In this episode of The Craft podcast, our host Dawn Murden, VP of Customer Success at Shorthand, welcomes Ronan Hughes, Output Editor at Sky News.
Ronan speaks about the importance of news verification and fact checking, particularly in this era of smartphone journalism, social media, and a rapidly evolving news cycle.
As he explains, “It's much better to be cautious than foolhardy. Even if you are 90% sure that something is right, don't publish it. Only publish it if you're a hundred percent sure — that's really important.”
Listen as Dawn and Ronan discuss the pressures of covering complex world news, the importance of accuracy and truth-telling to maintain audience trust, and how to harness creativity and technology to produce innovative content.
Guest at a glance:
Links from this episode:
In this episode of The Craft podcast, our host Dawn Murden, VP of Customer Success at Shorthand, welcomes Ronan Hughes, Output Editor at Sky News.
Ronan speaks about the importance of news verification and fact checking, particularly in this era of smartphone journalism, social media, and a rapidly evolving news cycle.
As he explains, “It's much better to be cautious than foolhardy. Even if you are 90% sure that something is right, don't publish it. Only publish it if you're a hundred percent sure — that's really important.”
Listen as Dawn and Ronan discuss the pressures of covering complex world news, the importance of accuracy and truth-telling to maintain audience trust, and how to harness creativity and technology to produce innovative content.
Guest at a glance:
Links from this episode:
[00:00:00] Ronan Hughes: My advice is you don't need to run before you can walk and walking is a good thing. Learn to walk really, really well, then you can jog, and then you can run, and then you can think about doing a half marathon, and then you can think about doing a marathon, but, actually, it's get in those kind of, those, those miles early on, and don't feel in a rush to get somewhere because, especially if you're early on in your career, you will hopefully have a very long, very successful career.
[00:00:56] Dawn Murden: Hello, and welcome to this episode of The Craft, brought to you by Shorthand. I'm Dawn Murden, VP of Customer Success here at Shorthand, and today I'm joined by a very special guest, Ronan Hughes.
[00:01:09] Ronan is Output Editor for Sky News Mobile. He's responsible for everything published on the website and app. Before joining the mobile team, he worked in production on just about every program produced on Sky News. Ronan has been with Sky News for 17 years, and he's worked on pretty much every big news story during that time as well, and the news cycle has billy, has been pretty unrelenting of late, so I'm absolutely honored to steal Ronan away from the news desk in this busy latter half of 2022.
[00:01:47] Finally, outside of work, Ronan is a father of two. He likes football or soccer and is a Manchester United supporter. Hello, Ronan, thank you for joining us.
[00:01:58] Ronan Hughes: Hi there. Glad to join.
[00:02:00] Dawn Murden: It's great to have you here. So, I'm gonna go straight into questions today. I'm very, as I say, very honored to have you with us here and steal some time away. I know there's more big breaking news today, but I would really love you to tell our audience about yourself, a little bit about your career background, um, how you got to where you are today.
[00:02:22] Ronan Hughes: I think I'm a weirdo because ever since I was about 11 years of age, I wanted to be a journalist, I either wanted to be a journalist or I wanted to be a private detective. I think it's because I'm nosy, either way, it kind of works, um, there is part of me that sort of wishes that I actually did become a private detective because I think I'd get to uncover more things than I uncover with journalism.
[00:02:49] But both of them work. And I was in one of those strange positions from really early on in my life where I ki, I knew that I wanted to be a journalist and was able to kind of focus all my attentions on actually doing that whenever I was, I think I was 12 or 13, and my mom got me a typewriter for Christmas, one of the old school ones where you need ink to actually tie down.
[00:03:18] And I liked writing, and I liked the, kind of the creativity of it, and that sort of spurred me to make decisions as I went through school and into sixth form college, and then university, which were really kind of focused towards a career in journalism, and when I got the, um, I was really delighted and pleased to get my first job, uh, and then work my way up.
[00:03:44] And like everybody who gets to a certain age, we all sit back from time to time and think, do I really wanna keep doing this for the rest of my life? It's pretty relentless, it's, let's be honest, it's a pretty stressful job, but, um, I then, and I see other colleagues who kind of leave journalism and go across, maybe into PR, or decide to do something completely different.
[00:04:08] And I do think, hmm, is now the time for me to consider doing it before I get too old and become impossible to kind of learn new things, but actually, I then, 'cause I slapped myself in the chops and realized, no, I don't, I actually really enjoy this, I really enjoy the immediacy, the fact that every single day is different.
[00:04:29] And my God, the last year, I mean, it just, it's unrelenting. And after the years of Covid, which were just a totally different thing altogether, it's, it's good. It keeps us on our toes, that's gotta be a good thing, right?
[00:04:47] Yeah. So, I was going to ask, what was your very first job?
[00:04:50] So, my first job was actually working in a stationary shop in a place where I sort of grew up and went to school, which is Hyde in Greater Manchester, a place which is best known as, where Harold Shipman had his doctor practice. Unfortunately, it's not known for a great deal more than that, other than a very good football team with a plastic pitch,
[00:05:14] Ronan Hughes: but I digress there, but now my first job was in a stationary shop there whenever I was, I imagine, 15 or 16, and I actually kind of worked, then I worked in, uh, a local kind of restaurant and pub, and worked all my way through kind of university, um, was always quite kind of independent of mind and thought, and wanted to fund my own way through.
