In the hot seat:
Lucy Hunter Johnston: Executive Editor at the Evening Standard
Lucy’s Focus:
- Oversees Features, Arts, Lifestyle, TV, Travel, podcasts and London Life sections
- 3 podcasts: The Royal, Literature, Women Tech Charge
- not covering news, business or sport. Oversees the Evening Standard
- Not really PR’able unless relating to a ‘big’ interview or political situation
- Very tricky for Lucy to meet PRs – better to go through the team
- NEVER call or email between 7-11am.
- Lucy gets into the office at 7 am. Has an 8am conference and they go to print at 11 am
- She works 24 hours ahead and 3-4 months ahead for features
Evening Standard:
- Evening Standard prides itself on the fact they are the first to run new, relevant news. The paper is seen as the go to place to find out where to be eating, drinking and going out
- Evening Standard does not regard Metro or City AM as competition – they consider other National papers as their competition
- Audience: younger than most other papers, 25-45 year olds. Believed that 1 in 3 Londoners read the Evening Standard everyday
- Super engaged and switched on with very diverse interests
- Online audience is different – more international rather than Londoners
- Online and print teams are different although work closely together
- Some editors for print are the same, e.g. food and tech
- Exclusives are absolutely paramount. If anything has been covered in other papers that day it will be pulled and won’t run
- There is a weekly meeting every Tuesday at 11 am to discuss feature stories
- Print is London focussed apart from travel
- “Escape The City” is going to be a new regular slot
- Evening Standard runs campaigns, but they start as an investigation
- Campaigns running now include Future London
- Christmas gift guides will be running throughout December
