The Journal | Founder & Publisher | 2007-2014

About Link to heading

The Journal was our youthful, rebellious take on where hard hitting news media needed to go. It was a time of significant transition in journalism, as publishers found their feet online - competing against sensationalist blogs and farmed content.

I had become heavily involved in journalism in my first years at university - including a run as editor of the historic Student newspaper, and with a team of talented writers and editors, we decided to launch our own independent journalism platform.

That platform was web first and lowered the barrier for entry to quality journalism in presentation and content for aspiring journalists and content creators - but also provided a backend to simplify and automate layout for print editions.

This was my first business and gave me an incredible experience across the full commercial lifecycle - engaging with investors, raising funds, hiring staff, product development, sales, people management and everything that goes along with being a startup founder.

At our peak we had between around 60 people working with the company, a significant print run of 10,000 copies and over 60,000 monthly visitors online. We won awards for our content, design and website every year and notable alumni have gone on to work for the top publications in the world, including the Financial Times, BBC & Conde Nast.

It was also my transition from a hobby programmer to managing production code in a live environment with a daily audience.

Impact Link to heading

  • Peak print run of 10,000 copies and weekly readership of 60,000 online and in print
  • Awards every year for content, design and website
  • Produced 7000+ articles over 7 years
  • Broke dozens of high profile stories that were picked up in the national news

References

Technology