Summary: I have a career’s worth of experience in journalism, media innovation and corporate communications. I spent the best part of two decades at the Financial Times in London and New York, moving from the paper’s International Edition in 1994 to be part of the start-up team for FT.com and later its US News Editor.
I moved permanently to New York in 2006 (I’m a dual UK/US national) and worked at Forbes.com, McKinsey and with a media/tech start-up called MuckRack, where I helped launch their daily media newsletter.
After returning to Belfast I worked for four years with Northern Slant – a volunteer, non-profit politics and opinion site.
I’ve written from the US about every presidential election since 1988,including from both party conventions, in Cleveland and Philadelphia, during the 2016 campaign.
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Writer, Lecturer; Belfast/Baltimore; Oct 2016 – present
- Since 2022 I’ve been writing States of Play, a project about the political landscape in the US, using memories of baseball as an entry point for interviews.
- Annual guest lecturer on Media in Britain and the Transatlantic Relationship for visiting honors students from the College of Charleston.
- Associate Editor for Global News and a mentor to younger writers at Northern Slant.
- Advisory board member/adviser for NI start-ups Practice Edge and Avila Media.
- Regular guest on the EPL Round Table weekly soccer podcast.
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Freelance Writer, New York/London; Oct 2013 – Sept 2016.
- Associate, corporate client work, FirstWord Media, London.
- Writer/Editor, Content Innovation team, NBC Universal, New York.
- Research for Presidential campaign coverage project, through the Wolfson College Press Fellowship programme, looking at media coverage of the first “post-factual” political campaign.
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McKinsey & Company, New York; Apr 2012 – Sept 2013.
- Lead Writer, Internal Communications. Wrote and edited news and feature content for the McKinsey News website, read by more than 10k staff weekly; instituted new content formats and various traffic-building initiatives.
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Sawhorse Media, New York; Aug 2010 – Apr 2012.
- Launch writer/editor for The Muck Rack Daily newsletter on media, politics and technology; part of MuckRack.com, a start-up Twitter newsfeed aggregator.
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Writer/Editorial Consultant, London/New York; Jul 2008 – Apr 2012.
Project-based corporate consulting/writing, including:
- Desk Editor, Nomad Editions, New York.
- One-year US editorial viability project for The Telegraph, London/New York.
- Contributor to Scientific American’s 2008 presidential election coverage.
- I wrote a blog about my experiences busking in the New York City subway, called Beat Below The Street
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Forbes.com, London/New York; Apr 2007 – Jun 2008.
- Section editor for a global business news site. Managed a team of writers producing a heavy volume of content. From 2004, I had written a monthly commentary column for Forbes.com from London.
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Financial Times, London/New York; Mar 1989 – Sept 2006.
(I returned to the New York newsdesk part-time for a year in 2014.)
Positions included:
- Assistant News Editor, International Edition (London).
- News Editor, Electronic Publishing (London) Part of the core editorial launch team responsible for designing and developing news and features content for FT.com.
- US News Editor, FT.com (New York) Responsibility for US online content and coordination of global 24-hour news coverage. Jointly managed a team of 10+ journalists. Made regular TV appearances on ABC World News This Morning; and on both CNNfn’s New Economy Watch and CNN International.
- Political blogger (London/US) I wrote a daily blog for FT.com during both the US Presidential campaign of 2004 and the UK general election of 2005, and helped co-ordinate our election night online coverage on both occasions.
- FTpm Launch Editor (London) In May 2005, I helped start FTpm, the FT’s first attempt at on-demand digital micro-printing.
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Visiting Fellowships:
- University of Michigan, Ann Arbor – Knight-Wallace Journalism Fellow (1999-2000).
Paper: “How will we read? – The Internet, Language and Literacy”.
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- Wolfson College, Cambridge University – Visiting Press Fellow (1995).
Paper: “News of Tomorrow’s World – Online Newspapers and the Future of Print”.
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Miscellaneous:
I’m the author of a chapter in ‘Brexit, Trump and the Media’ (Abramis Books, July 2017) entitled ‘Beyond Orange and Green’, looking at coverage of the Brexit referendum and politics in Northern Ireland. I also wrote a chapter on newspaper electronic publishing strategy in ‘The Communications Revolution At Work’ (McGill University, 1998), as well as a 2001 FT newspaper supplement as part of a special series, Life On The Net.
Before joining the FT, I worked at a long-standing local weekly paper in south London – home of the last hot metal press in the borough – as well as shifting for papers on Fleet Street, notably on the Foreign Desk of The Independent for a few months in 1988/89.
Between 1996 and 2006, I taught part-time at both Birkbeck and Goldsmiths Colleges at the University of London: courses included Intro to News Reporting, Feature Writing, Media Analysis, Journalism and Politics; and Contemporary Political Communications. I’ve also given one-off lectures on the British press at a number of US colleges, from Old Dominion in Virginia to UT Austin.
I attended and presented at a number of industry gatherings in both Europe and the US, starting with the 1995 Interactive Newspapers conference in Dallas, up through a few New York Social Media Week events.
I’m a member of both the Online News Association and the Society for American Baseball Research. Since 1999, I’ve been a Life Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts in London. I’m also a long-time supporter of the Hansard Society and the Linenhall Library in Belfast, and while living in New York City I was a patron of the Irish Arts Center there.
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The States of Play substack is here.
My LinkedIn profile is here, and you can contact me at steve@statesofplayproject.com
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States of Play 