The kids are all write

Pupils lend hand in latest edition of Chalk Talk

BUDDING Dundee journalists from schools across the city helped put together the Tele’s latest edition of its award-winning magazine Chalk Talk.

The autumn edition of Chalk Talk, free in your Tele next Wednesday, is packed full of school news from Dundee primary and secondary schools.

All the content is written and produced by pupils, showcasing their work and the current issues of importance to them.

And the front page was designed with the help of pupils from five schools – Clepington, Sidlaw View, St Andrew’s and Victoria Park primaries and Baldragon Academy.

A group of pupils from each school came to DC Thomson HQ at Meadowside to help arrange the articles in order, design the front page and some even recorded a showreel for advertising purposes using the Wave FM news studio.

The Tele’s editor Dave Lord, who led the editorial day, said: “We were blown away with the quality of the content the kids produced, both for the magazine and at the editorial day.

“The wording they chose for their scripts was great and the way they delivered it was even better than we had imagined.

“They put emphasis on all the important words, showing they really understood what they were saying and the message they were trying to get out there.”

The showreels will be used as part of a video on the Tele’s website promoting Chalk Talk.

Dave said he introduced a multimedia element to the editorial day to reflect the changing nature of the media industry.

“The actual Chalk Talk magazine is extremely important.

“It has a huge readership with a significant proportion of the city’s overall population ultimately seeing a copy, which is incredible,” he said.

“We wanted to add a multimedia element, as that is central to all the content we produce now.

“The Evening Telegraph website has a hit rate of something between 100,000-120,000 page views a day, so by adding video content we’re getting the children’s work out to as wide an audience as possible.”

The feedback from participating pupils was positive and they commented that they were very excited to see the final copy of Chalk Talk in print.

Dave added: “We would like to thank everyone who took part in the editorial day and who submitted words and pictures for the magazine.

“We had enough content to fill 80 pages and I can guarantee a great read.”

Chalk Talk was named Supplement of the Year at the Society of Editors’ UK Regional Press Awards in May.

The budding journalists from five Dundee schools who were at DC Thomson HQ to help with Chalk Talk.