[00:05:41] And so, I've always kind of worked alongside what I've kind of, all my studies, and I like working, I like the, kind of the, the environment of it. And while I'm delighted that I no longer work in the stationary shop, no offense to other people who work in stationery shops, um, it was a good kind of very early grounding in actually the skills you need for life, and actually being able to build relations with different people
[00:06:13] from different backgrounds. So, it was, it was a good start, but went on and done, I mean, I worked before I actually sort of graduated and got a job in what I'd studied to do. I did a load of random jobs, I mean, I have worked at Chatham Race Course, serving dinner, um, I've worked in a factory in Leeds, weirdly cleaning stuff for kind of the military,
[00:06:40] like, military-grade kind of things, I don't know what they were. I've worked in a few different pubs and very nice restaurant in Leeds, 42 La course, 'cause I went to university in Leeds. Yeah, I've, I've done a few different random things over my time.
[00:06:58] Dawn Murden: I'm sensing some themes of other journalists that I know, and I've spoken to as well, and yeah, sort of two themes that you wanted to do from really early age that seems, like, it seems to be common among a lot of journalists, and also that kind of element of doing lots of different jobs while you're trying to perhaps find your break into journalism, as well.
[00:07:17] So, what was your first kind of break into the journalism world where you were like, "Ah, I'm a journalist now, I've made it."
[00:07:25] Ronan Hughes: Again, my first break, I think, was whenever I was at uni, and I was in touch with the people who do the, the Irish Times or Irish Post, can't remember which it is now, I think it's the Irish Times, which is the Irish newspaper in, in the UK ' cause I'm from Ireland originally, and I've sort of got in touch with them and did try and do some freelance work and wrote a couple of articles for them and got paid for it.
[00:07:52] So, that was the first time I'd done journalism and got paid. So, that's, that was my, that I considered to be my, kind of my break into it 'cause I'd done a bit of work experience, like, for local newspaper, uh, when I was at uni I did the kind of the radio station, that kind of thing, but actually, whenever I first got a check, and back then it literally was a check.
[00:08:13] It was quite exciting, and it was just, I think I went along to, like, an Irish band that was playing in, in Leeds, it might be, yeah, I can't remember who would've been back then, but went along and, and sort of wrote a review on it. And then, I also did a couple of kind of Irish events, um, which were going on there.
[00:08:32] And yeah, that, that was my first kind of break into it, and then when I left university, I did some work experience at Granard Tonight in Manchester while kind of, um, searching for a job, but was in a kind of lucky position because right at the end of uni I got, um, a job interview down in London for a production company called Uden Associates who produced Ford Motor Companies Internal News Program, and I went down for the job interview.
[00:09:06] There was a couple of people who went from my course because there was a, sort of a, a link between somebody who would graduated from, from Leeds in broadcast journalism like myself, and this production company. So, they, they had a kind of, not intern, but kind of first out-the-blocks job in journalism for, for Uden.
[00:09:25] So, there was a few of us went down for interviews. I did my interview, it all went really well, and it all went really well because I spent about three-quarters of it talking about football, 'cause the day that I went down was the day of the Manchester United by Munich, Champion's League final in 1999.
[00:09:46] And I am United fan, as you have pointed out already, and so I'd gone down, and to do this interview. My interview was at about two o'clock in the afternoon, maybe even three o'clock in the afternoon. And so, I was chatting to the guy, talking about kind of, you know, what I'd done in journalism, yada, yada, yada.
[00:10:05] And then he said, you know, "What else interests you?" And so, I got onto talking about football. He was a huge QPR fan. And so, uh, we kind of clicked a little bit talking about football. That all went well, and then I went and got my train back up to Leeds, but the train going up to Leeds was delayed, and as a result, I was on the train while the Champion's League final was happening.
[00:10:29] Now, go back to a stage when you are on, right, imagine a train and trying to listen to something on your phone with 4G, it's normally a bit sketchy. Now, imagine doing that before there was even 4G. I had classic old school radio with batteries, uh, trying to listen to it and it kept cutting out and trying to listen to the game and, you know, we were losing, it was all going badly, and I was like, "Oh, this is miserable."
[00:10:58] And then, we literally got to Wakefield near Leeds, and United scored the first of their two huge combat goals, which is incredible. And I'm on this train and we're going through Wakefield and loads of people pile on at Wakefield to go to Leeds. Leads isn't traditionally the most sympathetic to Manchester United fans, I think it's fair to say.
[00:11:20] And so, I'm on this train and United scored, "Yeah, come on!" And everybody's looking around like, "Okay, who's this weird guy that's on the train shouting." And then, the second goal goes in and I absolutely lose it. Anyway, good days. That was, um, the point of that whole digression is that actually if it wasn't the sort of the, the conversation about football and maybe I wouldn't have got that job,
[00:11:48] and that was my first proper job, moving down to London, not knowing anybody, moving into a house share and straight away from university, and, and that kind of kicked off my career in journalism.
[00:12:01] Dawn Murden: Amazing. Have to say you're a brave, brave man cheering for any, any, any other team on a train that's close to,
[00:12:01] Ronan Hughes: Just couldn't help it.
to arrive at Leeds. Oh, brilliant. Uh, I hope you managed to watch the highlights of that game afterwards and celebration, as well.
[00:12:17] Ronan Hughes: We had a few, a few log of shandies, should we say.
[00:12:24] Dawn Murden: Brilliant. And thinking about the span of your career, and so far, um, what successes stand out to you and why?
