A New Job

As you may have heard, I will be leaving The Times at the beginning of October to start a new role at The Guardian as their Digital Development Editor.

I’ll be based in the newsroom, helping The Guardian team to develop their digital skills further as the organisation moves towards its digital-first strategy (this will certainly be a two-way process given the digital talent at the Guardian). I’ll also be looking at developing new ways to tell stories and new digital methods of working.

The Times

Over the past few years I’ve been fortunate to have worked in the team at the centre of  The Times’ move to a digital subscription model. Developing the social and engagement strategy for the site has given me the opportunity to think about (and sometimes challenge) what we now consider to be integral functions of news sites – sharing, commenting and conversing with our readers. I believe this has given me a far better understanding of just what is possible online.

I’ve enjoyed working with editors and our developers to introduce digital tools and skills into the newsroom – from live analytics boards and data journalism tools, to training on social media and reader engagement. I’ve also benefited from working across departments, developing 24/7 live support with our customer service team and increasing the community engagement roles of our moderators. I’ve also had the chance to help build fun projects such as our Twitter Word Nerd game.

I’ve had my successes and my failures but I’ve always tried to learn the lessons from each. I leave The Times grateful for the opportunities I’ve been given and with immensely fond feelings for the friendly and very talented people I’ve had the pleasure of working alongside. I wish them every success in the future.

The Guardian

The new role at The Guardian is a great opportunity for me and I’m very much looking forward to starting in mid-November. In the meantime, I’ll be at the next Hacks/Hackers meet up on 28 September and you can keep up with me on Twitter @timesjoanna – I’m going to have to update that username!

Sly Bailey on the future of digital – full speech

When Trinity Mirror chief executive Sly Bailey spoke at the Association of Online Publishers earlier this month, people seemed to focus on her predictions that 2009 would be a repeat of 1999 with the digital bubble bursting.

I hadn’t heard the whole speech until today, but journalism.co.uk has a natty recording of the whole thing. I think it’s worth listening to, not least in terms of how TM strategy is communicated.

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Big changes for The Birmingham Post – reaction round-up

We’re just come back from a big announcement about the future of Trinity Mirror Midlands, part of that was a major announcement about the future of The Birmingham Post.

I think I want some of the dust to settle before blogging my own thought (and don’t want to gazump my Editor!), but I thought I’d provide a bundle of links to other people talking about what is happening.

I will post my thoughts a bit later, so if you want to leave some questions in the comments, I’ll try and answer them. Suffice to say there are some very interesting times ahead.

Any Qs: Sly Bailey

Sly Bailey[Answers are here]

Ok, this one is a HUGE longshot and I probably shouldn’t be blogging about it. But… what the hell! I’m excited!

It appears that Sly Bailey, chief executive of Trinity Mirror will be in the Post & Mail house tomorrow (Monday)… and The Birmingham Post has requested an interview with her for the Media & Marketing page. That means I’ll be doing the interview! Cripes!

We’ve not had any confirmation yet on whether or not she’ll do it (I’m not even sure how long she’s going to be in the building). But, if this actually comes to pass, I think I’ll be asking her to outline her digital strategy for the Trinity Mirror Midlands division, now she’s decided not to sell it.

If you have got any others, let me know ASAP!!!