Let’s start with the basics…
I’m Ed Walker, I grew up in South London – Morden to be exact – and since then I’ve lived in Preston, Cardiff, London, Manchester, Chorley and Preston (again).
Your career at a glance…
I’ve spent nearly 15 years now working mostly in regional digital journalism, most of that was with the UK’s largest multimedia commercial publisher Reach PLC. They publish the likes of the Manchester Evening News, Birmingham Mail, Liverpool Echo and many many other titles.
I was part of the senior editorial management team as we undertook a large-scale digital transformation of Reach’s newsrooms over the last decade and I held many senior roles across its newsrooms during that time.
My first full-time journalism role was in Cardiff, with WalesOnline, where I joined as Online Communities Editor and worked as part of an integrated newsroom. My stories appeared not just online but also across the South Wales Echo, Western Mail and Wales on Sunday. I spent nearly two years there before moving to Reach’s – called Trinity Mirror at the time – central editorial team.
I then travelled the country as we undertook the digital transformation of the newsrooms, working on audience development projects, often editing titles for periods of time – most notably in Reading, Berkshire – where the title went digital-only.
Most recently before leaving Reach I was overseeing the expansion into the US market for the Mirror and Express news brands.
I’ve been fortunate in my career to work on so many different projects, news brands and gain an insight and understanding into not just journalism – at a hyperlocal, regional and national level – but also the business of journalism.
There’s also an entrepreneurial streak in me, I set up in 2009 the hyperlocal news site Blog Preston. It’s gone on to become one of the UK’s leading hperlocal titles and has built a highly engaged audience in the city of Preston in Lancashire. I am also really proud of how it’s been a proving ground for many journalists-in-training to go on and launch their careers too. It operates as a Community Interest Company (CIC) which means the surplus made from any advertising is reinvested back into reporting on the city. I spent a decade as editor and journalist for the site reporting on the city of Preston alongside my day job – which was hard going but extremely rewarding.
Notable moments from your career?
I became editor-in-chief of InYourArea, Reach’s hyperlocal news aggregator site and app, in 2019. I led the first major editorial and audience expansion of that title, as well as being part of driving a major investment in the service. It saw exponential growth from 2020 onwards and became one of the top three most downloaded news apps in the UK that year too and we did lots of campaigning and assistance for people during the Covid pandemic. We raised £50,000 in just a fortnight to help children stuck at home without kit during home-learning, in the Cash for Connectivity campaign, bringing together charities, media titles (rival ones too!), businesses and community organisations to make it happen. We won Best Publisher-led Social Good Initiative or Campaign at the Digital Publishing Awards 2022 (hosted by Association of Online Publishers) for this campaign and the way InYourArea brought together disparate parties was specifically mentioned.
Another fundraising one too, there’s a theme here, but in 2019 I was part of the team who organised the Big PNE Sleep Out. We set the target of raising £50,000 to help buy a house for The Foxton Centre who help rough sleepers in Preston and bring people together to sleep out at Deepdale – the home of Preston North End – and more than 300 people turned out to take part on a freezing cold night in November. We smashed the target with nearly £100,000 raised and in the next 12-months the Foxton were able to buy a house, do it up with the money and convert it into two self-contained flats for people who were previously homeless.
Where/what did you study?
I studied journalism at the University of Central Lancashire and had a great three years, obtained a first-class honours degree and an awful lot of life experience too (being from South London and suddenly thrust into Preston was a learning curve!). I also became Media & Communications Officer for a year after graduating in a sabbatical role (you had to be elected, I won standing unopposed – phew!). In that role you were editor of the student paper, responsible for the student radio station and also a trustee of the UCLan Students’ Union too. I decided that wasn’t enough and we launched a digital news service for the student paper that year and also supported a fledgling student TV station to get going. We also won a number of Press Gazette Students Journalism Awards for a scoop using one of our reporters undercover to expose a student essay-writing ring (narrowly avoiding getting one of our own reporters suspended from studying!). It made the nationals and the trade press and was a cracking story, complete with undercovering long lens pictures taken from the back of my mates car outside a Chinese restaurant in the city and a cobbled together MP3 recorder device attached to a microphone to obtain evidence from undercover meetings.
Nearly 20 years later and I recently returned to UCLan to study again – this time to take stock of where I’d ended up. I received a scholarship from the Google News Initiative to enrol on the Journalism Leadership and Innovation postgraduate course. It was a great experience and the year-long course gave me time and space to explore lots of different things related to journalism and also work alongside and with editors from across not just the UK but also Africa, Australia and beyond.
What do you like to do when you’re not working?
I’m a Dad, so that’s my real full-time job! Getting my daughter to where she needs to be etc.
But I enjoy fell walking. My Dad passed away in 2020 from cancer and we had a tradition of going walking each year – usually to the Lake District – with my uncles, cousin and friends. And we keep that going, at least once a year but I’ll try to get other walks in. One of the great things about Preston is just how close we are to the Lakes, Forest of Bowland, Yorkshire Dales and more. All on the doorstep and easy travel time.
I’ve also started playing cricket during 2023 for the first time since I was a teenager. Grimsargh Cricket Club – which is just round the corner from where we live – were advertising for players needed and my wife was like ‘you used to play, you should do it so you can be even more boring!’. I’ve loved it. I am distinctly average at batting and marginally better at bowling, and can occasionally hang onto a catch in the field. But more than anything it’s great fun, playing on a Wednesday night in the Boddingtons League (the trip to the pub after often as important as what happens on the field) and also for the Sunday team too. I’m really enjoying it and my daughter has been to watch a few times and told me the other week she felt really proud watching me play (and I think my wife secretely is too!).
What was your first job?
If you exclude having a paper round aged 13 then my first job – and indeed all my first jobs – I owe to my Dad. He was working in the nearby Tesco to our house at the time as a wine advisor and they needed Christmas temps. So I, at 16, was stacking beer, wine and spirits onto shelves and constantly being asked what I thought of some Sauvignon Blanc to which I would shrug and deny any knowledge of having drunk alcohol, ever.
I then got a job in Woolworths (ageing me here!) – again thanks to my Dad as he knew the assistant manager who had previously worked in Tesco. It was a great laugh, we worked hard and there was a great bunch of people working there. My best mate also got a job there (and indeed ended up meeting his future wife in Woolies!). Just don’t ask about the pic’n’mix.
What did you want to be when you were a kid?
I think it was a police officer very early days but I also always liked geography and remember telling my Mum I wanted to be an explorer. Which seems a bit daft given Google Maps came along.
What would your advice be to someone at the beginning of a career in journalism?
Don’t specialise too early, there’s a skill in being a generalist. If you get opportunities, take them. Always ask an extra question too, even if it’s a more light-hearted one, you’ll be amazed what people tell you sometimes just to fill conversation/silences. Get out there and meet people, being able to send someone a DM who you’ve also met offline will more likely get you a response. I was featured on the InPublishing Podcast and they covered my career and advice to budding journalists, so there will be more tips within that: https://play.acast.com/s/the-inpublishing-podcast/ed-walker
Alma 