In our recent webinar we spoke with Patrick Jenkins - Deputy Editor at the Financial Times, for a discussion on how his team are dealing with the lockdown and the business news agenda, and how you can best work with them.
1. How has the lockdown impacted you in The Sunday Times?
The challenge is conversing with a team and then communicating with contacts and it’s always more difficult when you’re dispersed. I’ve been pleasantly surprised by how the tech has worked so it’s working well in general, conference calls and video calls have tended to get us through.
Sunday papers rely on exclusives and insights from contacts. The usual working week runs Tuesday to Saturday and so on Tuesdays and Wednesdays, reporters would usually be out and about having meetings and attending events which provide so many little gems of intel. In the average week you’d usually you meet between 5 and 20 new people and so the current situation means you are more reliant on existing contacts and much less so on new ones. All things considered, I’m quite pleased at how it’s worked out and the team have performed very well.
People constantly remark that this whole crisis has shown that remote working is possible, and that people are just as productive as they are in the office. Actually, I find people in general work slightly longer - you arrive at your desk early without any commute, the day is more intense because your colleagues aren’t interrupting, and people tend to work until the work is done. In general people have pulled together very hard, but it’s certainly entered the gruelling phase now where everyone’s ready for a bit of change.
Throughout the entire lockdown period I’ve been going into the office on Thursday to Saturday to put the paper and the section to bed, as have the news editor and other section heads. The Sunday Times have now started bringing in other business reporters on a rotation. It’s nice to have a bit of human interaction back in the team and it’s amazing how much quicker things are when someone’s right there, you can just bounce around ideas. Some nuance gets lost in chit-chat or email and when you’re in front of someone it’s much easier to shape up stories and ideas.
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Watch back our webinar with Patrick Jenkins - Deputy Editor at the Financial Times, for a discussion on how his team are dealing with the lockdown and the business news agenda.
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