Hey, Osborne: This is what it’s like editing a newspaper

Following George Osborne’s surprise and controversial appointment, former newspaper editor Chris Blackhurst explains what the job is really like…

So George Osborne thinks he can edit a major newspaper part-time, does he? Perhaps the job has changed. Certainly, when I was editor of The Independent there weren’t enough hours in the day to accommodate all the demands.

Even when I had supposed down-time, I still found myself reading other newspapers and browsing websites, and watching TV news programmes, to see what they were covering, and how, and to look for possible leads.

I began at my desk at 8.30 in the morning, usually with a chat with the Deputy Editor – that’s if I did not have a breakfast meeting. I would deal with emails, then scan all the papers and check the news platforms and social media, for stories.

Then came the morning conference with the heads of the newspaper’s different sections. They would go through their lists of ideas, then we would start planning the following day’s edition.

Once they’d gone, in would troop the leader writers and we would run through the topics that we most cared about, and discussed where we stood on them.

Out they would go, and then there’d be more meetings: with the managing-editor to go through the budgets or a proposal of mine involving spending money; with the lawyers to examine a defamation claim; with the advertising director who wanted to sell an advert that would take up more space than usual; with foreign correspondents who were paying a visit; with a staff member who had a personal issue; with a freelancer who was offering a particularly juicy tale; with a book publisher who wished to see if I could be persuaded to serialise one of their new works; with a possible recruit; with a group of journalism students touring the offices.

And so it went on, before lunch and after lunch (invariably taken with a journalist or politician, advertiser, business figure), day in day out.

Afternoon conference was at 4pm. Not attended by quite so many people, it was when we settled on the running order of articles, formulated an image in our minds of how the paper was going to look. I tried to settle on the splash. Back in would come the leader writers, with their tightly argued words, for analysis and approval.

At 6pm, I’d see how the BBC News was regarding the world. Sometimes their treatment or non-treatment of a subject would provoke a rethink. More discussions.

Then the pages would begin coming across the screen or printed off and dropped into my in-tray. Every single one had to be studied, taken apart, and if needs be, redone. Are the headlines grabbing enough? Does the intro of the story make sense? Are the pieces on the page sufficiently different to engage a reader who may not be interested in the lead but is entertained by the report underneath, and vice versa? What are the pictures like? Does the graphic work?

In the run of Home News, are we missing anything? Are we offering enough contrast, of light and shade, of heavy articles followed by less serious ones? Same in Foreign? Have we got pieces of great writing, that define the paper? Is the cartoon funny and sharp enough? In Obits, are they the right deaths? On Business, have we managed to convey the essential developments in finance and commerce? And I haven’t even got to Features and Sport.

Finally, the layout of the front page and the wording of the headlines, and selection of the main photo. Time for one more read of the whole lot, to put myself in the position of the reader coming to it, fresh, in the morning. And the paper was done.

That’s not allowing for a story held up by legal issues, deciding what to do about one that would offend an advertiser, and a breaking report that had to be squeezed in somewhere.

I’ve not mentioned the phone calls, often from a political leader or their advisers, flagging up an important speech or announcement. Dinner would usually be work-related, sometimes I’d be speaking. More calls on the way home. Finally, sleep.

Tomorrow, do it all again. And the day after that. At weekends, I’d have to read all the papers to see what we’d missed, what we could have done better, what we should follow. There’d be calls and emails with colleagues back and forth.

Obviously it was a huge team effort, and I would have been bereft without mine.

But in the end, it was my name on the door; my reputation that would be traduced if an error was made; me who had to deal with the proprietor who thought his cash could have been better spent.

Somehow, Osborne can do all this in half a day and be an MP the rest, and also advise an investment manager, make speeches and charge for them, and complete a project for an educational institute in the US.

George, you must be a better time-manager than I ever was. But I loved it. Good luck.

Chris Blackhurst is a former editor of the Evening Standard’s city pages and the ex-editor of the Independent, where this article first appeared. It has been published here with the author’s permission.