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Alessia Horwich (00:08):
Welcome to On the Rox, a podcast from Roxhill Media that asks some of the best journalists in the UK for their solutions to the kind of dilemmas that confront PRs daily. We know that there’s not a one size fits all way of communicating with journalists, so we are going direct to the writers in the newsroom to hear how they like to work with PRs and how to stand out in their inboxes. My name is Alessia Horwich. I’m a former Sunday Times journalist, now the brand director at Roxhill.
Today we’re going to be talking about how to pitch to the regular slots, relative values and life in the day in the Sunday Times Magazine with the senior commissioning editor Liz Edwards. Liz, we’ve worked together for a long time, but I don’t know, a huge amount about how you got into journalism. Do you want to tell me what was your path in?
Liz Edwards (00:49):
Well, I did a few bits of writing at university as lots of people do, the college newsletter and a very strident feminist magazine, but I was studying law but then decided that law wasn’t for me. So then at that point I was like, what else do I enjoy? So finally the penny dropped. I was like, oh, maybe I need to take this writing thing and run with it. So then I did a journalism course, got some work experience on Wanderlust
Alessia Horwich (01:20):
Oh nice
Liz Edwards (01:20):
Proper magazine and then yeah, all went from there.
Alessia Horwich (01:25):
And I mean we met when we were working on travel together. Well, you on the mag and I was on the section, but you’ve since moved across to the Sunday Times Magazine. How’s that been and how has that changed the way you feel about journalism?
Liz Edwards (01:37):
Well, it is been brilliant. It’s really good to just get a very different perspective on how things work. I mean, you think working for the same newspaper, it wouldn’t actually have changed very much, but each desk sort of has its own very particular way of working, obviously just different consent. It’s not just the subject matter that’s different. It’s been really good way of broadening my horizons in a non geographical way.
Alessia Horwich (02:03):
Yeah, I mean you worked in travel for a long time and now you’re not doing it at the moment. What’s the best thing about being on the desk in the Sunday Times Magazine?
Liz Edwards (02:11):
It’s partly the variety. I mean, I thought travel was pretty varied, but obviously the subject matter is almost infinite when you get to the magazine. So there’s a new thing coming along every week. And also I still sort of doing a bit of travel, but it’s just to put it bluntly, it’s a bigger team so you can sort of take your time. I wouldn’t say it’s un pressurised, but you can be confident that you’ve got time to get it really absolutely spot on. right
Alessia Horwich (02:39):
You have been covering relative values in life in the day for a while, and so you know the ins and outs of it, I mean it’s one of the foundation stones of the Sunday Times Magazine, isn’t it? It’s been running the magazine for such a long time. Do you know how long?
Liz Edwards (02:52):
So life in the day began in 1977.
Alessia Horwich (02:56):
Wow.
Liz Edwards (02:56):
And relative values came along, I think it was 1983, so bit later, but that’s both been going more than 40 years. They feel like really they’ve both got a massively strong heritage and yeah, it’s a real privilege to work on it. It’s a really lovely bit of the paper.
Alessia Horwich (03:16):
It’s also very varied in the, it’s not always stonking celebrities that do it. Sometimes it is, it’s brilliant and other ones are less so. Have you got any highlights of ones that you have either worked on or read?
Liz Edwards (03:27):
Yeah, I mean there’ve been some really amazing ones over the years. I mean, I really loved the John Cooper Clarke life in the day that run recently. I mean, he’s such a brilliant character and it sounds very straightforward, the interviews, it is all in their own words. And then our interview is kind of just put it together in a slightly neater package. There’s minimal editing, which sounds like it’s straightforward, but actually sometimes when you are piecing together spoken word into a sort of coherent piece, it is harder than it sounds.
But that one particularly, you could just really hear his voice, you could hear him saying it and he just, I dunno, national treasure isn’t he?
Alessia Horwich (04:10):
It really jumped off the page,
Liz Edwards (04:10):
It really came across.
Alessia Horwich (04:11):
Yeah, that one. And I think sometimes ones like that are the best ones that stand out. One that I remember from my time was Orlando Bloom’s Life in the Day.
