On Monday Nick Linford, Managing Editor of FE Week, spent the day as Editor of England’s best-selling regional morning newspaper, the Eastern Daily Press (EDP).  Back in June, Nick successfully secured the opportunity by outbidding others at City College Norwich’s Charity Auction, which raised over £40,000 for its Student Opportunities Fund.

The day kicked off with an 8am meeting with the paper’s Editor, Peter Waters, who gave an outline of how the paper operates on a day-to-day basis. The paper employs over 100 journalists and has a daily readership of 59,000 people. At 8am the EDP’s offices were slowly beginning to fill, but Mr Waters explained that it “becomes more frantic at 4pm, when we have our daily conference to finalise the next edition and prepare for print.”

After an introduction to the paper it was time to set off and explore Archant’s printing press, where FE Week is printed and City College Norwich in the search of some news stories.

Once Nick had got hold of some worthy stories it was time to head back to the nerve centre of the EDP and begin to plan Tuesday’s edition with their Senior Content Editor, Peter Hannam. The atmosphere was notably different in the office in the afternoon, with journalists rapidly punching away at their keyboards aiming to meet their deadlines.

At 4pm it was time for the daily conference meeting where the team discussed all of the day’s news and thoughts about what should and shouldn’t go to press. Nick was very keen that his stories were included in the paper. After the conference meeting and subsequent conversations with the EDP team, it was time for Nick to retire as editor of the EDP and return to London and retake the helm at FE Week.