Quentin Wray founded The Word Chest in November 2013 after a long career in large-scale media organisations. It is now working with newspaper companies, PR agencies, executives and start ups in the UK, South Africa and Nigeria.
Having run a large combined online-print newsroom, a national digital news portal and a major newspaper, Quentin is a highly regarded business, economics and financial journalist. He is now using the skills accumulated during his years in frontline journalism to build a professional London and Johannesburg-based media consulting, writing, editing and publishing business.
Find Quentin on LinkedIn or view his full CV here.
Publisher
As General Manager of Independent Online Quentin was responsible for overseeing the operations of around 40 newspaper title and niched content websites that comprise IOL, South Africa’s second largest online publisher. As well as the web sites for the Independent Group’s 17 South African newspapers, IOL has a news site and a wide range of niche content sites including Business Report, property, travel, motoring, lifestyle and entertainment. It also ran online businesses in various sectors including classifieds, dating and motoring. During his tenure, IOL grew core advertising revenues and readership despite stiff competition, poor retail and consumer confidence levels, sluggish economic growth and massively increased competition in the online news space.
Editor
As Editor of Business Report, South Africa’s most widely read daily financial newspaper, Quentin ensured the production of a top quality financial daily newspaper which set the agenda in South Africa’s business community on a tight budget and in a difficult revenue environment. During his time as Editor, Business Report grew readership, as measured by the All Media Products Survey (AMPS) by 20% to 1,244 million readers. This happened while the group’s titles’ circulation – BR’s only distribution channel – fell and while our main print competition saw readership numbers fall dramatically. Quentin ensured the incorporation of BR’s online offerings into the management of the newspaper and, as a result, the website and social media offerings performed superbly.
Group Executive Editor
Quentin was appointed on a short-term contract to restructure and integrate the newsrooms of Financial Mail, South Africa’s premier weekly financial magazine, Business Day, the country’s top business-oriented daily newspaper, and the
group’s BDLive website. This was done in response to the changing economic and media environments. Quentin’s duties included contributing to newsgathering and production discussions on both publications across print, web and wire, ensuring the efficient and effective allocation of editorial resources and ensuring that BDLive, Business Day and Financial Mail all improve their market share and competitiveness.