Liz Edwards (04:20):
That was a classic
Alessia Horwich (04:21):
What happens when you are filed an interview like that. It’s their general joy on the desk, but it’s going to be such a great one.
Liz Edwards (04:28):
Yeah, totaly.
Alessia Horwich (04:29):
And what’s it like when it goes the other way?
Liz Edwards (04:31):
I mean, I haven’t seen a dreadful one. I think the hardest ones to deal with are when people have, I think maybe if they’re just a bit more nervous interviewees or they’re really not relaxed and so they’re not opening up and none of it’s, although it’s sort of personal, none of it’s sort of terribly intrusive. There’s no gotcha moments.
So you just want to say you want to know what people have for breakfast and who puts the rubbish out and that sort of thing. It’s that really relatable stuff. But sometimes people are so anxious about giving too much away that you don’t get that. And I suppose that’s when maybe they fall a bit flat or they kind of don’t want to talk about things that you know the readers will want to hear them just touch on. Oh, that’s in the public domain already, but it’s like, well yeah, but remind us.
Alessia Horwich (05:24):
What is the type of person who works well? I mean, I don’t know if you need to take it, if it’s different for relative values in life in the day, but talking generally, who are the types of people you want to be pitched?
Liz Edwards (05:33):
I mean the bottom line is that you want household names with some exceptions, but broadly it’s household names so that when a reader picks up the magazine or sees it online, they know instantly who it is. You’re not having to explain, oh, that one who was in that thing.
And so much as we love to celebrate up and coming talent, they’re a harder sell. I mean, having said that, if you’re talking about sports people for instance, so I interviewed Meghan Jones, one of the Red Roses, the female rugby players. And if you’re not into rugby, if you’re not into women’s rugby, then you wouldn’t have a clue who she was.
But it worked partly because we turned it around really quickly after England won the World Cup. So they were sort of front of mind. But also I think there’s just a recognition that if people, even if they’re not totally household names, then if they’ve kind of achieved some amazing marker of recognition, then they’re going to be interesting as well.
Alessia Horwich (06:36):
In terms of audience, that must be important for PRs to assess if someone is a household name. So who is the Sunday Times magazine’s audience and who are you thinking about when you are commissioning?
Liz Edwards (06:47):
We’ve got quite a wide range of readers. I mean I guess they skew in terms compared to other desks on the paper. Our readers are probably at the older end, maybe a bit older than Style readers say, it’s a pretty good mix. It’s men and women, it is all ages. We assume our readers are a pretty intelligent bunch.
Alessia Horwich (07:11):
Are they London centric?
Liz Edwards (07:12):
A lot of our readers are in London, but actually we’re digital first now and our readers are all around the world. I mean I think we are probably still thinking of a British audience first, but increasingly we’re trying to sort of push the boundaries a little bit.
Alessia Horwich (07:28):
You talked then just about a quick turnaround. So tell me a little bit about lead times for these interviews. I remember that there used to be a huge bank of them piling up. Is that still the case?
Liz Edwards (07:39):
Yes, yes, there is quite. There’s a very well stocked larder currently, which is good and bad. You never know when you’re going to have to sort of swap things in and out. A sort of safety valve I suppose, better that than bare shelves. If there are no last minute switch roofs, then I would typically say we want three weeks to a month
Alessia Horwich (08:05):
Ok.
Liz Edwards (08:05):
from sort interview and shoot. In the case of relative values to publication, bear in mind that the magazine has a longer lead time than the rest of the paper.
Alessia Horwich (08:14):
What’s the lead time on the mag?
Liz Edwards (08:16):
So we go to press like 10 days before the magazine is in the newspaper. The frustration is that you can’t be too reactive, although if push comes to shove, you can get something in maybe in a couple of weeks if you really want to.
And of course you can run it online much quicker. That’s something that we’ve been doing a bit of recently where the copy’s there, we’ve pulled it all together and we’ve got it up online straight away, even if it’s then in the magazine 12 days later.