[00:12:32] I think one success, and I know you all sort of come on to talk about kind of advice later on in the, in the conversation. Early on was, actually, bouncing around. I kind of didn't stick in one job really for, it took about kind of five, six years before I really stuck in a job for any considerable amount of time.
[00:12:55] Ronan Hughes: And that I think, early on in my career, was really helpful because I got to meet lots of people, I, I didn't, I had no contacts in journalism before I started, and it allowed me to move around and learn lots of skills and move up quickly. And as I worked in Uden, so I was doing the Ford Motor Company Internal News Channel, and that involved me filming stuff, editing, scripting, even doing a bit of voicing, um, which was,
[00:13:27] just those skills you wouldn't have got so early on if I was in a conventional newsroom. And I was able to kind of learn from people around me who had considerably more experience. And then, I moved from there, and I went to an Automotive Channel, which was run by Sky at Pinewood Studios. So, just working at Pinewood was incredible.
[00:13:50] I sort of, you know, did that again. So, Uden, I was there for about nine months, Automotive Channel was there for about six months, just on kind of short-term contracts. And the contract sort of comes to an end, and that production ends and you have to find another job. And I kind of moved from there, I went to something called the Money Channel, which was, again, similar kind of thing.
[00:14:11] So, he started to build up these production skills that mean you can get jobs at different places. The Money Channel was run by sixties singer called Adam Faith if anyone can remember him. He was also an actor that he, um, he was into investments. So, that involved going into work at six o'clock in the morning, five o'clock in the morning, and doing shows which looked, tried to pick apart company results.
[00:14:37] I mean, I knew nothing about financials, but you learn in the same way, I knew nothing about Motor Companies and vehicles and production lines. Um, but the point is you start to learn those different kind of skills and, um, make those, those contacts, and it was, it was there, the Money Channel, that I actually met one of the kind of the presenters, also did some freelance work at Channel Five News in, uh, the ITN building.
[00:15:06] And when the Money Channel, actually came to when it closed, I've been there about kind of, again, nine months. I did start to think that I was somehow cursing these places, but hey ho, whenever that closed, the presenter was able to put me in touch with the person who was in charge of freelancers at Channel Five News, and I was able to go across, get some kind of shadow shifts to test out, and then that got me into ITN and that was really my first,
[00:15:37] sort of big jump into proper hard news journalism and TV production. And from being in the ITM building, was able to move across to ITV News, as well. From there I was able to get freelance work at Sky News, which was, got me into Sky, um, and then, again, it was just getting to know different people, but also at that stage starting to get a flavor for, um, really tight deadlines 'cause before you were working on productions, which, um, the deadlines were literally two hours away.
[00:16:11] And that really excited me, and I kind of learned a lot in those kind of early days about what I wanted to do, um, and the lure of, of breaking news, things which happen fast, making quick decisions, but also about creativity and how I like to do things which are different, and that was really kind of influential I think, early part of my career.
[00:16:42] I learned a hell of a lot in those, in the time when I was freelancing at Channel Five with some fantastic, um, editors there. So, it was, there were good times and some of the, kind of the, the biggest lessons that I've learned were definitely in the, kind of the early days, early stages of, of my career before I'd moved on and worked at ITN, and then, uh, News Channel, and then, before coming to Sky as, as I did in, you know, as you pointed out, nearly 17 years ago.
[00:17:15] Dawn Murden: Brilliant. Thank you so much for running me through that. And I have so many questions, but I feel like the part two will start to dig into some of the questions that I have, which is yeah, really sort of going into those rookie mistakes and, and the failures, and all of those learnings that you had over, over those times.
[00:17:32] So, both the years and, you know, maybe, maybe more recently, um, as well. So, yeah, sort of thinking again over the span of your, of your career. What would you say are some examples of failures that you've had, and what did you learn from these?
[00:17:49] Ronan Hughes: Well, the first thing to say is I'm touching every single piece of wood I can find in here. I haven't had, I haven't had an absolute clanger in my career. That's a good thing, that's a very, very good thing, it will probably come 'cause it comes to everybody, but I have, I've made lots of errors, loads of errors over time, and whenever I worked back at ITN, um, was in an era when people were a lot harder,
[00:18:20] um, I think the environment in newsrooms now is much more accommodating of, of people's, I think people now are, it's unacceptable now and I think quite rightly to be balling people out in the middle of the nutrient, that's what I'm trying to say. But back then, it was just one of those things that you just had to put up with, and you had to have quite thick skin.
[00:18:41] And this is only going back, you know, 20 years ago, it's not a different bygone era, but even then, things were a lot kind of softer than they were the 10 years before that, um, but I did learn, um, in those early days about the importance of, uh, precision and accuracy. And so, little things like when you are putting together a TV package, you need to put in the super for who the person is that is
[00:19:11] appearing on the screen and in the running order, you have to put into timing for when that super appears. And if that timing is out by two seconds or the super is spelled incorrectly, then that can really just ruin what is a, a brilliant, uh, you know, news bulletin. And it might be a three-minute news bulletin, or it might be a 20-minute news bulletin, um, as was the sort of the case back then.
[00:19:36] And I remember being absolutely balled out in the middle of the newsroom for getting a super roll, and that seems like a really trivial thing, but that taught me a lot in those early days. And while I don't think that is an acceptable way of, of dealing with, um, people who make mistakes, I think everybody will inherently make mistakes, and you have to accept that.
