AS part of BBC School Report, The Skipton Academy sent a group of students to the offices of the Craven Herald.

Joanne Hooper, Josh Hughes, Skye Lancaster-Moon and Callum Nettleton began the day discussing the current news and preparing questions for their visit. They were treated to a look around the office, given the chance to watch the reporters in action and spent time talking to the editorial staff. They then came back to school and put together this report about what they’d learnt:

How is the newspaper made?

They start making the newspaper on a Thursday after the previous one has been published. They start to make arrangements about what is going to go in the newspaper and get ready for upcoming events that are happening in the town or around the Yorkshire Dales. The stories, or anything that wants to be in the paper, has to be finished by Wednesday and then it is sent to Oxford to be printed and sent to the shops early on Thursday morning.

Each edition has 64 pages each week with every one of them filled with interesting things. There are four different papers they have to make. They are: Craven Herald, Keighley News, Ilkley Gazette, Wharfedale Observer

They all have different context about the area they specialise in. Different people specialise in different stories then after they have finished they are put into the Craven Herald. After that the Craven Herald is distributed into many shops and supermarkets.

Where does the information come from?

When we went to interview the team of the Craven Herald, they taught us about many things such as: the content, how they get the information, process of making it.

Firstly, they could get information from the public. That means people could get phone calls and e-mails and that could be things like a family member passing away or something really good happens and it should go in the news.

Next, they could also get information from courts (where they use shorthand in a note book because they can’t record in the court). Also they go into meetings and interviews which they can record and then e-mail to another work partner. They can also get information off police and then they can see what crimes have happened in that week.

Did You Know?

They use iPhones to take pictures instead of proper cameras because they think the image quality is as good as a proper camera – and quicker!

Puzzles, adverts and content.

The Craven Herald is full of interesting content. Even fun puzzles. This newspaper has puzzles like crosswords and Sudokus. The Craven Herald doesn’t actually make their own puzzles, but they buy them from different companies. I obviously understand because it would take forever thinking of words, making hints and fitting them in. We all had a laugh because we were the only ones who knew what Sudoku was!

Another big part about the Craven Herald are the adverts. And there are sections in the newspaper about history (nostalgia), sport and letters. The editors add in a page of the old newspaper. The sports section is on the back and it isn’t just about football, they are about Skipton sports. And the last section is about readers and viewers sending in pictures.

Altogether as a whole on our visit we learnt some key things about our local newspaper, the Craven Herald. We learnt about the history and how the Craven Herald is made. After seeing the team of hard-working colleagues we learnt many things. We have expanded our general knowledge. As a bunch of hard working students they helped us in our knowledge about the community and helped us expand it.