The Telegraph Weekly World Edition
(2009-12)

I took the helm of the Weekly World Edition, the weekly tabloid edition of the Daily and Sunday Telegraph, along with its channel on the Telegraph website, telegraph.co.uk/expat, in 2009. During my time running it the paper - which like so many other print editions was shut down in April 2016 - was printed at five different print sites around the world, and distributed in 130 different countries, so it was a complex undertaking. 

As part of a root and branch overhaul of the product I led a redesign of both the paper and website and added user-generated data areas and a social media network to the latter, which took page views went from 400k a month to over 2m a month. I also launched the Expat Directory, an interactive social map which collected user-generated content from expats around the world, and attracted 20,000 registered users and £200k in commercial sponsorship from partners including British Airways, LloydsTSB International, John Lewis and Sotheby’s International Realty. In September 2011 I also launched an iPad edition of the paper, and drew up proposals for a Kindle edition.

The plan had always been to prepare the edition for sale, not just around the world, but also at home in the UK, as a competitor to The Week. When it came to the crunch, however, the business felt - probably correctly - that such a move would only cannibalise sales of the existing Saturday Telegraph and Daily iPad edition, and decided not to proceed with the UK rollout. This was a decision that ultimately meant the Weekly's demise, as the shrinking expat market - by now better served by the Internet than by a print edition - was no longer sufficient to sustain it.

It was sad but we had our moments of glory, not least producing a cover that The Atlantic and The Huffington Post deemed "the greatest newspaper front page ever". I've reproduced it above so you can judge for yourself, my slightly controversial solution to a particularly exciting press day.