New Year, New Job

My timeline on social media for the last week has been a combination of links to features about ‘new year new you’ and announcements by journalists of ‘new year new job’.

Like celebrity deaths at Christmas, I’m not sure that there really are disproportionate numbers of career moves in January, but it does feel that way. Incidentally, I’m indebted to the Roxhill Twitter feed for catching me up on any I might have missed.

The challenge is firstly to understand who is doing what when a title brings in multiple new editors (as, in fact, the Telegraph has with a new features director, Lucy Hunter Ford and head of live features, Susie Butter). And once you’ve established that, what are their interests – both in subject matter but also how, why and when they want to be contacted. 

Then there’s the staffers going freelance – including our own ace food writer Tomé Morrissy-Swan.

Years ago when I was a restaurant critic, I caught sight of the legendary wallchart that restaurateurs circulated amongst themselves of who reviewed for whom and what they looked like. It was quite hilarious but also, I imagine, useful. Most if not all media organisations have org charts of staff in different departments. I wonder if they could be “bribed” to share them with outside agencies…

Meanwhile, working on a newspaper, it feels a bit like there’s only one story in town, but – as I think I’ve mentioned before – readers might be interested in Prince Harry, but they also want to read about other subjects. A breadth of reads – a smorgasbord if you like – is what makes people subscribe to a title. Thank goodness for consumer stories such as Waitrose vs Aldi and what’s going on at Noma!