Today we talk to Trisha Andres, Editor-in-Chief of Crane.tv, the online video-magazine for contemporary culture. Andres has five years’ experience as a journalist and researcher. Prior to her role at Crane.tv, she was a journalist at the Press Association (PA). Her work has appeared in the Guardian, the Scotsman, the Huffington Post and anothermag.com. Read on to find out more about Crane.tv and Trisha’s role at the publication.
About the publication:
Who reads Crane.tv and how many of them are there?
Our readers are global citizens who are style conscious and culturally curious. They are looking for a platform, which pulls together their myriad areas of interest – art, design, fashion, lifestyle and travel. Our audience is evenly split between genders, with 80% below 50 years old. Our viewers are also affluent with 30% coming from the UK, another 30% from the US, and the rest from all over the world.
What subjects do you cover, and what stories are you most interested in covering?
We cover the most engaging stories around the globe and across our five video channels: art, design, fashion, lifestyle and travel. Crane.tv features a balanced mix of the established and the emerging, giving an in-depth and thoughtful look into the world’s leading thinkers and creatives.
What makes you different from the other outlets in your sector?
Compared to other arts & culture generalist magazines, our proposition is purely video.
How do you decide the content?
We decide the content based on our editorial calendar, which we’ve subdivided into a yearly, a three-month and a weekly plan. Whilst we decide early on which on-diary events we are going to cover for the year, our schedule allows for leeway when it comes to featuring off-diary breaking stories and new developments, which just crop up during the week. We also plan around our monthly issues, which inform the kind of features we are going to do for the month.
About PRs:
Do you work closely with PRs or do you keep them at arm’s length?
Yes, we work closely with PRs that we like. Whilst our stories are independent and purely editorial, we rely on PRs to secure interviews with clients they represent so we really value our relationship with them and the help that they provide.
If you could make one change to the way PRs deal with you, what would it be?
There are quite a number of instances when I’ve been sent irrelevant press releases. I don’t know what the solution is there – except to have a bit of a trawl through our site to get a better feel for our content and the kind of features we do.
How should a PR approach you about their client?
I’m very much a proponent of email, which is the best way to get me as I’m at my desk most, if not all of the time, and if not, I have my Blackberry with me.
When is the best time for PRs to contact you & what is your deadline for contributions?
Most of our editorial and client meetings are in the morning, so it is easiest to get me in the afternoon after 2pm.
About you:
Describe a typical day at work.
I get in about 9am or a little before then. If it’s a Monday, I start looking through our production schedule to check what features we’re filming for the week, what posts we’re meant to be publishing for the week and what our editing schedule looks like. I check for any emails or pitches that have come through the night. At 10am, I’m in a meeting where we sit around and discuss our filming, writing and video editing schedule. Stories and edits will be assigned and I will then have a good idea of what editorial is doing for the week. I then start prepping for an interview I’m doing for the day. Sometimes when I get back, I’ll be in another meeting with a client (we also work with clients on commercial projects) or with a PR on the phone telling them what our travel schedule is looking like in case our team is travelling abroad in the next couple of weeks/months. I then make some time to look through other magazines, websites, blogs and Entertainment News and Fashion Monitor to see what’s going on in culture.
What interests you most about your job?
I love the variety – one day I could be interviewing one of my favourite authors, another day I could be visiting a quirky café in Munich. I also like supporting and providing a platform to young and emerging talent to showcase their work.
Where have you worked previously, and how did you end up in your current position?
I was previously at the Press Association as a Journalism Associate for over two years, prior to my role at Crane.tv. There I worked at the multimedia department and also wrote for the features desk, so my background is quite varied. I’ve also written pieces for other publications and outlets including the Huffington Post, the Guardian and the Scotsman, mostly on arts & culture. So I think my familiarity with online and multimedia journalism, and experience in arts & culture helped me land the role.
Do you tweet? Why?
Absolutely. Twitter is a great resource for finding out about what’s happening in the arts & culture sphere, most journalist and bloggers have Twitter accounts so it’s easy to follow them. I also use it to post about where Crane.tv is (when we’re travelling) and to engage in conversation with other like-minded folks on Twitter.
If you could time travel what time would you go to?
I would probably go back to the beginning of the 20th century, when some of my favourite writers and artists would have still been alive. It seemed like it would have been so much fun; lots of rebels.
[lnk|http://www.featuresexec.com/mediaoutlets/profile.php?pubid=18149|_self|Crane.tv]