Finito candidate Cameron Kerr sat down with the renowned writer to ask him about his career, why he never expected to run a think tank, and the need for a career backstop for would-be journalists.
Cameron Kerr: Was your journalism career a goal you had planned to achieve or a role that you fell into?
Robert Colvile: It was never something I’d thought about until university, but I volunteered to work on one of the student papers there and absolutely loved it – not just the writing, but every part of putting together a newspaper. I did consider some other options – I applied to the Civil Service, for example – but ultimately it was always the thing I wanted to make a living doing if I could.
CK: Take us through the early days of your career, from where you first encountered opportunities in journalism, to a point in your journey where you could tell yourself or peers that you worked as a journalist for a living.
RC: I got started at university, then tried to make as much of that opportunity as possible – for example getting accreditation to the various festivals at Edinburgh over the summer, then covering them for the paper (which also enabled me to build up a stock of interviews with some of the people performing or promoting their films and books). After university I got on to a training scheme at the Observer, so I did work experience there and at the New Statesman, while supporting myself by doing admin work as a temp.
Then I got some extra work helping produce the paper on Saturday evenings, and uploading the print edition on to the Guardian website, and doing paid supplements on broadband take-up, and just anything I could do to get a foot in the door. But I wasn’t properly, formally a professional journalist until I parlayed all that into a job on the Telegraph’s training scheme, which was looking for sub-editors – the people who sit back in the office editing the articles, checking the facts, putting on the headlines and so on.
CK: Is the route you took into journalism a pathway which others could follow today, and if not, how does that entry pathway look different in 2024?
RC: The thing about journalism is that there really aren’t many formal pathways. I was lucky enough to get on to one of the Fleet Street training schemes, but the number of people they take are vanishingly small compared to the size of the sector. One of the big differences today, though, is that there are so many more opportunities to get yourself noticed by writing, tweeting, blogging, starting your own thing and getting noticed. One of the great things about journalism is that ultimately, quality really does shine through – if your writing is good, or you’re a good editor, people absolutely take notice.
CK: What opportunities in your career do you feel you discovered, pushed for and achieved yourself?
RC: All of them! Though in retrospect I could have done more to push myself forward while at the Telegraph – I was there for 10 years and ended up in a pretty senior position, but there were quite a few years where I was sitting there quietly chafing, for example at not being able to move full time on to the comment desk. I probably could have been bolder in agitating for a move, or trying to find opportunities elsewhere. But I’m pretty happy with how it turned out.
CK: What opportunities in your career, if any, do you feel were fortunate enough to be given to you – by bosses, word of mouth, unexpected events of the day to cover etc.
RC: I’ll always owe a big debt to Liz Hunt, who’s now at the Daily Mail. As Telegraph features editor she plucked me from my sub-editing job and put me in charge of the news review section of the paper – the big, chunky, attention-grabbing Saturday reads – as well as the science page.
And then I’m pretty grateful to Maurice Saatchi, who was then the chairman of the Centre for Policy Studies, for asking me to be the Director when I was running its CapX website. But the truth about journalism is that few people have a career path plotted out – I certainly didn’t think I was going to end up running a think tank, for example. It’s very organic, about the connections you make and the reputation you build.
CK: Are there one or two defining moments/opportunities that took your career to a whole new level – they could be expected or a total surprise.
RC: The move from being a sub-editor to an editor was definitely a step change – after that my career started moving forward much more quickly. Getting to run CapX was similar – I was freelancing as a writer, and had had quite a few discussions with people, but wasn’t really actively looking for a full-time role. And oddly, moving into think tanks really improved my opportunities as a writer – I suddenly had not only a load more relationships in Westminster, but a massive pipeline of policy ideas that I could write about and publicise.
CK: With all your industry experience and knowledge of the state of journalism today, is it a career you would pursue now if you were starting from scratch?
RC: Yes, but with the caveat that you really do have to have a backstop these days in a way that you didn’t in the old days. There’s so much competition to get into journalism, and so little profit, that the salaries really aren’t very good, at least not until you get right to the top of it. I’m proud that I never got a penny of support from my parents, and got every single job on merit rather than due to connections.
But at the same time, I knew that if it didn’t work out, I could always retrain as a lawyer or management consultant or what have you. A lot of people don’t have that safety net. And there are also always people who are prepared to work unpaid until they get hired, which is pretty tough to compete with.
CK: What does your journalism career look like today? And do you think a regular op-ed in a major newspaper is still the desirable goal to achieve for a journalist looking toward the future of their career… or does it look different now with the presence of social media, podcasts, vlogs and straight-to-web documentaries?
RC: My main job in journalism is as a political columnist on the Sunday Times – I also oversee the Centre for Policy Studies’ CapX site as editor-in-chief, but that’s a much more limited commitment, as we’ve got a good team who keep it running day-to-day. Having the column is still an incredible platform, and I’m very privileged to have it – but if I didn’t have the day job at the CPS then I would probably doing a lot more on top of that, whether a podcast or a Substack newsletter or what have you. Ultimately, there are all kinds of ways of reaching an audience – you just have to find the one that works for you.
CK: Looking back at your career, from early steps to the big decisions, is there anything you would have done differently with the gift of hindsight – perhaps even advice you would give to those starting out now?
RC: There are all kinds of things I should have done differently – mostly having a bit more confidence in myself, and in my value to my employer. But the big things would be things that I hope I got right – always try to do the best possible work, and always try to be someone other people actually want to work with.
CK: In a world of a multitude of news outlets, podcasts, opinion columns and broadcast shows, how do journalists and the media have to evolve in order to continue their mission to inform the public and hold the powerful accountable?
RC: In all kinds of ways! It’s pretty obvious that mass market news is breaking down into a host of niches. The audience for the BBC evening news, for example, has fallen off a cliff in the last few years. But the difference between when I was starting out and now is that the shadow of doom has been lifted – we were all convinced that the internet was going to kill newspapers stone dead, whereas today the kind of subscription models that the Times uses, or the revenue people are getting from Substack, shows that there is a future for high-quality journalism. But you always have to keep innovating.