How Brexit has kept sub-editors working around the clock

The next ‘meaningful vote’ in the Commons is set for 13 February. You can bet sub-editors will be working in offices, and from home, until the small hours of Valentine's Day

When I started out as a cub reporter for my local newspaper in the southside of Glasgow, I had no way of anticipating that all these years later I would be sharing a menage a trois with the prime minister and the leader of the opposition. Ahem, no this isn’t a love letter. Let me explain...

During extreme news cycles (and Brexit is nothing if not extreme), reporters, picture editors, sub-editors (that’s me!) – basically anyone in the media who contributes to covering current affairs – is expected to work to the rhythm of those events.

There is no such thing as a nine-to-five job in journalism.

To give you the best news, reaction, analysis and comment, we fit our schedule around what’s happening in the world.

The past few weeks has seen a succession of votes in parliament (if you’ve missed them, then lucky you) attempting to unblock the logjam created by the deal struck between Britain and Brussels to agree our withdrawal from the European Union.

You can bet if politicians are up late in the House of Commons, then journalists are up even later trying to make sense of it all. Once reporters in the Westminster lobby have filed their stories, it’s then up to sub-editors to polish and fact check their words before writing the headlines you’ll be reading over your cornflakes in the morning. The later the news, the later we work.

So it was I found myself sub-editing from the comfort of my own home in the small hours after voting had taken place in parliament last Tuesday. This flexibility allows us to report on the big events and news of the day in order to keep what you read as fresh and as accurate as possible.

The next “meaningful vote” in the Commons is set for 13 February. You can bet sub-editors will be working in offices, and from home, until the small hours of 14 February. It will be my fate to spend the start of Valentine’s Day with Theresa May and Jeremy Corbyn. Talk about uneasy bedfellows... Brexit in bed anyone?

Yours,

Ross McKinnon

Sub-editor