What made you want to work in the publishing industry?

I made a decision when I was 14 that I wanted to be a journalist. I didn’t know in what capacity, but I made my subject choices at school and university based around what I thought would help me achieve this. I went to the London College of Printing and worked with a lot of ex-Fleet Street journalists, but it wasn’t until I was doing my dissertation that a Junior Writer job came up at Bliss that I considered magazines a realistic option. I landed that job on the day I handed my dissertation in and never looked back.

Chart your career from the start to where you are now.

I was Junior Writer at bliss for a couple of years and then went to a web start-up, mykindaplace.com, which was a portal for teenagers. There were very few team members, so I went in as Features Editor and then quickly got promoted to Editor. I learned a lot from going into digital journalism at that early stage but had more I wanted to learn from print so following that I went back to bliss as Features Editor and then moved to New Woman magazine as Entertainment Director. I landed the editorship of Smash Hits when I was 25 which was where I got to learn about the publishing and business side of magazines. After that I went back to bliss for the third time as Editor, then moved to edit more! magazine. I was at more! when I got the call about by Stylist, where I have now been for 10 years.

You’ve been an Editor from an early age and throughout your career. How do you view the role of an Editor?

My job as Editor is to listen to the audience, understand them as much as possible and to try and work out what they want – before they even know – then deliver the most original, high-quality content that we can create. We are translators. We have to know our audience better than they know themselves. But it’s a mistake to think we are the audience – even if we have things in common with them, like age, lifestyle or interests. As journalists and editors we have unusual lives and are privy to a lot of opportunities and information our audience will never see or know – we get to peek behind the curtains all the time. So I consider it our job to keep in touch with who our reader really is. For example, when I was Editor of bliss we had immersion days where I would get my team to go back to school for the day and hang out with the teenagers, ask them what they were listening to, what they were talking about and who they were messaging. It was never acceptable to say “when I was a teenager” because our readers’ experiences were so different.

The Stylist Group CEO Ella Dolphin said in an interview recently that you have always been on point with how women are feeling and that Stylist has a very powerful connection to the audience. How have you maintained this powerful connection and understanding of the audience since it launched?

We live and die by how well we know our audience and our readers are very vocal with us about what they like and don’t like. It is our job to listen. For me that’s also listening to the gaps or silences, and also to the throwaway comments. People reveal so much all the time but usually that’s not when they’re pitching you an idea or telling you what they want. The biggest compliment for me is when someone says: ‘I was thinking about that but hadn’t told anyone.’ I also love to watch people reading our magazine. On the Tube I look at the order people read our pages, where they linger or flick back to. Social media is also great for reading the room.

During COVID, how do you spark that creative process and translate what the readers want?

The spontaneous chat is one of the things I miss the most. So much of what we do comes from informal conversations, so we try to create little bubbles of time to recreate that office chat. I keep joking with my colleagues that I am going to have them in the corner of my screen all day, just to listen to what they are chatting about.

What has it been like managing the shift from a print-focused workflow to a digital workflow?

The biggest difference for the magazine is the design and visual process. One of the main things that is time consuming in the print process, is what is it the magazine going to look like? Our design is such an important part of the print experience – we are very visual. Normally, we sketch every page, and try different design executions which means we tend to have a couple of versions before we get to the final proof. We are using templates in our CMS for the digital edition so that removes the design process, but it puts a lot of creative pressure on the one individual image we are using to tell the story. As a team we love design so we are all looking forward to the print magazine coming back.

*Do you have a date in mind for its return? *

It all depends on the advertising market and footfall. As we distribute in major cities, where it is obviously very quiet at the moment, we are assessing different options for distribution but we are hoping to return in Autumn.

Now that your readers are reading the magazine on an app, has the data revealed more about what is engaging readers?

It’s really interesting being able to see all the data behind the magazine like the most popular features and the dwell times, but we are very data driven anyway when thinking about what trends are happening on the website that might do well in the magazine. Having worked across digital for a long time now, I am a big believer in data plus instinct. As magazine editors we were always driven by instinct and although we now have this amazing colour to help us understand how our audiences are behaving, I still think it is important to work with some instinct. Data only tells you what you already know, and instincts will give you the suggestions for what is next.

Having launched the app, are you still confident about the longevity of the print product?

We are absolutely committed to print in the longer term. It is a hugely integral part of our brand and this digital edition is something we were working on before COVID. We have a lot of readers who have moved out of the cities where we distribute, or they can’t get access to a copy at their local station, so this app is a perfect partnership with print. It gives us a bigger footprint and reach.

What’s on your radar?

Pre lockdown we had just launched a campaign called Love Women, which was about inclusivity for all women within – and outside of – Stylist. Now more than ever that conversation is at the forefront of how we should behave so that will continue to be an important narrative for us as we move forward. Similarly, I can see our conversations around sustainability and climate are changing pace and how that will affect our shopping behaviours and fashion choices, which COVID has now accelerated. As a brand, it is super critical that we have a clear vision of where we fit in in the world and what we stand for.

What magazine would you stockpile?

Delayed Gratification, Family Traveller, The Atlantic and the supplements like the Saturday Times Magazine and Weekend.