Elfrida Primary School visit

Meet our CEO

Vincent Desmond

10:30 am

Meet the Content team

and learn how to write a news story

10.45

Break

11.15

Write your own news story

11.30

Lunch

12.45

Show your story

to the Content team

1.30 pm

The Chartered Quality Institute

Meet the Content Team

Who?

Carolyn Scott

Editor

Dina Patel

Alicia Dimas McNulty

Content Executive

What?

We write articles for the Quality World magazine, interview people, arrange photoshoots and proofread articles.

What?

We also write or commission articles for our website and monthly newsletters and promote our articles on social media: LinkedIn and Twitter.

Why is our work important?

We help the Chartered Quality Institute (CQI) promote the quality profession, by writing articles that show how important the work of quality professionals is and how they can do better.

Pick the topic

Topic

We pick a topic that we believe will interest our members.

Research

We research on that topic to learn about it, identify the best people to talk to and what questions are important to ask.

Research

Contacts

Contacts

We contact people that we would like to interview and we schedule a interview. Interviews can be face to face or over the phone.

Some people prefer to reply to our questions in writing.

The interviewees

Interviewees

We research about our interviewees: their career, where did they gain their expertise on the topic we are writing about, what have they already said about it.

Then we put together the questions we want to ask.

The interview

Interview

During the interview, other questions might arise: you might want to ask your interviewee to expand on something they said; ask them why they gave that answer; or even have a new question because they said something new and very interesting!

The transcription

Transcribe

After the interview, we have to transcribe what the interviewee said.

Planning the feature

Plan

Once we have the interview all written down in front of us, we start thinking how we want our feature to look and what do we want it to ‘tell’ our readers.

What are the most important or interesting things our interviewees said?

Writing the feature

Write

Now it’s time to start writing our article. We use our research material and interviews to put together a feature that we believe will interest our members, teach them something new about their profession, show them a different point of view on a subject, or help them improve their skills.

A feature should always have a headline, a standfirst, an introduction, the body of the text and a conclusion. It can also have pull-quotes and box-outs.

Edit and approve

Edit

After we write our feature, our editor reviews it, makes the necessary edits and gives suggestions for improvement. We go back to our interviewees to ask them if they are happy with any changes we made to their quotes.

The design

Design

Now it’s time to start think how our feature should look.

We have a designer to help us decide if we should use pictures or if we should commission an illustrator to illustrate our story.

Proofreading and fact checking

After our designer puts content and illustration together in what will be the magazine’s page, it’s time for proofreading and fact checking.

Proofread

Send to press

Press

When we are happy that the feature looks good, there are no errors or spelling mistakes, our editor sends it to press.

A week later we and all the members of the CQI all over the world receive the magazine with our feature in it!

How to write a news story

The questions a journalist asks to write a great news story:

WHO was involved?

WHAT happened?

WHEN did it take place?

WHERE did it take place?

WHY did it happen?

HOW did it happen?

Example:

WHO was involved? "Thousands of school children, the Climate Coalition group and Greener UK"

WHAT happened? "A protest march against climate change took place"

WHEN did it take place? "On Wednesday 26th June"

WHERE did it take place? "In Westminster, London"

WHY did it happen? "To ask the government to address environmental issues, including plastic and air pollution and damage to natural habitats."

HOW did it happen? "A mass lobby called Time is Now was formed. A mass lobby is when groups come together to get politicians to listen to what they have to say about a particular issue. The march was organised by Climate Coalition and Greener UK"