In the hot seat:
Hannah Uttley: Business Reporter at The Daily Telegraph
Hannah’s week:
- All focussed around delivering copy for both the Daily and Sunday editions.
- RNS statements and trading updates are followed closely.
- Covering the consumer goods, luxury and pharma sectors.
- Pharma coverage is generally wider on the larger firms with some smaller AIM-listed companies.
- Luxury – cover overseas global companies / luxury brands. Also UK brands.
- Aims to get into Telegraph around 9am+.
- Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday are ‘best’ days for meetings with industry figures.
- Breakfast / coffee / lunch at Victoria/office is ideal.
- Couple of bullet points as to who and why relevant is fine.
- Happy to book months in advance if required to book CEO etc 30/45 mins.
- Tuesday & Thursday mornings generally busy – pitching ideas for Sunday & Monday
- Tues: 10.30am meeting – features and profile ideas for Sunday & Monday
- Team looking for 4-5 features for the Sunday
- Profiles – ideally need to be a CEO.
- Monday therefore, a good day to pitch features and profiles
- Thurs: 10.30am meeting – news and scoops for Sunday edition
- Wednesday a good day for pitching news and scoop stories
- Tues: 10.30am meeting – features and profile ideas for Sunday & Monday
- Thursday very busy with focus on:
- copy for Friday’s edition as well as
- file Sunday’s features by 5pm
- Fridays are very busy too: File Sunday news stories by 4 pm.
- Saturday slot: preparing Sunday stories to go online. 12pm to 8pm
- Sunday for Monday: 9.30am-6pm slot. Also 3pm to 12am slot for breaking late news.
Telegraph Business Team:
- Digital team starts at 6:30am. Early shift Reporter gets in for 7am.
- 7.30-10 am key stories flagged.
- Editors gather for mini conference around 10:30am.
- By 11.30am Editors meeting. Most stories are decided on. 75% certain.
- Print & online team work the same, as it’s all one team.
- Stories will generally go online first during the day. No set deadlines. When ready, it goes up. Today keen for new angle or a fresh take of the story.
Top Tips:
- Pitches should focus on business themes: fund raisings, restructurings, new hires if well known, investment in other companies etc. Needs to be a ‘hard’ action.
- Surveys: Not keen on surveys
- Experts: Need short sharp comments sent in first. All about timings. Urgency and move quickly.
- Quotes: Punchy, concise, contrarian is good. Timing is key.
- Talking on the phone: is on the record and not run quotes back past the PR.
- Saturday/Monday editions – interested in lighter content or read, trends.
- Saturday is a lighter section so less feature led.
- Exclusives: Must be an exclusive to make it into the weekend editions: Saturday, Sunday and Monday.
- Images and pictures are helpful, so include them alongside your story pitches. Helps pitches.
- Press trips: Possible and keen for individual and group trips. Have travel account but also happy to receive a level of contribution to travel costs.
- Press release follow up: Please don’t call. Do resend the email again just in case it has been missed.