[00:20:01] I did learn a lot from it, and that taught me to kind of look at something and then look at it again, and then look at it again. And I think those lessons and those, those mistakes were classic kind of rookie eras that anybody who starts out in TV production will make, and my advice for anybody to try and avoid making them is to do exactly that.
[00:20:25] Look, look, look again, and if you are writing something, read it out loud because if you read it out loud and it doesn't flow or doesn't quite seem right, then that is the way that you will clock it, and it feels weird if you're sat in the newsroom with lots of people around saying, "This is my story and I am reading it out loud, and I'm doing it, and I'm not being embarrassed by the fact I'm doing this because this way I will make sure that everyone gets shouted up by my boss." It kind of works. So, yeah, those, those were classic kind of early rookie eras.
[00:21:01] Dawn Murden: Mm. Yeah, there's been some, there has been some real clangers, not, not on Sky News, I'm not calling Sky News out, but
[00:21:07] Ronan Hughes: Sky, Sky has made clangers, you know, hands up. We all have, um, yes.
[00:21:12] Dawn Murden: And, and every single, you know, every single news program does, and I was gonna ask like, how do you think that's changed with, you know, kind of social media coming in because, of course, the, I don't know, back back, when you were watching, you know, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, here in the UK, even before five came on, you were just watching the four channels, and the news would come on, it would go and you would, you know, maybe there might be a, a clang, a moment that you might see, but then it would kind of live and die on that day.
[00:21:43] But then, in social media, if now if there's a real clanger and you get someone sort of making up a drum and bass mix of, you know, of these clangers on television and they don't live and die in a day, they actually stay around for, for a lot longer, you know, the, the sort of real kindness. So, it's interesting, isn't it?
[00:22:01] So, you kind of talked about, you know, kind of your peers, your, you know, your bosses, your managers, kind of being a bit more lenient about the, the errors or maybe just having a different way of approaching kind of coaching on those errors.
[00:22:14] Ronan Hughes: It's not a leniency, I don't think anything's different in the fact that it's expected that things should be correct and accurate, I think it's just how, how that, when errors are made, how you manage those errors.
[00:22:28] Dawn Murden: Yeah, so maybe that kind of coaching around talking to people and that nature of how you talk to people about them, but how, how does that sort of play out in that world then where, you know if, if you do make an error, it maybe the wrath of your boss isn't going to be so bad, but actually the wrath of the public.
[00:22:47] Ronan Hughes: Yeah, no, it's true.
[00:22:47] Yeah, the wrath of Twitter, Instagram is going to be, maybe that's worse.
[00:22:51] Ronan Hughes: It is, I mean, there's nowhere to hide, that's a reality that if you make a mistake now, especially on a platform like Sky News, be that on TV or digitally if we publish a story, it, somebody's gonna see it. And, you know, whereas before, you might show it on TV, and somebody might spot it on TV, but then, "Oh, did that, did that say what it did?"
[00:23:15] Oh, I, and then the world moves on, unless they had a VCR in and they were actually recording it. It, so, you, things would get spotted, but they wouldn't have the same implications, now it's, that's totally different, like, it's, if an error is made, even the most basic error, like, classic kind of, um, you know, supers, or, or there was a great example on, not
[00:23:37] a great example, but a typical example on, on DBC a while ago, and, you know, BBC, same kind of thing as kind as people will, will watch it and they will see it and they will pick up on anything. And there was a poor producer who was learning how to put the tech straps across the bottom of the screen.
[00:23:54] So, the tick that you would see on Sky News, the equivalent of that on the BBC, and, uh, they were training and Sky News does the same thing, we train people. And so, that they kind of are able to pick up and get the skills to do it well. And this person, when they were training would put some fake ticker stuff and they didn't think it was gonna go on air,
[00:24:14] they thought it was all in, in a production area, and it said that, I think it said Manchester United a rubbish, which at that stage, I would definitely argue was a statement of fact and therefore was not inaccurate and fair play to them. But actually, that's the sort of, kind of error that in the past would've gonna miss, but people wouldn't have made a big thing, but that blew up on social media, and it was only on there for a short time. It'd cycle through like once or twice, and somebody picked it up and went on social media, and as a result, the BBC then, later in the day, had to apologize, you know, there was one of the percenters stood in there and said, "Earlier on this happened and we'd like to apologize."
[00:24:59] Explain what it was, that was it. And it wasn't, I flagged this because it, it's, it's not something which is a significant error and I think it's, it's just an unfortunate thing that happens from time to time. But it does underline how there is nowhere to hide from this kind of thing, and, and it's changed, or it's made us formalize our approach to dealing with things like that because trust is so important with everything that we do now, and Sky needs,
[00:25:25] has, its reputation is unparalleled in terms of the, the trust that we have with our readers and with our, with our viewers. Ofcom consistently rates us very, very highly when it comes down to, to trust. And because of that, we have to be upfront, and if we make an error, be that on digital space or on TV, then, then we front it up, and we say, "Look, there was a mistake, and there was a reason for that, or there wasn't a reason for that, and we apologize," and you kind of move on and you learn from it and you put new procedures in place to make sure it doesn't happen. Yeah. That, that's reality. There is no way of, of hiding for stuff anymore, and I, I actually think that's a good thing.
