Behind the door at No4

Dawn Collinson partner - Copy MediA

Tell us who you and what your role is? 

I’m a partner in Copy Media, which is a news, features and copywriting agency run by myself and my business partner Janet Tansley. We launched the business in September 2016 after working as journalists for more than 30 years, including 25 years+ at the Liverpool Echo. 

We worked alongside each other in the newsroom and latterly in the features department, so when we were looking for a new business challenge it made sense to take the leap into self-employment together.

Now we write features and news for national newspapers and magazines, we write press releases for PR companies and for individual businesses, and web content for anyone who needs it. We also offer a proofreading service because we’re slightly more grammar obsessed than is probably healthy.

What is it you like best about your job?

It’s the same now as it was when we worked at the Echo – getting to meet and interview so many interesting people, finding out more about their stories and then sharing them.

Usually the people who think they don’t have a story at all are the ones who have some little gem tucked away, then the challenge is to dig it out.

The excitement of seeing your byline on a story never goes away; it makes me feel the same to see it now as it did when I got my first weekly newspaper byline aged 19.

Tell us one thing about yourself that other people might not know?  

I interviewed George Clooney when I was pregnant with my son 19 years ago. When he was born, I sneaked George in as his middle name so he’d always have an anecdote to tell.

How important is social media to your business and how do you use it? 

It’s really important because it helps us share our articles to a wider audience and it’s also a great tool for contacting subjects. When we both started out as journalists, you had to track someone down and either approach them in person or somehow find a landline phone number for them. Now messaging via social media is so simple. 

Tell us what you are most excited about in your business over the next six months? 

We’re looking forward to working with new business clients - we’re often offered work via word of mouth so we never know who’ll be on the end of the phone when it rings or what kind of content they might need. We also enjoy the challenge of finding great stories and we’re about to start a podcast project with another former colleague which is really exciting because it takes us into a new area of media.

How much of a difference does being in No 4 St Paul's make to you or your business? 

We work in the Santander business hub so we’re a part of a business community, mostly start-ups, which has been enormously helpful to us in getting Copy Media established. Alongside the social aspect of being part of a team, we’ve collaborated on a number of projects with fellow hub members, and we’ve relied on their support. For instance, my partner Jan’s laptop hard drive suddenly died after a Windows update and one of the other business owners was able to install a new one and restore all her information.

Without that help we’d have potentially lost so much time and work. We tried to repay him in tea and biscuits.

Dawn Collinson can be contacted at Copy Media - dawncollinson@copymedia.co.uk