Alessia Horwich (08:45):
Yeah, that’s really interesting. I was going to ask about the credit. So really the timing’s to do with whatever the PRs client is promoting, I assume. So they need to be pitching you a month before whenever their credit comes good or
Liz Edwards (08:58):
I mean the pitch needs to be quite a long time before that.
Alessia Horwich (09:02):
Ok
Liz Edwards (09:02):
Really partly because of the well stock shelves, it means that, so currently I think we’re full up to the end of the year and then probably pushing into January as well. If you’re pitching then you’ve got to think quite far forward I would say.
Alessia Horwich (09:18):
Can you tell me a bit about how each works? How does the interview work? How do you do it? Who writes them? And I mean life in the day is pretty self-explanatory, but relative values it can be. Tell me about what kind of relationships work for that. And I wondered because I was reading a lot of them to prepare. What do you actually want them to talk about? I read the Jason Donovan one.
Liz Edwards (09:44):
Oh yes. His son Zac.
Alessia Horwich (09:45):
And he talked mostly about himself with that one rather than his son. So I was kind of wondering how does it work and what is the focus of the interview?
Liz Edwards (09:52):
Yeah, I mean it is a balance with relative values because obviously where you’ve got a celebrity, you want to get their anecdotes and you want to hear about especially the dark years and the glories and all the juicy stuff. But you really want to hear about their relationship as well.
And particularly when you’ve got pairings where one is famous and the other one isn’t, then often you can get more insight from the less or the non-famous one because they’re sort of talking about how they feel about that celebrity. And so you are sort of getting a different feel for it.
But in terms of which pairings work as a rule, which is kind of really very rarely, very rarely broken, we say they either have to be in a relationship or be related, but it could be a grandma and a grandson or it could be an aunt and a niece. By the time this comes out, we’ll have had two people who aren’t related by blood, but they’re wives are sisters, but they’re both well-known. So that works. And also they’re all really close and we do get pitched people who are sort of known as pairings but aren’t related and we tend to say no. I mean if Ant and Dec came knocking on our door, I don’t think would turn them away. Generally we want them to have spent some considerable time together and not just in a professional way as well.
Alessia Horwich (11:11):
And how long does the interview taken? How is it done?
Liz Edwards (11:13):
So we always ask for 45 minutes for each interview. So the relative values interviews are done separately, so you get 45 minutes with each one. We did have one couple recently who really, really wanted to be in the same room together. We pushed back quite a lot on that. Anyway, we ended up allowing them to do it, but they had to promise not to jump in. It just felt.
But the thing is obviously you’re then presenting the words separately so it doesn’t work if they’re finishing each other’s sentences.
Alessia Horwich (11:43):
It’s like interrogating two suspects in the same room, isn’t it? It just doesn’t work quite as well.
Liz Edwards (11:47):
Exactly. And seeing if their stories match up because a lot of the joy of it comes when one of them has a childhood recollection of something and the other one remembers it, but their takes on it are very different.
So that’s always fun. Life in the day, that’s 45 minutes as well. Sometimes it’s a little bit less, there’s a bit of flexibility about it, but that’s our starting point that we’d ask for to really get a good run at it.
And then with relative values, and this is often a deal breaker that we have to shoot them together. There was one I was trying to set up of where the father was in New Zealand and the son was LA and they weren’t planning to be in the same room together for a year, so there weren’t even any recent photos that we could maybe fudge it with.
So that one just didn’t work out, which is a great shame, but normally people are really happy to be shot together and they’ll welcome you into their home. Some of them we had Richard Osmond and his wife, we shot them at home. You appearing at the books on the shelf behind you obviously to see what they’ve got. Sometimes it might just be in a park nearby and occasionally we might have to shoot someone in a sort of hotel, but it is much better if there’s a personal element to it.
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Alessia Horwich (14:05):
It is clear that you get joy out of doing this. I get joy from reading them. There’s a lot of joy for the Sunday Times end of it. What’s in it for the interviewees?