[00:26:08] That's something I'm very happy to embrace, and, and I think that gives you a greater bond of trust with your readers and your viewers that if, I think they understand that every now and then something might go wrong for a multitude of different reasons, technical reasons, user error, a slip up, whatever it might be.
[00:26:31] Um, thankfully none of them very, very, very, very rarely they are of, of significance, but I think it's important that we are transparent about those things when they do happen.
[00:26:45] Dawn Murden: Definitely, and I imagine, you know, sort of in the world of breaking news, that's even more important because, like I, I'd say I was looking, looking up, yeah, obviously, we've spoken before, interviewed four bars. Come on and look around what you've done previously, and I know that I think it was like in 2017, you spoke at, uh, an event and said that, you know, sort of breaking news are so hard to achieve now because of social media,
[00:27:08] and it was Twitter at the time because Twitter was, you know, breaking, you know, every single news story. So, I suppose you have that element of it's really hard to be first with, with, with news across any of the news channels, not only the other news channels are you competing with, but you're competing with social media as well, so, yeah.
[00:27:26] Sort of how does that play into kind of what you said there around sort of transparency and trust? Because I guess you are, you are wanting to make sure that you are first with the, with the news and you're timely in, in delivering that news, but also some news, as it happens, you know, you only kind of get the, the, the glittering of information and the story, you know, the picture builds over time and you have to make a judgment call, I guess, about what bits of information you feel are,
[00:27:53] you know, relevant and, you know, that you verified the sources and everything like before you can disclose them to, to the public. So, how do you guys deal with, with that and getting that right balance?
[00:28:03] Ronan Hughes: Totally right, and it is a real kind of, I mean, that's one of the most challenging, stressful, but exciting and invigorating parts of, of my job is, is making those judgment calls. And I've worked across multiple, kind of really difficult developing, fast-moving stories, and with things like this, the most difficult ones are always the likes of God forbid thought, but, you know, a terror attack.
[00:28:33] And, you know, the, there have been multiple, sadly in the last kind of decade or so, if I think back to something like the Manchester Arena bombing, or the kind of the London attacks or, you know, there would be one in London Bridge, a couple of years ago. You know, those are actually, in some ways, they are made easier to report on now because of the proliferation of social media and the availability of pictures and video that people, um, put out there.
[00:29:05] But that creates huge challenges in terms of taste decisions about verification, about what we deem is a safe source and not a safe source, um, with Ukraine, you know, what we've seen, and particularly in the early part of the, the conflict was a, a, a huge amount of, of video purporting to be of Russian or Ukrainian attacks
[00:29:32] going on, you know, things exploding and whatever else. And, and, you know, we put a lot of effort into verification, and we have some fantastic, uh, experts who know all about on-scene journalism now, who are able to look at, um, stuff that is posted on social media or gathered through likes of Telegram or wherever else, and, and are able to kind of map
[00:29:55] and find out if it actually is where it's from, if it was taken when it was said, and, you know, Ukraine early on, you had stuff being posted from Syria of explosions, and being claimed to be examples of explosions happening in Ukraine, which, you know, on the face of it, you think, "Oh wow, look at that, I mean, that's, that's a boring, that's awful."
[00:30:16] And then, you dig into it, and you dig into a bit more, and you dig into it a bit more, and you realize actually that's not really what it is. Um, so you need to be cautious, you need to be measured, you need to make sure there's absolutely right, because the damage from publishing something that is incorrect is, it pulls apart all your reputation, and that's why it's much better to be cautious, um, than full hardy and go in, even if you, you think if, if you are 90% sure that something is right, don't publish it, you only publish it if you're a hundred percent sure, that's, that's really important. And, and just coming back to the, to what I was saying about, you know, the nature of content that's available now on social media because of everybody having a, a smartphone, um, you know, one of my,
[00:31:06] one story which I sort of covered, probably it must be about 12, 13 years ago now, I can't remember exactly when it was, but the London riots, if you remember back, that was probably the first example of smartphone kind of journalism coming to a for, to the fore in a really dynamic way because, you know, you had lots of stuff happening all around, around London and, and we had journalists who were out filming stuff on their phones and feeding it in and us getting video on air, and that was a cumbersome process back then in a way that it is in now.
[00:31:44] And, but also the massive of material which people were, were doing similar with, that we had to again, verify, put through a system to get on air and, and that was a kind of the first example of that and was a really challenging story, but rewarding story to do and something which Sky News did very well at the time.
[00:32:03] Dawn Murden: Hmm. That's so interesting. So, I remember talking about the rise of citizen journalism back then. So, I think the London riots were the first example in the, the UK.
[00:32:11] Ronan Hughes: Yeah.
[00:32:13] Dawn Murden: And then, I think the plane crashing into the Hudson River, I think was the first example of it, maybe in the US, I think, uh, maybe New York Times or one of the other publications at the time had so many, so many pieces of footage that were, were coming from, yeah, people, just civilians sending their information in, really interesting. And now we just kind of accept, don't we, on the news, that we just have those, that, you know, lots of mobile videos now, whether they're taken by journalists themselves in the field, or just regular people out and about who have witnessed it.
[00:32:45] Ronan Hughes: Yeah, if there's a big event that happens now, if there's, you know, God forbid a terror attack or something significant like that, whereas in the past, newsroom would've reacted with, "Okay, we need to get cameras, correspondence, reporters, fixers, drinks, everybody needs to swarm down to the scene to try a news gather, find the pictures, tell the story, get information, get facts, and then feed that all back to the TV channel or as it is now digitally to the live blogs,
[00:33:19] and that would be the process. Actually, now that still happens 'cause you cannot beat boots on the ground, uh, that's a reality, and, and, you know, in Ukraine, you know, the eyewitness journalism we've been doing has really made us stand, stand out and actually does enlighten and, and inform about what is really happening.
