12 things I learned in 12 years at Citywire

This weekend will mark my 12 (twelve) year anniversary at Citywire. Without echoing the lists of a certain right-wing commentator who has his 12 rules for living, here are 12 things I have learned over that time. I didn’t intend for it to be an article but apparently I went over the limit for a post.

1. If a PR person tells someone “it isn’t really a story”, that is perhaps true 5-10% of the time. It usually means “it’s an inconvenient story” and they want it to go away. There will be cases where it is genuinely not news but the messaging needs to be clear.
2. You can get Bill Gross on the phone to give you an exclusive about GameStop, share a rare WhatsApp with Mohamed El-Erian and get praise from Tony Visconti for your video editing* - but if you pretend to be a spy in the Gstaad Palace hotel, that will be your legacy - as the cover photo shows. (*I didn’t do any editing, Tony was being polite and saw I was working with the video team)
3. Hosting an event is as close to being a celebrity as you can get, as a few people will know instinctively who you are, when you last spoke and what you spoke about, but you might be not 100% guaranteed to know them. It is weird and disorientating.
4. Media briefings over food will result in hungry journalists scoffing breakfast while a fund manager watches his own meal go stone-cold or, and perhaps worse, involve having to hear about bond yields over the smack of scrambled egg being masticated by an overenthusiastic fixed income manager.
5. There is a surprisingly high level of opportunity to weave football into most financial topics (and, to an extent, wrestling and Succession). If you like a topic it can make it more engaging to write about, but doesn’t always land with the audience.
6. It is hard not to get swept up in the ‘excitement’ and breaking news aspect of a scandal – GAM, H2O, Woodford, et al – but better journalism comes from stopping for a second to actually ascertain what is going on and why it matters.
7. Nobody is bigger than the whole thing. Pre-pandemic each journalist team worked almost in complete isolation, now we work much more closely and have daily contact. That contact expands to other departments, teams and people who might know what you need to do more than you first did. Not an original thought but something that has become apparent.
8. Conflict is good if it leads to a better outcome – a discussion over whether a story on prisons has merit or needs to be put through a more complex lens is better than an argument over whose byline goes first.
9. Preparation, preparation, preparation. In my early days I met with a Japan equity manager and went with three questions. He answered them flat. I then asked if he liked his job. He looked at me incredulously and said “yes”. And then I left. 15 minutes. Never again.
10. In a similar vein to point one – if a fund manager says “that’s a good question…”, it can occasionally be a genuine sentiment. But experience tells me it serves two purposes – it buys them a bit of time to answer and most journalists – myself very much included – have quite fragile egos and will be briefly thrown off their equilibrium by this minor bit of validation/praise.
11. It takes literally two seconds to email a PR person and say “no thanks” or “this isn’t for me, because we don’t cover XYZ” and saves you months of frantic chasing and/or pestering for something you never wanted to do in the first place.
12. During this job, I have travelled to Switzerland (many times), France, Luxembourg, Belgium, Germany, Netherlands, Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Portugal, Spain, Monaco, Italy, Hong Kong, Singapore and Miami, several of which I would have never have gone to of my own volition, so I am grateful to have had the chance.

Cheers.