come up with an entirely new vocabulary for philosophy and one of his coined terms was the ‘Dasein’ this literally means being there, and it is a very common word in German. It is important to note that the Dasein is always relative to the beholder and is either entirely buried or firmly grounded in subjectivity, for example it is in your mood, which opposes the earlier ideas of the Logical Positivist who believed that the truth is grounded in facts and empirical data. Being is not some abstract concept, it is concrete - it is you being at a particular time and place and being engaged in a particular task of thinking.

Heidegger believes that they only way we can be free is if we are completely absorbed in a task, such absorption does not lessen existential pain but makes existence slowly fade away, for example being really into a song or playing a game, you will be entirely focused on that one task and existence seems to be gone. If there was infinite time then there would be infinite boredom, and the perception of a ‘lack of time’ makes you throw yourself head on into your Dasein and if you are not absorbed in a task, according to Heidegger, then you will be overcome with utter boredom. Heidegger claims there are three aspects of time, the first being attunement - this is expressed as mood, a reflection on the past produces this mood. Outside of the Dasein the normal mood of attunement is a looming angst and the mood of guilt. Secondly, Dasein - this is caring about the task at hand, being ‘in the zone’ so to speak, this is essentially the present. And thirdly, directiveness, this reflection on the future produces the mood of dread a fear of the future that we try and block out.

Jean-Paul Sartre’s Existentialism: Sartre (1905-1980) focuses upon the construction of a philosophy of existence (existentialism) and his early works are characterised by a development of early phenomenology, very much following the same structure as Heidegger and to a lesser extent Husserl, but he diverges from Husserl on the concept of the self, and with an interest in ethics. These differences are the foundations of Sartre’s existential phenomenology, the purpose being to understand human existence rather than the world.

Sartre’s main book ‘Being and Nothingness’ is where he defines two types of reality which are beyond our own experience: these are the being of the object of consciousness and the being of consciousness itself. The object of consciousness exists in itself, this means that it is independent and not defined in relation to anything. However, consciousness is always are of something, which means it would be defined in relation to other things. This allows us to also experience a ‘nothingness’ and this power is also at work within the self, which leads to a lack of self-identity.

Sartre goes on to set up his own idea of the individual human being. He does this by first getting rid of its grounding in a stable ego. Sartre claims that Existentialism is a Humanism, this means that to be human is characterised by existing. This was put forward in Sartre’s early that would later become ‘Being and Nothingness’. Sartre’s early works are seen as improving the material to make an existential account of being human. But Sartre’s approach to understanding human existence is formed by his interest in ethics.

Fun fact - Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir wrote many love letters to each other and had them published after their deaths