[00:33:39] But, so you still have to do that, and there is massive value in that, but actually alongside that, whenever something happens, we also set up a desk in the newsroom, which just scours social media. We'll just look through, find facts, double source it, triple source it, speak to people, get them on air to do classic old-school photos, which there is totally still a place for.
[00:34:06] If they can't do it on there, do a kind of a FaceTime call as it, as is easy now. So, there is, there's huge kind of, uh, that digital news gathering is just as important now as the on-the-ground news gathering that's said, it just makes it, it gives it a different challenge in the way that you cover fast-moving, developing stories.
[00:34:30] Dawn Murden: The industry has changed so much. What advice would you give your younger self now knowing all that you know about how everything has changed over the years?
[00:34:42] Ronan Hughes: Uh, uh, calm down. When, when I was, when I was younger, I think it's fair to say I was a bit kind of, how do I put it? I suppose I wouldn't say kind of cocky, but I was, you know, I would, I wanted to go, go, go, go, go. I was impatient, and actually, and, and I thought I knew more than I did in the early days.
[00:35:05] And actually, there was an editor who at the time, you know, took me aside and said, "Look, Ronan, just chill, you know, just slow down, back off." Because I was so kind of excited and keen, um, and energized to do stuff that I was basically trying to take on more than I was actually experienced already for, and I needed to sort of just take a step back and, and learn.
[00:35:35] And so, my advice is you don't need to run before you can walk, and walking is a good thing. Learn to walk really, really well, then you can jog, and then you can run, and then you can think about doing a half marathon, and then you can think about doing a marathon, but actually it's, um, get, get in those, kind of those, those miles early on and don't be, don't feel in a rush to get somewhere because, especially if you're early on in your career, you will hopefully have a very long, very successful career, and, but look around you and learn from those around you.
[00:36:12] There's, there will be lots of people who have a lot of, of wisdom and insight and knowledge, and you will get to the point where you have taken all of that in, and you are then able to sort of push that back out again and, and impart that onto other people. Not that it ever ends, I'm still learning, totally, every single day.
[00:36:35] Dawn Murden: Well, and I think we can all learn from each other, can't we? And people, obviously, most people are usually so willing to, to share in their learnings, like yourself appearing on the podcast today. I think people do really like sharing their, their learnings. It's, um, I know it's one of my favorite ways to learn, it's just listening to other people's lived experiences of, you know, how they dealt with that, I think that can teach us so much.
[00:36:57] Brilliant. And so, we talked about sort of changes that are happening in the journalism industry. What excites you about the future of your industry the most right now?
[00:37:07] Ronan Hughes: Um, what excites me is the fact that I genuinely don't have a clue where we're gonna be in 5, 10 years time. It is moving so rapidly, I love the, the fact, the way that people consume cha, uh, news has, is developing the, this sort of demand for news now, I think is really exciting, I think the last couple of years, and the news cycle has made news more important than ever to people.
[00:37:40] It's underlined the value and the importance of, of what we all do in, in journalism. Um, I think it's interesting how people now want to understand the why and the how of stories much more than just the, the facts about, about them. And there's a really big part of what we do now is adding value to the stories, be that in terms of kind of analysis and explanation, and what excites me is the kind of the, the way that video is becoming more, um, important than ever in terms of showing what is going on in the world.
[00:38:23] And Sky News is always produced incredible video, and now we're able to push that to more people than ever thanks to social platforms like, like YouTube and, yeah, I think it's just the thing that excites me most is just not really knowing what things are gonna be like in 5, 10 years time. I mean, it blows my mind that, you know, one of these, you know, wasn't around, was hardly around 10 years ago, and how that has transformed the way that we, um, gather and publish news. Yeah, it's, um, so that's, that's a, yeah, that's probably what excites me most of all, the unknown.
[00:39:07] Dawn Murden: Yeah. And like you said, you've had so many changes over the last couple of the years, you've had Covid, you've had so much news in the last couple of months in the UK, as well. How are you sort of feeling about the news cycle at, at the moment? What does life, like, look like for you at the moment with everything that's happening?
[00:39:26] Ronan Hughes: I genuinely thought that 2022 was gonna be a slower news year. I thought that going into it, you know, we, we sat around 'cause we'd had, you know, 2020 and Covid, which transformed everything, and was a really challenging year in terms of, you know, covering a really hard, impactful story and doing it in the right way and a sensitive way, but also managing a big team of people and putting in place
[00:40:02] the facilities for people to work effectively from home. Um, and that's totally transformed how we operate. So, that was 2020, into 2021, we had, you know, the consequences of Covid rolling on and new waves, and that really kind of kept us on the toes, but as, as we sort of got to the end of the year, you know, we were starting to have conversations about, okay, well, you know, this huge spike in audience that we had from Covid, you know, it's starting to drop off now and, you know, it was never gonna last because those,
[00:40:34] those audience numbers were absolutely incredible, and, you know, we were getting 90 million people consuming our news on platform at the peak of their crisis in, in March. So, we were, we were, you know, starting to have conversations about how we grow our audience, how we look at different things because we can't rely on the news cycle.