Liz Edwards (14:14):
Well, I think mean it is the continuation of that joy. They’re such positive pieces. They’re really well loved, they’re so well established. They’re the bits the paper that readers will often turn to first or maybe after they’ve read all the bad news just cheer themselves up.
And I think so certainly for relative values, it’s a really nice opportunity for two people to just say lovely things about each other in public. We’ve heard of lots of incidents where that they’ve been printed out and framed
Alessia Horwich (14:43):
Oh really
Liz Edwards (14:43):
Family mementos,
Alessia Horwich (14:45):
That’s nice
Liz Edwards (14:45):
Which is really touching and Life in the day as well. It is in their own words. It’s a really pretty nice gentle, they can say they can celebrate their highlights and show them to be a nice rounded human being and it’s read by millions of people and it’s well loved. So I think there’s lots in it for people really.
Alessia Horwich (15:04):
Tell me about the people who write them. Do you think it’s a better idea to pitch to them or to pitch to you?
Liz Edwards (15:09):
That’s a good question. We have got a really solid roster of really amazing interviewers. That’s not to say that new ones aren’t introduced now and then, but they’re really sort of seasoned professionals. It doesn’t mean that they’re good at catching people up, but they’re just really good at drawing people out and getting them to relax. So like Danny Scott, Caroline Scott, they’re sort of names that come up a lot. Nick Duerden and Nick McGrath. We rely on them to bring ideas to us as well as commissioning them out. And so it sort of works both ways. We might on the desk, we might have names that we decide would be a great fit and then we’ll try to get hold of PRs and set it up and then commission them out. But often obviously all our interviewers have great relationships with PRs as well. So in terms of who to pitch to, it could go either way. If you’ve got a good relationship with the writer, then I’d say probably go to them, but there’s no harm going to the desk either.
Alessia Horwich (16:10):
And if you are going to pitch to the desk, well actually, if you’re going to pitch to either what does the perfect pitch for either of these kind of franchises look like? What’s the essential bits, what’s maybe a bit more flexible?
Liz Edwards (16:21):
What I find really helpful is just a little biography of them, even if you think they’re a household name, just a sort of reminder of who they are, what they’ve done, and also a little bit of the personal stuff, the kind of thing that they might talk about. It is really useful with relative values. If we are thinking about interviewing a pairing where one isn’t famous, just to know a little bit about the non-famous one as well because you can research, it’s obviously on Google, but that’s the stuff that you’re not going to find and it just gives you a sense of the kind of things they might say about each other or the kind of where the questions might lead. It doesn’t have to be very detailed, but just a few lines on each. That’s really good. I would say it’s also really useful to know obviously what’s being promoted, but what kind of expectations there are around when a piece might come out. Because if they’re promoting something but it’s happening in three weeks and there’s no gaps, then we don’t want to commission things to sit on them. Like I say, it does happen, but the intention is never to file it away to gather dust. So some sense of that expectation is really helpful.
Alessia Horwich (17:34):
What should the subject line be?
Liz Edwards (17:36):
I mean the person’s name is a good start and it might be worth saying interview opportunity as well just to make it stand out from more general press releases about launches and that sort of thing.
Alessia Horwich (17:48):
Is there ever scenario where someone is pitched as an interview for the main features and then you guys think, oh, actually this would be much better for this slot? Or is it mostly that they get pitched specifically?
Liz Edwards (18:00):
Yeah, I mean it is sort of interchangeable. What it might depend on is sort of how much time, if you’ve got a day with your client and you’ve got to get in eight interviews, then maybe a 45 minute phone or Zoom chat for life in the day is going to be just what they want or just what the client wants. But we will ask, if we see a name come in and we think actually we’d really love a bigger profile, then we might ask if there’s time for that or the other way round. I suppose the one thing to note though is that if they are doing lots of interviews and this is something that it’s worth including, I would say, and if not the first communication, certainly early on, it’s just an idea of what else they’ve got in the pipeline so that we are not all running personal interviews with the same person or the same weekend.
