Growing Audiences and Managing Teams with Ed Walker (Reach)
Growing Audiences and Managing Teams with Ed Walker (Reach)
Ed Walker is Audience and Content Director for regional titles at Reach Plc
Hey folks! Happy belated U.S. Thanksgiving, I hope y’all stuffed your faces with good food and took a little time to reflect. I know I did — I made good old bangers and mash for my mum and me.
As for what I’m grateful for? Well, the main reason I started Inside The Newsroom was to help other journalists learn about the industry, in addition to myself. So today really is one of those occasions where I’m just so damn appreciative of all of you who make it possible for me to do what I do.
Bangers, mash and gratitude aside, we have a very insightful Q&A for you today as we welcome in Ed Walker, Audience and Content Director for regional titles at Reach Plc. Ed and I recently shared a panel on how to enter journalism for Leeds Trinity University, and he had some great advice about what it takes to be an editor of so many different audiences and publications.
Who exactly are Reach Plc? Formerly Trinity Mirror, they own some of the UK’s largest and most influential titles including the Mirror, Manchester Evening News, Liverpool Echo and WalesOnline. Below are a handful of positions they currently have open. Let’s get right to it!
Manchester Evening News — SEO Writer (Full-Time)
BirminghamLive — Agenda Editor (Full-Time)
North Wales Live — Audience Editor (Full-Time)
Wales Online — Reporter (Full-Time)
Reach — Social Media Editor (Full-Time)
“The best editors don’t need to be in the room for their newsrooms to perform”
Thought of the Day 🤔
How many times do we tell ourselves that an event, experience or opportunity will come around again? I’ve come to realise that, in reality, seldom are we in the right place at the right time twice. Life is full of internal and external forces demanding our attention, meaning taking advantage and appreciating things in the moment isn’t easy. Still, we must somehow carve out time to savour what we have in the present, so we don’t rue missed actions from the past.
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Introducing Ed Walker 👋
Ed👇
Daniel: Hello Ed! It’s so great to welcome you onto Inside The Newsroom!
Ed: Great to chat with you, thanks for inviting me on!
Daniel: Let’s get straight to it. Management is both an art and a science. I’ve worked for editors that I’d run through a wall for, and others I couldn’t wait to see the back of. From your years of experience, what have been some of your hardest challenges and best lessons you’ve learned of how to be a manager that journalists respect and are inspired by?
Ed: I’ll quote someone else here, but I was always struck by a phrase Darren Thwaites — Editor-in-Chief of the Manchester Evening News, and Marketplace Publisher across Reach’s North West division — said to me when he was an editor at ChronicleLive in Newcastle. He said “the best editors don’t need to be in the room for their newsrooms to perform”. By that he meant that everyone knew their role, their place and how to work within the team to produce top-class journalism.
I think my lessons would be that you have to balance rolling up your sleeves and leading by example, with stepping back and preparing your team for the next big story or project. My biggest challenge was becoming an editor at 27. Reach — or Trinity Mirror as it was back then — had decided to go digital-only with the Reading Post and its associated titles. I remember everything happening very quickly, and suddenly I was leading a team through a very difficult period, introducing new ways of working, moving office, among other things. I had to learn a huge amount very quickly, but it was always about returning to the basics of what we needed to do day-to-day and week-to-week to establish a digital-only local brand.
Daniel: Journalists aren’t necessarily trained to manage people and large teams, and in turn, management doesn’t necessarily equal leadership. How does Reach train its editors to become more well-rounded managers?
Ed: I’ve actually just got back from two days in Manchester that brought together editors from across Reach’s Live network of titles, for the first time since the beginning of 2020. It was great to see everyone and that kind of time out of the newsroom to talk about what we’ll do in 2022, how things need to change and work differently, and give editors the opportunity to talk through shared challenges and offer inspiration is really important.
So it’s not formal training, as in a course and leave with a piece of paper, but this kind of training and development is important. Of course there’s the basics of people management, but a huge part of it is working with and learning from other editors too.
“If you’re determined to preserve the status quo then journalism probably isn’t the career for you”
Daniel: You’re coming up to 12 years working for various newsrooms under Reach’s collection of titles. What have been the keys of rising through the ranks to your current position?
Ed: I think being willing to go places. And often they were the tough places, the trouble spots, the places where big changes were happening. I’ve sat on news desks when we’ve made big, difficult and unpopular changes, but you have to keep plugging away. I’m not afraid to debate the finer points of our digital strategy and why we’re doing something with any member of a newsroom — I think it’s important for journalists to have the opportunity to ask questions to help them understand why certain changes are being made.
Working in a variety of newsrooms across Reach — from national to hyperlocal — has given me an appreciation of how things can work, and not work, and it’s given me good perspective so I can provide insight to other editors of how things should work in their own teams. I’m not afraid to change and learn new things — sometimes those can be big or small changes — but if you’re determined to preserve the status quo then journalism probably isn’t the career for you.
I guess my first role for Reach sums it up. In 2010, I put my stuff in my car and moved to Cardiff from Preston to join WalesOnline for a role that hadn’t existed before. I knew nothing about Cardiff, but within two months we launched a new hyperlocal brand and built a very engaged digital audience, which was certainly harder than it is today given the tools we now have at our disposal. You have to be willing to take a chance on something, and I was lucky that then editors Tim Gordon and Mike Hill took a chance on me.
