IRN

What is IRN?

Independent Radio News (IRN) is a service that provides newsrooms across the UK with bulletins and news stories. Shock pays for a subscription to access IRN’s ‘Net Newsroom’, which provides us with hundreds of news stories. This includes text only stories (which tend to be for breaking news or smaller stories), stories with audio clips (press conferences or other sound bites), and interviews and analysis from Sky News journalists

IRN also provide us with clips from Sky Sports News, which are useful for sport news at the end of a bulletin.

Accessing and using IRN

IRN can be accessed on any PC on the Shock Radio Network.

To get to IRN, open any browser (preferably Google Chrome), and go to irn.co.uk/net-newsroom. You will then be taken to this page:

This shows you all the stories that IRN/Sky have been working on. You can then click on a story to find out more about it. If you decide you want to use the story in your bulletin, click on the ‘Print’ icon, which will open the story in its own window. If you don’t do this, the story will close automatically after about 20 seconds or on IRN’s next automatic refresh.

There are also categories you can pick from, handy for a targeted bulletin or headlines:

Some stories may have audio clips that add to the story. These don’t have to be used but can be a great way of adding another perspective. You can tell if a story has audio as the grey box will have an ‘Audio Number’ on it, like this:

Getting audio clips and uploading them to Zetta

Downloading clips is easy! At the bottom of a story which contains audio is two links that say ‘MP2’ and ‘WAV’. Click on ‘WAV’ and the download will start.

Once it has been downloaded, go to Zetta, go to the toolbar at the top, and select 'Tools' and then 'Media Import'. This will open the window shown below, you should then select the folder icon to navigate to the folder holding the clip you wish to upload.

Next, add a station by clicking the '+' icon shown. The Station "SHOCK RADIO" should be selected. Please ensure that the 'Default Asset Type' is set to "INBOX"

Then click 'Import Media' and any audio files in the folder you selected will be imported into Zetta.

You can then put the clip into the ‘News’ Hotkey bank. This will make it easier for the presenter to fire the clips during the bulletin (just make sure you tell them which one it is).

And those are the basics! You can even vamp it up by changing the name of the hotkey, which will make it easier for the presenter to find Right click on the hotkey

Click ‘Edit Key’ and then make the changes. But always remember to click Save.

For information on how to craft your bulletin, click here!

Page updated

Report abuse