Alessia Horwich (18:46):
I assume that exclusivity isn’t a huge priority for these formats, but it’s important to know what else is going on.
Liz Edwards (18:53):
Exactly. And so I mean if we can have an exclusive then brilliant. But yes, it is always useful to know that it’s they’re not going to be traffic jam.
Alessia Horwich (19:02):
Does it ever happen the other way that they say something particularly amazing in these interviews and it gets bumped up to a full blown interview?
Liz Edwards (19:10):
Not in my experience. I mean, I guess you might then ask to go back for more, but if you were doing a profile interview, you’d want longer with them and then you’d definitely want to shoot so then that you couldn’t convert a life in the day non shoot to a profile with a shoot. I mean it’s not impossible, but yeah, I don’t recall it happening.
Alessia Horwich (19:32):
No. Is there a specific time of the week or the month when you and the team are thinking about commissioning this? I mean we should say obviously that Emma
Liz Edwards (19:42):
Broomfield
Alessia Horwich (19:43):
Broomfield is going to be back from maternity leave, but you can pitch these things to anyone on the desk, I assume.
Liz Edwards (19:48):
Yes, yes. I mean she’s overseeing it and if you know her then by all means try her first, but I’ll be covering if I need to, if she needs cover. So it can come in via any of us with, we’re a close team and we’ll share ideas.
Alessia Horwich (20:05):
But because it’s a franchise that goes all the time, I’m assuming that it’s not like you must have your ideas in for the ideas meeting every week whenever you do it.
Liz Edwards (20:12):
No, no. I mean, I would say if there’s a busier part of the week, it’s probably on Wednesday and Thursday when we’re really focusing on getting to press. So Friday and Monday are probably the days when you might be more likely to be browsing your inbox. I don’t know if you pitch something first thing on a Wednesday, that could go either way. You might not get an answer the next week.
Alessia Horwich (20:35):
Well, I wanted to ask you, it’s relevant for the Meghan Jones interview that you mentioned before. Does there need to be a news hook?
Liz Edwards (20:40):
No. I mean it can help in the scheduling and clarify in your mind if you know that you’re working towards a particular date, but you just want to know there’s a reason to publish. And so sometimes that might just be because someone is very well loved, but also, I mean realistically, most celebrities are not going to be giving interviews unless they’ve got something to promote. So in practise it ends up that there is generally some sort of timely peg.
Alessia Horwich (21:06):
Liz, if somebody was pitching to you for these slots for the first time, what would be the three main things that you would advise them to do?
Liz Edwards (21:12):
First of all, I would really make sure that they make sure that their client knows what the format is and understands it. Because I think that’s a really key part of getting interviewees to relax and be open and candid. And we’ve had a couple that have not quite worked out, have been where they really want to talk about their project and they don’t want to talk about the personal stuff. And although, like I say, it’s not intrusive personal questions, but if they’re uncomfortable talking about what cereal they like, then it can make it a little bit harder. So I would say in terms of the groundwork with the client, that’s really important to sort of make sure that that’s clear. But in terms of pitching, I think it’s just that making it clear that this is what the person is going to likely to be talking about or has to offer, but this is what we’re promoting and here are the dates, that sort of thing.
Alessia Horwich (22:13):
Liz, when PRs are pitching, are there any other little sort of extras that they can offer you that might induce you to commission something that maybe not, maybe a really juicy story that the person has or something else like a big social media following
Liz Edwards (22:29):
All those things will help. I mean, obviously the juicy stories are great because you want to know that readers will have something sort of get their teeth into, but particularly if the interviewee has a big social media presence. Some of the people we’ve interviewed, that’s how they’ve come to prominence. And so if there’s any chance of a collaboration, well we can both post this at the same time, then that’s always, it is not necessarily going to seal the deal, but it’ll definitely help and it’s definitely worth knowing because that’s something that obviously we’re looking to do more of.
Alessia Horwich (23:08):
Thank you, Liz. That’s been really fun to talk about and I hope you’re going to get loads of great pitches in.
Liz Edwards (23:12):
Yeah. Brilliant. Thanks.
