Meet the commissioning editors

Minutes Ossian Ward, Time Out Time Out (TO) has a highly arts engaged audience. Since gone free 300,000 copies are distributed weekly, yet subscription has only gone down by 4,000/5,000, and has the most used website in London People find the smaller, quirky events most interesting. thingstodo@timeout.com is the new name and address for the About Town section of the show. Pitch to the person who writes the section you want to cover your story or it will get passed over.

Ria Higgins, commissioning editor, Sunday Times magazine Invest time in finding out which commissioning editor deals with what you are pitching. Ria looks after A Life in a Day one of the most read pages and well loved by (Sunday Times) ST readers, Relative Values and Witter a small interview spot. Not just interested in well-known people, but people who are experts in their field or work in unusual positions (such as the man who guards the crown jewels), eccentric or full of passion. Always want big names, and we know that is tough for you. Always looking for family stories for relative values, doesnt have to be a saga but something that draws readers in, human interest journeys.

Matthew Dodd, head of speech programmes and presentation at BBC Radio 3 Music and arts station, devour a huge number of arts shows every day; Verb, Music Matters, Nightwaves, In Tune and around 35 docs every year and hungry for items. Matthew Dodd (MD) commissions the strands and has another set of people how turn the shows into output that is the BBC model. There are also a large number of docs that MD commissions himself. Ideas can come in either via MD or via the editor and if they like their idea they will commission it. Audiences are older, weighted towards the SE and they are arts lovers. They are interested in the arts and that is why they listen to Radio 3.

Mixture of daily and weekly programmes looking for a range of deadlines from 6 weeks to 2 days, they look for a whole range of stuff, but docs or one off specials will need a lead-time of up to 18months. For instance just done a whole programme on Manet with the actress Fiona Shaw to reflect the Royal academy exhibition. Really interested in working in partnership with organisations, such as Baroque Spring (with National Trust)and History of the world in 100 objects (with the British Museum) for which we are always on the lookout for ideas. Email is always the best way to get in touch with MD. Forced to make snap decisions about what I read, if people repeatedly send emails that arent quite right, he will stop reading them. Looking for people who know the programmes and understand what they are about. If someone sends something targeted it really stands out. Radio 3 is not a news network. The treatment of the items is much more important. How interesting the story is. Listeners have an expectation to find something they wouldnt find elsewhere

Nancy Grove, Cultural Professional Network, Guardian Something that is wonderful about the arts world is that the PRs and the journalists want the same thing, to share information about great arts Arts journalism limited to interview, preview and review in most media which means that there is lot of really good stories that arent actually told. Audiences want to know those stories. Art has a long gestation period, we know that and we know that coverage doesnt have to be the week an exhibition opens, Guardian Professional Network (GPN) can cover them a year in advance or a month in advance etc. Guardian art coverage in 3 parts. News (Charlotte, Mark etc), the arts desk in G2, online and Guide etc and then the network as well. GPN is made for and by arts professionals. They cover the logistics, behind the scenes across all the arts. Operate as Comment is Free style opinion pieces, in the way you are working what you are doing that is different, - something that can inform others in the sector. Interested in stats and data as GPN can play with the information and visualise it. There are interested in stories that can be gatehered from crunching numbers Taking rich media like videos and presenting them in new ways on the guardian website.

Interviewees dont have to be at the top of their professions, it can just be people who are doing unusual things in the sector. Arts PR is one of the most popular sections of the site. GPN dont want press releases. They dont want to be a promo. It is about telling a story as much about how it is when you are telling the story People willing to talk about failure are the ones that work really well. Lead times all working up to the wire, anything from 3 months to 3 hours. Turned around the Culture Campaign to mobilise troops to say what they would say to encourage continued support for the arts. Hundreds of responses overnight were turned into a big section of the best Unlimited space, doesnt mean we will put up anything. GPN want sticky content GPN are not there to lobby but do like stuff that makes a case

Questions Time Out Screens TO now have screens on the tube, not curated content, just dragged from the site. TO admit they need to balance what goes on screens as small events were getting inundated and people trust what TO write, Which Ed at ST? Ria Sarah Baxter, the editor and Mark Edmond the deputy are the ones who decide on the big features, Paul Crouton or Cathy Brewer and Chrissy Morrsion will all decide what gets commissioned. All paths lead back to Sarah though. Depends on the week as to who covers what. Cathy/Chrissie/Paul look after TV, films, popular world and Mark and Paul tend towards the more weighty stuff. Get in touch with one of them, or the editors, but try not to scatter gun it. Admits its n always clear whos patch is what Exclusives MD not crucial for us. Want to know what cuts through to the listeners. We do like them though OW TO being a weekly we know that we are going out after the papers and we want to be current so we dont want an interview 2 months before a show opens. Online helps you react quickly and we dont want to see a show before it is finished. We dont set our stall by exclusives. RH ST mag would need to run first; film, theatre, arts we need to know we have the first big interview. It is a cut throat time. Columns and features dont always need to be exclusives. We might

consider doing an interview with someone two months into a run, the regular columns have more flexibility like that. When to get in touch RH email it. Telephoning seems bad. Email is preferable. OW dont mind a phone call. Mon and Fri are good, but different for different people at TO MD email is the best despite being so many of them, beginning of the week or at the very end of the week. In the middle we are already doing things and it is going to be too busy NG email and then do call to nudge. I dont mind a nudge. Are Guardian and GPN competition for each other? Stories that might not get covered elsewhere might get covered on GPN and therefore gets the weight of Guardian online. Internal competition at Guardian does GPN knock a story out the Guardian, we do talk to each other and we wont run the same story.