[00:40:53] Um, and then 2022 sort of kicked off, and this thing was happening out in Ukraine, and nobody really thought that Putin was gonna properly go in, and it happened, and then Partygate came along, um, we've had transformative events with the, with the Royal family, but, you know, before, you know, the passing of the Queen, we had Jubilee, which was a, a, a significant event and everything that's been going on with the wider royal family,
[00:41:21] Andrew and Harry, um, and, you know, new Prime Minister, at the end of it all, who inadvertently, she would argue, triggered an economic crisis. It's been a, a seismic news year and in a way it's difficult with dealing with the news to put in place a kind of, a lasting kind of strategy. Um, but that's what we work on, and, and you know, Sky News is growing digitally, we are in a privileged position when a lot in the industry are, are cutting back on jobs because of financial pressures that we're able to grow are journalism,
[00:42:03] and we are, you know, recruiting new roles, that digital expansion is a reflection of the growing audience, which we have maintained and, and are now in this year, we are seeing it grow again. Uh, and that is, of course, it's down to the news agenda, but also, I think it's because people, lots of people have come to Sky News in the last two, three years, and they've seen Sky News for the quality trusted product that it is, and they've stuck with this.
[00:42:35] And I hope that those people will build that kind of bond of trust I was, I was talking about before, and, and, and you see it on, particularly on TV when something happens, people switch on their TV and come to Sky News, and actually what's happening increasingly now is when something happens, people switch on their TV or
[00:42:55] they go to the live stream on their phone, which is just important to, in, um, for us in terms of, um, making sure that we are getting our, the, the content that we have out to as many people as possible.
[00:43:09] Dawn Murden: Mm. 17 years at Sky News, and I wonder how the three years that we've just had stacks up against all of those years, it sounds like there's enough to, enough to have reported on the last three years of, of a lifetime.
[00:43:25] Ronan Hughes: Yeah, it really is, but they've been, but the thing is every, I don't think there's ever been a quiet year, but I think that is why I genuinely kind of love the job I have because there really isn't very many quiet moments, you might have, like, a week or two when it's quiet, like in the summer, like every summer you get to kind of August, and you see people around the news like, "Oh, it's really dead,
[00:43:52] there's nothing happening, what's going on?" And I turn around and say, "Enjoy it. It won't last." Let's have, like, to have a couple of weeks for people to have some time with their families and enjoy the summer holidays. It's like Christmas, you know, Christmas, every Christmas I kind of pray, "Please, nothing happened."
[00:44:11] And, you know, and there have been Christmas in the past where definitely stuff has happened, I mean, the Boxing Day tsunami, and, in 2004, and, and, you know, being, yeah, all sorts of things which happen over that Christmas period, but, you know, Christmas and the summer, the two times the year when I hope that things just stay quiet and people get to have time with their families, reset a little bit to go again because as soon as they come back it, it will go again,
[00:44:38] in the, and especially with the way that things are now, and I think the news agenda, I think the, the, the fact that news is so immediate now, does create this sense that news is all-encompassing. Um, I'm sure that if we had the news environment of the 1980s today with the technology that we have now, it would feel just as, if not even more seismic than, than what we are seeing now.
[00:45:14] But, but they didn't, you know, back then you didn't have 24-hour news channels pumping out news every second, you didn't have mobile phones sending you push alerts, telling you about events which are happening, you didn't have live blogs with changing facts, um, you didn't have the sheer scale and breadth of, of publishers, um, which you can read from anywhere in the world that you have now.
[00:45:40] Um, and that creates its own challenges in terms of competition, and in terms of, you know, trying to be the first and giving added value, but it also does mean that, I think it all just, you know, it keeps you on your toes and that's, I think is a good thing.
[00:46:01] Dawn Murden: Hmm. Would you say the, I know you sort of, you said the quieter times are good, you sort of sit back, okay, you know, enjoy it, it probably won't last for long, so enjoy it. But when you do have those quiet sort of news cycle moments, is that, is that, can that be a blessing because you get that kind of breather, and maybe you sort of look at the, the news stories that have come out, and then maybe think about sort of the long-form reports, analysis, et cetera, that you want to put out about stories that have maybe happened recently, or is there a feeling of, "Oh, it's too quiet." Um, yeah. Is it, is it a bit disconcerting or?
[00:46:37] Ronan Hughes: It's a bit of both, to be honest, and, and look, the reality is that they don't last, at the moment, they really don't. Um, but I think that actually it's, it's helpful to have those moments where you can reset because it's the, the job we do is an intense job, and it's been particularly hard the last couple of years.
[00:47:01] It's hard to switch off if you are working, you know, long hours, and then you go home, and you're sort of bombarded by the same amount of news all the time, and people want to talk about it in a way that maybe they didn't wanna talk about the news so much the last few years and, and you're actually, you know, a challenge now for us as journalists is actually the fact that journalists sometimes seem doom-mongers because there is this constant flow of hard news, difficult, depressing, um, news which is going on around the world,
[00:47:37] and it's our job to report, and it's important that we reflect it, absolutely, and it's, and it's right that we show that nasty things are happening in, in, in, around the world, and that we hold people in powerful positions, that we, that we challenge them and that we hold them to account. Um, I don't think that it would be right of us not to reflect on those things, but there, there is, but it's understandable that sometimes people just wanna switch off from it, like, you know, I get that, you know?
