George A Kelly
George Kelly is director of CMC International, a leading independent oganisation specialising in strategic planning, marketing, readership development and promotions renowned worldwide for its innovative activities. The company is also the leading service provider in the UK for Newspapers in Education (NiE). Formerly, Kelly worked for six years as national manager of the regional press education programme operated by The Newspaper Society until it ceased operation in October 1996.
Kelly is a founder member of the World Association of Newspapers’ International Young Reader Committee formed in 1991 and of the World Young Reader Network sitting on their committee as an independent adviser. Recently, Kelly contributed a section in the WAN Strategy Report ‘Shaping the Future of the Newspaper’. He was the driving force behind WAN’s annual Young Reader Awards and continues as a judge for the programme. In addition, Kelly has been a member of a number of committees including the coordinating teams for the UK’s Better English Campaign, the National Literacy Trust and he advised on newspaper campaign plans for the National Year of Reading.
During his time at the Newspaper Society, Kelly was responsible for the planning and introduction of many NiE projects and campaigns. This included writing the highly acclaimed Reading Passport programme which continues to flourish under CMC International’s management and continues to be the mainstay of most young reader programmes in the UK. Kelly organised the industry’s annual NiE conferences for six years, each attracting as many as 280 delegates from the UK and overseas. He initiated the first international young reader event on behalf of the World Association of Newspapers (WAN) in Bristol, England in 1993 which led to the establishment of the WAN International NiE conferences now held every two years.
In 1992, Kelly organised the first NiE Week in the UK, devising the annual themes and support materials for a further five years, which included the UK’s first family reading programme - Reading Together - as the theme for 1994.
Kelly, a former teacher, first discovered NiE while working in Scotland where his 10-12 year old pupils won several national and international awards for their classroom publishing . Kelly then joined the educational advisory service, forming links between schools and local newspapers. Two years later, he joined the Newspaper Society.
In his national role with the Newspaper Society, he published a number of books and support materials for NiE. This has continued at CMC International with his latest projects - NEWSline, a current events programme for schools and ‘Let’s Read’, a family reading programme developed for News International, publishers of ‘The Times’ of London.
At CMC International, he manages and coordinates a range of local and regional programmes with daily and weekly newspapers worldwide promoting national literacy, reading and social awareness campaigns. Kelly also advises the industry on all aspects of young reader development and makes regular presentations nationally and internationally, most notably in Sao Paulo, Brazil at the 1997 International NiE Conference, the 1999 Young Reader Conference in Paris and, at the NAA Conferences in San Diego and San Antonio. He has presented at the World Editor’s Conference and been a key presenter at every WAN International Young Reader Conference, most recently in Washington DC in 2007.
On behalf of WAN, he has organised and led three international Study Tours, with delegates representing eighteen countries, to Florida, California and Central USA for 10-day exchanges of ideas on readership development. Kelly also ran a two-day kick-start conference in Colombia on behalf of Andiarios, the Colombian Newspaper Association, and the Ministry of Education. This was followed-up three years later with a national conference . While maintaining these links, he advised the country’s leading newspaper, El Tiempo, on its youth readership activities .
His work continues to take him to newspapers around the globe. Kelly launched the first NiE programme in Uganda with the leading national daily newspaper - New Vision and, in 2002, he worked with The Star of Malaysia on a major education conference programme covering most of the country and involving over 800 teachers As keynote speaker at the PANPA Conference in Australia, Kelly was able to demonstrate the immense variety and creativity being utilised by young reader projects across the UK. More recently, he has acted as consultant/advisor for the Daily Monitor Young Reader programme in Uganda and is now developing a similar programme in Kenya for the Daily Nation.
In 2001, CMC International opened the World Young Reader Resource Centre, supported by WAN, and now stocking some twelve thousand examples of NiE and Young Reader projects from around the world. A year earlier, CMC International launched its innovative Young Reader Management Programme which offers newspapers of all sizes a ‘virtual’ team of experts to plan and implement their readership development activities. With the backing of this team, newspapers across the UK have demonstrated increased circulation and generated additional revenue.
The latest programmes offered by CMC International give Reading Diplomas to students who successfully complete eight weeks of newspaper activities and a teenage editorial project to create a newspaper for disadvantaged youth in London. In addition, for the past two years, Kelly has edited and published ‘Kids Bizz’, a children’s newspaper
in London while, since 2007, he has edited a community newspaper 'Primary Plus' distributed across his home region of the UK.