Posts Tagged ‘Guardian’

Thanks to an early-morning TfL fail, I unfortunately missed the first ten minutes of the Gorkana breakfast briefing with Andrew Clark, Business Editor and Heather Stewart, Economics Editor at The Observer.  The parts I did catch however were extremely useful and I’ve included some of the key points below:

Links between The Guardian and The Observer:

- Apart from specific editors like Andrew and Heather, many of the journalists at Guardian Media Group are seven-day operatives specialising in key subject areas.  Their main areas of focus are breaking news throughout the week and working on Sunday news and features

- When pitching, you will need to specify which paper you think your story would be suited for

- Links from the Observer Business section to the rest of the paper – many of the stories are consumer-focused and easily accessible and so depending on the angle of the article the story can be moved into the main section of the paper

- Online: If a story is urgent the team will publish early online, however they do plan stories with a Sunday publication date in mind

Working week:

- Work from Tuesday – Saturday

- Tues/Weds – Conduct majority of briefings with PRs, finding story leads

- Thurs – Star to plan for weekend edition

- Fri – Planning for lead news and features

- Deadline: Saturday around 12:00 p.m.

- In terms of submission planning meeting for features take place Thurs/Friday, breaking news jus goes straight to the relevant journalist

What makes a good Observer story:

- Fits in with the broader news agenda

- Features with spokespeople who are willing to think outside the box (Roger Carr, CBI)

- Stories around current topical issues (e.g. Lord Davies Women in Boardrooms report)

- Political/green/CSR issues always of interest

PR-able sections:

- Punditry throughout the section – spokespeople who are willing to be controversial and have a strong opinion

- Case studies are always welcomed

- Success stories/company results  - don’t have to be a listed company, can be a company that is doing things differently etc.

- Don’t tend to run bylines/features although if you think your company/spokesperson is prolific enough then feel free to pitch!

- Observer podcasts –pitches can be sent to Paul Maynard

- Engaging with the team – like to speak to CEO level, but any credible players within the business world will be considered.  Happy to meet with PRs first to build a rapport

Specific pitching - The UK Budget:

- The team envisage that there will not be many shocks in the upcoming budget, will me more focused around key themes such as unemployment and the action the government plan to take to alleviate the situation

- Do not bombard the team with 5+ comment emails during the day.  They prefer more though-out, opinionated comment the day after the event

Such excitement in this morning’s scanning meeting as the team pored over the papers trying to spot the April Fools stories. This year seemed to yield more stories than ever before with several clever advertisers getting in on the act as well.

Granted, in some papers it wasn’t so easy to spot which were the April Fools stories and which just fell under the normal brand of ridiculous reporting, with some of our colleagues even convinced that certain papers did not have any irregular features in them…slightly embarrassing not to spot that the Circle Line is probably not going to be home to another Hadron Collider. What?! It was early!

Anyway we thought we would do a roundup of everything we found - have we missed anything!?

Labour’s election strategy: bring on no-nonsense hard man Gordon Brown - The Guardian

Experts find way to stop us ageing - Daily Express

Labour’s election strategy: bring on no-nonsense hard man Gordon Brown - Guardian

If we are to believe The Daily Mirror and the Daily Express, our Majesty has fallen on tough times, and has taken to Flying with EasyJet…be honest - you did have to look twice!

Meanwhile, The Sun wondered how many people might be tempted by a lick of paper, the Daily Mail wowed us with stories of the AA’s new breakdown service.

In France it’s much simpler. Just pin a picture of a fish on someone’s back…. Poisson d’Avril!

For a full list of today’s Fleet St Foolery, click here.

The Guardian has today announced plans to launch a local news service called Guardian Local, in the cities of Edinburgh, Cardiff and Leeds. This ‘experimental’ project will mean hiring so-called beatbloggers in each of the locations to create localised content.

This is great news for any of us who have clients which mean we regularly deal with local content and it is really refreshing to see more importance being placed on regional news. It will be interesting to see how the beatbloggers are chosen in each location and also to find out how contactable they will be for us prs! Do we think this is something that will catch on with some of the other nationals?