[00:48:10] And, yeah, it does, it's, but I think we, we just have to try and kind of, um, make news as engaging as possible to people, um, and to always put people at the heart of what we are doing and to tell people or try and convey the use to people in ways that is relevant to them, and whereas, you know, potentially in the past, you know, a war on the fringes of Europe, people might think, well, why does that matter to me? But matters hugely because we are now seeing a cost of living crisis, which is intrinsically linked to what is happening over there.
[00:48:51] Dawn Murden: Yeah, yeah, absolutely. On that engaging aspect, I wanted to ask you, what is your favorite piece of content on the web ever that you've seen?
[00:49:04] Ronan Hughes: Good question. I'll tell you what, one piece of content which we produced, which I think was really good, and I was really proud of was during the Royal Wedding of Harry and Megan. We produced a piece which was who's who, which was ev, we knew that the event was gonna have loads of people, celebrities, royals, all coming in for it, um, especially with, uh, nature of, of the two of them.
[00:49:32] And so, we produced a, worked with, um, some partners who used AI facial recognition technology, and produced a, an interactive where whenever people arrived for the wedding in real-time, we had locked off camera at their, uh, Windsor, and as they walked past, the facial recognition basically worked and it told you who they were.
[00:49:57] It was a really simple, it wasn't simple, it was really complicated and took a lot of work, uh, but a really, um, effective, and distinct, um, thing that nobody had ever done before in the world. It's really difficult to do now because GDPR rules came in literally two weeks after we published it, which make it even more difficult to do now, but at the time, it was okay.
[00:50:24] And it was, I think that goes down as certainly the piece of work on web that I'm most proud of having worked on because nobody had ever done it before technically. It involved a huge amount of work, it was really consumer-focused in that it was something which you could really play with,
[00:50:44] you know, you could fast forward, scroll back and forth, like, "Oh, who's that?" And then you pause, and it clicks up and tells you who they are and their bio on it. And so, yeah, that was pretty cool. And then, in terms of stuff that other publishers do, I just, I love pretty much everything the New York Times does, in terms of their big interactives, and the way that you kind of move around them. And they're class, but they've got masters of resource, which is why they're so class, so, fair play.
[00:51:16] Dawn Murden: Great. Thank you so much, Ronan. And I'm sad to say we're coming up on time now, but I've really enjoyed our chat. I do have one last question to ask you, and that's, if you had a captive audience and a hundred thousand people and a mic in your hand, um, what would you want that audience to know about you, your work, or your approach to storytelling?
[00:51:39] Ronan Hughes: My message would be to try and put creativity at the heart of everything that you do. If you've got an incredible story, which is the basis of everything, should always be an incredible story, just always think creatively about what can make it look and jump out and stand out, um, whenever I was early in my career, um, I used to, when Sky News used to was, was very famous for having its big news war,
[00:52:12] and we used to do really big bold graphics, which would really fill the newsroom with 3D objects, which was, uh, dynamic and creative and exciting, and, and now looks really cheesy and awful, but, um, but at the time it felt right and it felt really on, on the money and new, and that's the kind of thing which I still love is whenever I watch something on TV or view something on my mobile phone,
[00:52:44] and it really surprises me because it's so distinct and different and creative, and yeah, be creative, be innovative, those are the things which, and, and it's, and it's really easy to sit here and say, "Yeah, be innovative. Yeah, make sure you're always innovative." It's a really hard thing to do because you have to have the idea, and you have to have the drive to push it through.
[00:53:09] And you need to have the backing of those around you to support you in, in, in doing so, that should be what excites us is doing the things which are, are new and the who's who thing is a perfect example of it. Um, I worked on something called Deep Ocean Live, um, which was when we broadcast from the bottom of the ocean, they would never done that before.
[00:53:33] Um, Sky News' a good place for challenging and doing things which nobody has done before. That excites me, and my advice to anybody else would be do that.
[00:53:46] Dawn Murden: Great advice. Well, we'll make sure to include some of the things that you've mentioned in the show notes as well so that the audience can peruse them in their own time afterwards. But thank you ever so much, Ronan, for joining me on the podcast today. I really appreciate your time and all the insights that you've shared.
[00:54:03] Ronan Hughes: No problem. Happy to be here and hope to see you soon.
[00:54:06] Dawn Murden: What a fantastic episode of the Craft that was. It was really great to have Ronan on the show, and I hope you got lots of value from listening to our chat today.
[00:54:16] Before I finish up, I wanted to set you a challenge. In this episode, Ronan talked about creativity, innovation, and the importance of new ideas. The challenge from this episode, should you choose to accept it, is to innovate, easy, right? Hmm. No. Ronan, in his own measure did say it's not easy. So, let's break it down a little bit.
[00:54:42] So, I want to urge you to come up with one new idea, something a bit different from your norm, something that really excites you personally, and then to see if you can rally the support to get off the ground, you know, if you need to kind of push that through in your organization, if you need others to help you, or maybe you choose something that you can do totally independently, it's up to you.
[00:55:07] If you do accept this challenge, please do tag us on social media so that we can check out how you're getting along with that. And we have lots of amazing guests lined up in the future for the podcast. So, please do make sure that you've subscribed, and if you'd like to come on the show yourself and talk to us about content or storytelling on the web, then please do get in touch.
[00:55:29] Our details are in the show notes, along with the amazing links that we mentioned earlier today. Thank you so much, again, for tuning in to this episode of The Craft, and until next time, happy storytelling.