PR Newswire’s Meet the Media event
An evening with Ruth Sunderland of the Daily Mail
LONDON, April 30th, 2015 /PRNewswire/ - April’s Meet the Media was hosted at the City of London club and featured Ruth Sunderland, Associate City Editor of the Daily Mail, addressing a packed audience with a talk on how the Daily Mail works as well as hints on getting your content featured.
Before joining the Daily Mail, Ruth was Business Editor of The Observer and prior to that held a variety of senior positions at the Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday business departments. She has also been Personal Finance Editor at the Daily Express and earlier in her career worked at Investors Chronicle and Which? Magazine.
Media Gallery
With 4.48 million print readers daily and over 100m unique visitors to its website each month, there is no denying the influence of the Daily Mail. It is the only British newspaper with a female readership greater than 50% and has more ABC1 readers than any other daily newspaper.
Unlike some other media organisations, the Daily Mail, Mail on Sunday and MailOnline operate separately so the city desk is an entity in itself. Ruth describes them as an ‘exporting department’ as they’re keen to get as many stories about business, finance and economics onto the home pages as well as the city pages at the back.
Ruth gave an insight in to how the city desk works and details of a typical day in the life. Alex Brummer, the City Editor, and Ruth run the office with a small team of sector reporters. They start each morning by trawling through the newswires, websites and papers, then distilling that information into a news list ready for their editorial conference which takes place at 10.30am. This is followed by the main editorial conference with all the heads of department. The running order for the pages is then decided at around 3pm. However the desk stays open until 10pm so if there’s a big story that comes through in the evening, everything could change!
Ruth also gave some valuable tips on the type of content that will work well and the best ways to pitch the team:
‘Produce some really good visuals. The city pages can be quite corporate and need a bit of verve so a great picture doesn’t necessarily have to have a huge story... a fabulous picture will do you no end of good if you’re trying to get in.’
The days of pitching via phone aren’t dead. ‘Email and social media are very good, but personal contact is still very powerful. Relationship building is as important as it ever was’.
Ruth also revealed that the financial crisis has been an exciting time to be a financial journalist and although it’s been scary at times it’s certainly never been dull.
Following Ruth’s talk there was a lively Q&A with the audience followed by drinks, nibbles and networking.
The goal of Meet the Media is to enable communications professionals to hear from leading media organisations on how their respective companies work, providing insight into their specialist areas, giving advice on achieving coverage and informing them on effective targeting of journalists within their sector and how to build a mutually beneficial relationship.
The next Meet the Media will be held in London, details to be announced soon.
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