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Tag: Journalism careers

  • Robert Colvile Interview: Insights on Journalism Careers and the Positive Future of Media

    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.

     

  • Cosmo Landesman on making it in journalism and the tragic fate of his son Jack

    Cosmo Landesman

     

    My parents had a cabaret club in America in the mid-West. They did plays and had performers – people like Woody Allen, and Lenny Bruce – and a then unknown singer called Barbara Streisand. They put on plays by Pinter and Beckett and had a show on Broadway and moved to London in 1964.

    I was too young to remember Woody et al. but I remember going to the club and Albert King – B.B. King’s brother – was there and I went up on stage and did the twist. My Dad went on to do all sorts of things; he was a theatre producer, who put on a play at the Edinburgh Theatre Festival. My mother was a lyricist and wrote jazz songs and became a performing poet.

    I think my Bohemian upbringing gave me a taste and a leaning towards the unconventional. I’ve never followed the traditional path of most of my peers. I didn’t go to university and didn’t go to Oxbridge. I dropped out – and hung out.

    There are disadvantages to that, and I don’t think it makes me superior at all. It gives me a certain unique perspective and that’s good. That Bohemian tradition of which my parents were part of in the 1960s is something I miss. The classic moan is that Soho isn’t what is used to be. But cities have to change. Soho, which was once the Mecca of the Bohemian, has gone.

    But sometimes I look back at people who I thought of as square and conventional, and think of how they have the pensions. When you’re in your twenties, you think: “Pensions be damned!”

    I know quite a lot of people who did law, for example, not out of passion or interest, and regret it. I could never do something like that; I’m too dumb. I went into journalism because I was too stupid for everything else. I always wanted to write and I’m happy with my choices. I know plenty of deluded journalists who think they’ll write the great novel. Robert Harris is the exception everybody names. I realised I had no talent in that area; I abandoned all hope!

    Fleet Street used to be fun. Last time I went to The Sunday Times office it was like going into a library; it was so quiet and calm. Nobody hangs out and has lunch anymore. I meet young journalists who remember The Modern Review and it seems exciting to them. I was invited by Robert Peston to come to his Academy to talk about jobs in journalism. I would say: “Don’t do it – or only do it if you’re driven by a crazed passion that you must.” It’s a bit like becoming an actor – have a reserve job.

    I don’t do the kind of journalism that aims to change the world; I want to make people think, but mainly I want to make them laugh. You just do the best you can do, and pray to God that somebody will be moved. You try to be good and say something original and fresh. 95 per cent of what I read is this sludge of opinion and punditry.

    Book-writing is very unlucrative too. If you look at the statistics of the number of writers who make a living from their writing alone, it’s tiny, especially for a country as cultured and book-oriented as the UK. That’s not to say that you shouldn’t write books. It’s very rewarding.

    My real advice to young people is to try and be different. In this day and age, there’s such conformity – especially in the mainstream. 25 people writing the Harry and Megan article: do something different even if it will be a bit harder. Don’t follow the herd.

    If you devote yourself to journalism and writing, you’ll have what we call cultural capital. Don’t not do it because of fear about your pension.

    The death of my son Jack, who committed suicide after developing a drug problem, isn’t an easy topic – especially if you’re a parent. Who wants to read a book about this? It came out over the Christmas period last year. I hope people will find in the book more than just a sad memoir. I wanted it to be thoughtful and to have something to say about loss; I wanted it to be entertaining. I wanted to think about what it means to be a Dad.

    Parenting is trial and error; you bumble along and try your best. One of the things I write about in the book is that I had this idea of being a great Dad. I realise that I wasn’t being the Dad that my son needed, but I was trying to be the Dad I might have wanted. You don’t have to be a great Dad, you have to be a good enough Dad. You have to show up; you don’t have to be spectacular. It’s not just showing up at the parents’ evening. They’ll remember you sitting you in a chair, and leaning over and smiling at them, and pulling a funny face. It’s those small things: as long as there’s an atmosphere of support, love and care.

    You’re going to make terrible mistakes; being a Dad is about being a flawed human being. You’ll shout and lose your temper and regret it. That’s part of the business; it’s what you have to learn.

    There are days when I think Jack could have had more support for his condition, but I didn’t give him enough support either.

    But I can’t point the finger of blame; these things are complex. You often read that so and so committed suicide because of bullying. I don’t believe that; what drives people to that state of despair is a whole set of complex reasons. It’s not just one thing which does that. We always have these initiatives and drives, but I don’t think there’s a magic wand we can wave. We don’t really know why certain individuals commit suicide. Some will have suicidal thoughts; it’s only a minority will actually go through it.

