TWO budding reporters from St James' CEP School, Clitheroe, Jamie-Lea McCormick and Lindsay Mullen, worked against the clock during industry day to complete the following account of their visit to our newspaper for their own publication and for LET readers:

"Our class, year five, visited the Lancashire Evening Telegraph in two groups to help us write reports and design pages for our own Industry Day newspaper. We first went to the newspaper's head office in Blackburn.

"Mrs Shaw, Newspapers in Education Coordinator, explained about newspaper production before showing us round. The building is very high and the best way to get to the top is in the lift. Children on the first visit used the goods lift, but on the second visit the lift was out of order and they had to climb hundreds of stairs.

"At the top we went into the advertising department where people were selling large and small advertisements in the newspaper and also designing them on computer screen. "In the newsroom it was really interesting to see all the different stories being written on computers. One special screen had pictures on from Telegraph photographers and from the satellite dish on the roof. We saw that they could change the shape of someone's face but they are not allowed to print this in the paper.

"Then we set off in the yellow mini-bus to the print works in Bolton. This is a very noisy place but very exciting. We looked at the huge reels of paper and were surprised to find that each one lasts only around 20 minutes on the press and that they need 12 to 15 reels to print the Telegraph every day.

"We also saw the plate-making room where the light was yellow and the blinds pulled down at the windows because ultra violet light is used to make printing plates, so they have to keep this out.

"When the press started it was deafening, but we were excited to see the newspapers coming out and we took copies back to school. We are going to use all that we learned to write reports for our own school newspaper."

Converted for the new archive on 14 July 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.