The responsibility of being the leader

Last week the DigitalUs team had the pleasure of attending a conference with Paul Kirby, editor of the BBC's Europe section. The journalist told us about his work methodology on a day-to-day basis in a medium as large as the BBC.

He is in charge of coordinating the Europe section and ensuring that all topics of interest are covered by him. For this, Kirby requires a perfectly coordinated team distributed throughout the territory, since it is impossible for him to find out what is happening in all the countries of Europe. His reporters from different parts convey to Kirby the most important of the day and then he must decide.

BBC's Europe online section.

Every day he has a great responsibility. He has to decide what is published and what is not, as well as the order of importance that will be given to each news item. As if that were not enough, he has to make these decisions in a very short time and continuously.

Another point that has struck me about Kirby's work is the relationship he maintains with the audience. Kirby values ​​the opinions of his readers very much and is constantly paying attention to the feedback of everything that is published.

Kirby uses statistics, comments, social networks and everything in his power to see what content is most interesting to readers, what format they enjoy the most, what works and what doesn't. Based on that, Kirby and his team design content that is more and more appropriate to the demands of the audience, with the clear objective that they are satisfied reading and enjoying a medium that listens to them and makes content with their audience in mind.