Daniel: When I first entered the industry, I was often told to look for a new job, internally or externally, every two years. I’m yet to fully decide whether that’s sound or flawed advice, as there are pros and cons to doing so. As someone who’s been in roles for both a few months and a lot longer than two years, what’s your perspective on when it’s time to ‘stick or twist’?
Ed: That’s a hard one. Sometimes there are opportunities you apply for, and others that are offered to you. I think it’s important to weigh up whether you feel it’s something you will be passionate and interested in, but also you need to recognise that sometimes you may need to fulfil a role that wasn’t in your initial plan.
I’ve not been too set or fixated on a certain location, or role, so I think that’s probably helped as I’m willing to relocate to different places and newsrooms to work with different teams. I would say secondments or short-term projects are very useful to learn about different parts of the business, meet new people and teams, and expand your network within an organisation.
Daniel: I’m a big believer of using past experience to shape the future. With that in mind, had you always wanted to work on the strategic side of journalism, or was this more something that you “fell into”?
Ed: I definitely always wanted to work in digital journalism, although I respected and enjoyed print in the earlier part of my career too — getting my first splash in the South Wales Echo was very exciting! I don’t think I expected to work in a strategic role, and I definitely miss the operational cut-n-thrust of being a title editor. But being able to work across and influence so many titles brings with it different rewards and different satisfactions. I hope that passion for the cut-n-thrust of local newsrooms transfuses into the strategies we set and the tactics we deploy, and those on the newsroom front lines hopefully know that we, as senior people, have that in our hearts.
Daniel: In a way, journalists and editors at every stage of their careers, and in every niche sector of journalism are audience specialists, as the readers and listeners are who we serve. How did working in a plethora of roles and for several different publications prepare you for a role such as an audience director?
Ed: From writing copy and posting to social channels as diverse as WalesOnline, Liverpool Echo, BirminghamLive, CheshireLive, BerkshireLive and ChronicleLive, to being shouted at by angry Geordie readers in Newcastle, to dealing with fuming Women’s’ Institute members in Wokingham, to dealing with a bereaved family in Birmingham, I think it’s given me a real appreciation for the different communities and geographies our Live network serves.
Not everyone was angry, but it’s those experiences that stay with you and from which you learn from your mistakes. There are common threads, of course, but each county, city and town we cover is different and special in its own way. I think I’m quite unique within Reach by having spent time in so many of our newsrooms over the years, and that helps when we’re tackling new challenges, as it’s often easy for people to become lost within the blinkers of their own title and region, and being a network of titles is a huge strength we have.
Daniel: Growing the audiences of approximately 50 different titles must be incredibly challenging. How does your day-to-day mindset have to change compared to focusing on just one or a couple of different sets of readers?
Ed: It’s important in the day-to-day to remember that we have titles which are enormous, such as the Manchester Evening News with a large newsroom and a large audience, but we also have the recently launched WiltshireLive, which has a much smaller team that covers a more county-focused audience. It’s important to recognise the differences between these two newsrooms, and ensure the support and guidance we offer is able to be useful to the MEN as much as to WiltshireLive. That’s not easy!
Daniel: The journalism industry, perhaps more than most, changes rapidly, frequently requiring us to learn new software and tools as we go. As it pertains to growing and retaining audiences, how has that changed since you entered the industry a decade ago?
Ed: We have so many more tools, tactics and techniques we can utilise. When I started at WalesOnline in 2010, the focus was massively on Twitter for growing audience. Facebook was there, but it wasn’t really a news platform, still very much a social networking site only. But I remember we started some early experiments and saw good returns from posting on Facebook.
The platforms are now so much more widely used, which gives us the ability to put our journalism in front of an incredible number of people each day. As an audience specialist, it’s fantastic. I can also remember sending Wales’ email newsletter twice-a-day, and that’s still very much a thing. Overall, we can do so much more than we could do then.
Daniel: What are some specific techniques you’ve deployed to grow each title? How much do they overlap and apply to all publications, and what proportion are individually applicable?
Ed: Remember that journalism is about people. I think we often get fixated on where the audience is reading the story, and forget there’s people on the other end of the devices. If there’s been a big news event, people will be asking questions, and they might also be fretting about the traffic for getting home, so it’s about providing information about road closures and diversions as much as it’s about providing the latest on a police investigation.
That goes back to the people in your teams too. Make sure they’re getting the opportunity to write and do things they’re passionate about, train and challenge them, and also ensure they understand what’s expected of them in their role and when on shift.
Daniel: Before we sign off, any last pieces of advice for those wanting to or currently working in audience development, and also those currently or wanting to manage a team?
Ed: Ensure you’re digging beyond the headline data — why did something do well? What made it work? And can it work somewhere else, or slightly differently? Don’t be afraid to point out if something could be done better or differently, but make sure you’ve got ideas for how. Sitting on the side, throwing rocks, is not helpful. And lead by example. If you want to try a new way of reaching audiences, telling stories, then do it! I’ve done Facebook Lives, I’ve done podcasts, I’ve sent push notifications, I’ve re-written headlines, I’ve broken the CMS. Understand the tools you’re asking journalists to use and make sure they are fit-for-purpose.