    We need to give young people more tools when they face adversity and unhappiness. Suicide shouldn’t be an easy option; I sometimes wonder it’s become a sort of lifestyle choice – a human right. It should be understood that it’s a terrible thing to do, not just in relation to oneself, but in relation to others. But sometimes the mind orders its own destruction and that’s a scary thing.

    The trouble is my son had a terrible drug problem. We’re beginning to wake up to the impact of drugs on young people. I grew up in a generation where drugs were considered recreational and even mind-expanding, and people thought that anyone who disagreed with this view was a right-wing lunatic. Well, that’s just not true.

    I don’t think prosecuting people is going to solve the problem. You have to get people to understand what they’re doing. Our drugs problem also enriches the drug dealers, who are the worst in our society.

    People feel embarrassed to say they find my book funny, because it deals with tragic things. But humour is important – it’s perhaps especially important here. You don’t have to have a damaged son to enjoy this book.

     

    Jack and Me: How NOT to live after loss is published by the Black Spring Press Group

  • Tomorrow’s leaders: Emily Prescott

    Christopher Jackson interviews a new star of journalism about life at The Mail on Sunday

     

    When you pick up the newspaper what do you turn to first? For me, it depends on the occasion. After a sound sleep, I can face the enormity of the day’s issues, and brave the front pages. Usually, selfish for the next thing, I prefer the culture pages. But sometimes, especially when tired after a day’s work, I’ll go to the diary section to be pepped up by the human delights of gossip.

    When I do so, it’s with appreciation that writing it is the hardest job in journalism; the gossip columnist specialises in the bite-sized indiscretion, the minor cock-up, the eye-popping peculiarity. What’s noteworthy is how little of this there is in today’s PR-burnished world: these stories are hard to find, and needing to be taut and punchy, hard to write.

    At 26, Emily Prescott is already one of the best in the business, with a small team already working under her at The Mail on Sunday. Is this a declining sector?  Every time I open The Evening Standard, the diary section – where Prescott used to work – seems smaller. Prescott bats this away: “If anything, gossip is booming. The Telegraph recently introduced the Peterborough column and The Times Diary was culled during the financial crisis but returned in 2013. Any shrinking pages are a sign of newspaper decline rather than a waning lack of love for gossip and whimsy I think.”

    Prescott’s is a fabulous story. By nature softly-spoken and kind (‘Always be polite, no matter what’), she has shown tenacity to get so far so young. So how did she do it? After a range of almost hilariously non-descript jobs in recruitment and communications (“the pointlessness of those roles weighed very heavily on me”) Prescott decided that only one career would do. “I just really wanted to be a journalist,” she tells me. “So a few years out of university, I messaged Katie Glass on Instagram, saying I liked her features. To my amazement, I emailed her, we met up for a coffee and then she suggested I go to Diary events. I didn’t go to private school; didn’t grow up in London; had zero connections.”

    Astonished, half-thinking the gig a joke, Prescott attended her first party. “Weirdly, I did really well; it was beginner’s luck,” she recalls. “It was a weird law event at one of the posh law firms, and Victoria Coren Mitchell had gone to speak. She said she’d been groped when she was a poker player and men would grope her under the table. It was a good news story – but a complete fluke!”

    From then on Prescott hit the party circuit (“I found it such a thrill, just collecting lines”), and soon did stints at The Sun (“really useful”), The Express (“really awful, so depressing and bleak and SEO-driven”) and The Sunday Times, as the Saturday reporter (“wonderful”).

    After that came a prolonged stint at The Evening Standard, a paper she obviously loves, and which connected her into the worlds of entertainment and politics. “It’s quite easy to get well-connected into Westminster. Now [at The Mail on Sunday], I do showbiz and it’s difficult to get access. But I could get any MP on the phone now, bar Rishi – and even there I could probably get his number.” Prescott isn’t bragging – or the type to brag – she just knows her craft and what it takes.

    She recalls getting to know Sir David Amess MP, who was tragically murdered at his constituency surgery in 2021. “He was doing a campaign to get a statue of Vera Lynn. We spoke during lockdown, so maybe it was the thrill of talking to a stranger which caused a bit of a bond to develop. During the pandemic, interviews would be hours long; people were desperate for new voices in their lives. David was kind and thought of me a few weeks later, and called and said: “I have a potential story for you”. I was struck by the fact that the story wasn’t self-motivated. He had just remembered.”

