On Thursday 24 November, three members of the Oundle Chronicle newspaper team spent the day with editors at the offices of the Times Educational supplement (TES).
The work experience opportunity was one of the prizes that the Oundle Chronicle won for its Best Newspaper award at the Shine Media Awards at Stationers’ Hall in June. As one of the three major award winners, three pupils from the editorial team were invited to attend a day at the TES offices in London. Emily Wang (18), Freddie Smith (17) and Editor, Ruby Goodall (17) joined the other award winners from Headington School and Knights Templar School.
After a welcome from the TES Editor, Ann Mroz, pupils had a full schedule, working with four different editors who took them through the basic principles of news and feature writing, copy editing, social media and content management.
During the workshops pupils practised one-on-one profile interviews, developed the structure of a news story, copy-edited an article and worked with headlines. With Twitter now such an important driver of news, time was spent working headlines into tweets that would generate traffic to online content. Finally, the pupils worked to a brief and wrote a proposal for a new magazine that they pitched to the ‘Dragons’.
School Librarian, Leigh Giurlando commented, “The day offered an invaluable opportunity for the pupils to meet professional journalists, learn about the career path in journalism and pick up tips and advice to help develop school journalism.”
The Oundle Chronicle is produced by a group of pupils drawn from the Fifth Form (Year 11) and above, who meet on Wednesday afternoons as part of the School’s Community Action programme. A tabloid of approximately twenty-four pages, the Oundle Chronicle was founded in 1991. The paper publishes news and features based on people and events in the town of Oundle and East Northamptonshire, and is published twice a year. It is delivered free to every house in Oundle, and is also distributed to shops in the surrounding villages. All printing costs are funded by advertising from local businesses, and profits are donated to local charities, allowing pupils an opportunity to gain an insight into running a non-profit business.