The Bylines Network has the privilege of having a high proportion of women who are, or share the job of, Editors-in-Chief across all ten of our publications – standing at an amazing 83%, while the industry standard is 46% in the UK. And that is not mentioning the plethora of women behind the scenes here at the Network, without whom we would not be able to function.
For International Women’s Day, on this year’s theme of Give to Gain, the Bylines Network has collaborated to bring you the stories of the amazing women editors who lead our publications, and we hope that you will gain empowerment and inspiration from them.
At Sussex Bylines we have chosen to work as a collective, so while we don’t have a single Editor-in-Chief, each member of the editorial team has a key role to play in our overall success. We present the stories of our women editors and their involvement with Sussex Bylines in their own words below.
You can find the profiles of other Bylines Network female editors and Editors-in-Chief at the following links:
- Central Bylines
- North West Bylines
- Scotland Bylines
- East Anglia Bylines
- North East Bylines
- West England Bylines
- Yorkshire Bylines
- Kent and Surrey Bylines
Who are the women editors on the Sussex Bylines Team and what does editing for Sussex Bylines mean to them?
Pea Channon, Senior Editor, and the most recent recruit to the core team, who manages to combine a demanding full-time role in financial services with being a member of our team of volunteer editors. Always a calm and reasoned voice, she does an amazing job of coaching young and less experienced writers, and with her sense of humour and mischief she never allows our weekly meetings to slip into solemnity.
For me, being an editor for Sussex Bylines is about collaboration and a shared commitment to telling stories that matter. I am very aware that every article I read has been carefully thought out and I feel privileged that I am trusted to help shape their words into an engaging and informative piece for our readers.
What makes the experience truly special is our wonderful team behind the scenes. We work together with respect and encouragement and we support each other when deadlines get challenging. We work together to hopefully produce articles that are interesting, varied and thought-provoking. There is a real sense of shared purpose – to educate, to inform, and sometimes to challenge – while always maintaining high editorial standards. We are lucky to have a wonderful diversity of voices and topics which keeps the work fresh and rewarding.
What’s most satisfying for me is seeing an article that I have edited published online. It brings a quiet pride and the finished product represents an inspired writer carefully choosing words, me as editor refining the piece while carefully retaining the writer’s voice, teamwork behind the scenes and our shared belief that good writing can make a difference.
Ginny Foster, Senior Editor, who as well as having a background in teaching and being a skilled editor, is passionate about social justice and helps on occasion to steer editorial discussions back on track when they risk deviating from our core values of empathy and inclusion. She’s written articles on a wonderfully wide range of topics including homelessness, local charities, Gareth Southgate – and another of her key passions – gardening.
Any skill I have developed as an editor is entirely due to my involvement with Sussex Bylines which was a lifeline in lock down as I tentatively submitted articles for approval, receiving encouragement and constructive criticism from the editors. It was hard at times to have what I thought my finest syntax amended or even edited out but it taught me a lot about writing and about how to get the best out of other authors.
Ginny Smith, always encouraging, then invited me to join the team which resulted in a lot of initial confusion from everyone involved. We would always be getting each other’s correspondence and many were subsequent conversations at cross-purposes. Very nervous at first and not wanting to end anybody’s budding journalistic career by a careless or cruel comment, I agreed to be Letters’ Editor which was a safe place to start understanding that your correspondent’s or author’s voice must be respected.
Gaining more confidence through proof-reading and generally being part of a congenial and collegiate group, I now bring what I have learned from being edited to other writers. There are occasional disagreements and discussion with authors which can be difficult but are more often stimulating. However, these are minor compared to the challenge of WordPress, finding genuinely free photos, thinking up a punchy excerpt or even worse the most appropriate headline!
Viv Griffiths, Senior Editor, longest-serving team member, a deeply experienced teacher and editor, who always has wise advice to offer on articles submitted and wider strategic issues. She’s written many important pieces on the UK’s role in Europe, and about the fair treatment of migrants and their right to a decent family life in the UK, as well as some brilliant reviews of local art exhibitions and cultural events. The team were thrilled to have her back after she took a much-needed sabbatical from her work with Sussex Bylines.
My involvement with Sussex Bylines started during Covid lockdown in 2020, soon after the launch of the Bylines Network. The then editor, Robert Ellson, who I knew through Brighton and Hove for EU, kindly invited me to contribute and I jumped at the chance. After six years of retirement, I was ready for a new challenge. A year later, I was asked to join the editorial team.
Although I was used to editing and writing as an academic, it’s a different matter doing this for an online newspaper, with such a diverse audience and range of contributors.
Reviewing articles by a variety of writers – including people who have never expressed themselves in writing before – is a real privilege. It involves trying to keep the writer’s authentic voice, while at the same time helping them improve the way they communicate their often-heartfelt ideas. Feeding back suggestions has to be done very sensitively too: you don’t want to discourage people from writing again.
Being part of such a brilliant editorial team is a great pleasure. A hallmark of Sussex Bylines is the way we collaborate and share ideas and tasks at our weekly meetings. We take our roles seriously and it can be challenging, but it’s an enjoyable process too, ably coordinated by the brilliant Ginny Smith. I love it.
Ginny Smith, Co-ordinating Editor, and the second of the “two Ginnys” on the team. With an early career start in the overwhelmingly male environment of farming and later in the very different worlds of consultancy and careers advice, she now enjoys her role with Sussex Bylines of commissioning articles, liaising with authors, chairing team meetings, and contributing ideas for the future development of the paper.
I immensely enjoy and appreciate working alongside a group of extremely impressive women who bring insight and empathy to their roles within the team, as well as having the patience and skills to master the technology of editing – something that I do not!
Providing a space for young writers to learn how to write for publication is one of the most exciting aspects of our work, and can sometimes help them to develop careers in the media. Other older contributors who may only ever have written for an audience of one have seen their work published for the first time, and we have had the pleasure of seeing them develop and flourish as writers over time.
Being involved in the development of citizen journalism is immensely rewarding – in particular when we can help to expose wrong-doing often not adequately covered by the mainstream media, as with our recent series of articles written by one of the Harrods abuse survivors. Covering local and national issues that often most impact women, such as homelessness and the availability of healthcare, I see as a key part of our role.
POSTSCRIPT
The two members of our editorial team who have not been profiled here in this celebration of the contribution of women to Sussex Bylines – are our male colleagues James and Bruce, who we also deeply value and appreciate. While March 8 is devoted to International Women’s Day, they will have their own moment of glory later in the year, on November 19, International Men’s Day.
CLICK HERE TO DONATE TO OUR CROWDFUNDER
HELP US BECOME STRONGER SO THAT WE CAN CONTINUE TO DELIVER POWERFUL CITIZEN JOURNALISM!