    Prescott explains the range of interviewees she’s experienced. “Sometimes – and this especially happens with very experienced interviewees – you feel like you’ve had a good interview and that they’ve told you something, but then you’ll listen back and there’s nothing there, except perhaps an anecdote which they wheel out every time.”

    And what about young interviewees? “That can be frustrating – sometimes they’re just nervous. People often don’t understand that I don’t need a massive scandal, I just need something mildly interesting. When they’re so earnest, that’s difficult for a diarist.”

    And what about the effect on Prescott as a person from having met so many well-known people? “I have to watch myself not to do too many celebrity mentions. A friend might say: ‘I saw so and so on the tube the other day’. I might reply: ‘Well, I went to their house the other day’.”

    Some people are less than delightful to interview, Prescott says. “David Attenborough wasn’t incredibly charming,” she recalls. “When I say I’ve spoken to him, he’s so many people’s hero, but I’m not part of the fan club. He’s had an immensely privileged life, but he’s quite curt, and I have spoken to other people who have said the same. He is in his 90s though, so I forgive him a bit.”

    And has she ever had any pleasant surprises? Prescott pauses. “Often the extreme right-wing people can surprise you. Like Nigel Farage – I won’t say he’s lovely but he’s funny and has good manners. I think there is a tendency for Right wing people to have better manners. I’m not quite sure why? Edmund Burke (sometimes hailed as the founder of conservatism) spoke about manners being more important than laws!”

    The move to The Mail on Sunday has led to an increase in her visibility. She recalls doing the media law module on the NCTJ course (which she completed alongside her early jobs), but then tells me what it’s really like to wage war each day on the battlefields of UK defamation law. “I’m very protected now,” she explains. “I can message the lawyers and ask the question – and you do get a feel for whether something might be defamatory. But actually, more important than that is having the confidence to say: ‘This is not illegal; this is not a problem’. I’m always getting legal letters telling me to back off – even Prince Harry’s psychic has sent legal letters!”

    It’s in the nature of gossip to rile people: “That’s because it’s not PR,” says Prescott, smiling. But now, after Twitter run-ins with Jeremy Clarkson and Gary Lineker, she’s more likely to brush off any furore. Nevertheless, those fandangos – silly and needless as they are – tell you a lot about the job of being a high-profile journalist. Prescott managed to elicit in Clarkson that most 21st century of psychological states – the Twitter ‘meltdown’. This occurred when Prescott wrote a funny – and not especially mean –  story about Clarkson’s daughter, who had complained on Instagram about the effect of the Russia-Ukraine war on influencers (‘the great casualty of the Russia-Ukraine war!’ Prescott laughs). But upon publication of her story, Prescott woke – on a hangover as it happened – to a thousand messages, from the dreaded Twitter ‘mob’; specifically, Clarkson’s Twitter mob. The former Top Gear presenter had twice tweeted her (‘he failed to ‘at’ me properly the first time, so did it twice’), lampooning her journalism.

    The sainted Lineker meanwhile piled in on her after coverage Prescott had given his two sons – one story about George Lineker’s business, and a second about Tobias Lineker, who had secured a job DJ-ing at Raffles. Having read these pieces, I’d certainly say that worst things happen at sea, and that Lineker, handsomely paid by the BBC – that is, by the taxpayer – would do well to marry his gift for volubility with a balancing tendency towards reticence from time to time.

    Prescott recalls: “Lineker tweeted me calling me ‘unnecessarily nasty’, then George Lineker piled in, and wrote that I was ‘useless’. They lack an understanding of the Diary. Does Tobias Lineker want me to say he’s innately gifted and self-made? I appreciate people have to defend their sons, but Gary Lineker can use Twitter in that way knowing it’s not bad for his sons’ businesses, and also knowing that no-one criticises anybody for calling out The Mail. A friend of mine asked me how I felt after that, and initially I couldn’t remember what it had been about so I’ve definitely hardened.”

    Nowadays Prescott’s week is constructed around the demands of delivering her copy on time for the Sunday editions. The best time to catch her is undoubtedly a Monday, and her tough days are Thursday and Friday, on which days all right-thinking people shouldn’t contact anyone toiling to produce our Sunday papers.

    Prescott’s success is considerable but there is far more to come. A recent feature for The Spectator about Americans buying up stately homes shows how easily she can do long form journalism too. I should add that she can also draw and write superb poetry.

    Recently, Prescott was interviewing Michael Gove. When she began introducing herself, Gove interrupted her: “I know who you are, Emily.” Gove – for once, some might say – is ahead of the curve. Soon, everybody else will know her too.