Charlie Baker

Editor

The Fence

I am delighted - and honoured - to be nominated for this award for the second year in a row. There is no higher praise than to be celebrated by your peers.

2024 has been another fantastic year for The Fence. On a journalistic level, highlights have included our investigation into malpractice and skullduggery in the Diocese of London, a long-form feature on the Hackney crime feud that inspired 'Top Boy' and publishing original work from the legendary John Banville.

Our team - Kieran Morris, Róisín Lanigan, Séamas O'Reilly and Fergus Butler-Gallie have produced four spectacular issues, and our distinct orange-and-black colour palette has inspired Gen-Z readers to revel in the charms of print.

From a commercial standpoint, we have had a gala year, with growth from sales and subscriptions up 91 percent on the last calendar year. We have signed a commercial deal with CAA and our book on English pub culture is coming out next year.

I am very proud to have done all of this as the only full-time employee at The Fence, and am very lucky to have such great colleagues working with me.

Deborah Joseph

UK Editor In Chief & European Editorial Director

GLAMOUR UK

Deborah Joseph has made GLAMOUR magazine the unmissable online destination for Gen Z and millennial women. She is the leading force behind 24 articles a day online covering beauty, fashion, activism. She has ensured that GLAMOUR is the go-to brand for telling  women’s stories behind the news headlines, as well as across social platforms. She also oversees the brand’s landmark events such as the GLAMOUR Women of the Year Awards.

Deborah has led the way in digital transformation for seven years: the first editor of a major publication to introduce digital covers, persuading A-list celebrities including Gwyneth Paltrow and Nicole Kidman – among others – to view an online magazine cover with equal kudos as a print cover, which was no mean feat. She has driven an inclusive, purpose-led magazine, tapping into urgent cultural conversations surrounding feminism, identity, politics, and activism. 

This year, Deborah presided over the GLAMOUR Talks Consent campaign, commissioning a survey in partnership with Refuge and Rape Crisis England and Wales, which found that 91% of GLAMOUR readers felt that deepfake technology posed a risk to women’s safety. Deborah chaired a parliamentary roundtable with Greg Clark, then Conservative MP and Chair of the Science, Innovation, and Technology Committee, to explore what politicians, Ofcom, and tech companies could do to stop deepfake abuse. This ultimately culminated in the government announcing plans to criminalise the creation of deepfake pornography without consent. Although this promise was lost after the general election, Deborah regrouped and launched a brand new Stop Image-Based Abuse petition in October calling for a total rehaul of the UK’s image-based abuse laws, which already has over 35k signatures. 

Last month, it was announced that Deborah’s January 2023 self-love cover, which spotlighted three disabled women, will be included in an upcoming exhibition at the V&A. 

This year, she also launched GLAMOUR’s highly successful Empowerment Summit in Manchester, sponsored by Samsung. The first-of-its-kind event for 850 of the brand’s Northern readers brought together celebrities, activists, doctors and influencers to inspire and empower women outside of London on topics from careers to health.

This is her final year as editor of GLAMOUR – after seven years she is stepping down to write a book and to create a podcast. The rebirth of GLAMOUR and its successful transformation into a digital brand was dynamic, forward-thinking and industry-leading. It continues to lead the way in how to successfully pivot a brand and build it in a multi-platform, digital world. She has never shied away from covering controversial and taboo topics with her readers and driving forward powerful and surprising conversations, illustrated by her pregnant man Logan Brown cover, and GLAMOUR being the first mainstream magazine to have three women with disabilities on the cover.

Sasha Silber

Executive Editor

Perspectives

I am deeply honoured to accept the nomination for the BSME 2024 Editor's Editor Award. This recognition is especially meaningful as it reflects not only my work but the collective efforts of an incredible team at Perspectives magazine by Jewish Futures Trust.

Throughout my career, I have aimed to create content that not only resonates with the audience, but also challenges them to think critically and engage with diverse points of view. At Perspectives, we place a strong emphasis on curating articles and interviews that spotlight individuals making a profound impact on the Jewish world and beyond. Collaborating with my small but wonderful team –– from our brilliant Editor-in-Chief Ari Kayser, to our especially gifted art director Kimberley Rumble-Nugent –– allows us to bring this vision to life in every edition. Kimberley’s exceptional talent in visual storytelling elevates each issue since having joined our team last autumn, transforming it into a rich, immersive experience for our readers. It is a privilege to lead a team where creativity and integrity merge, producing a publication that not only informs, but also uplifts and inspires.

Being nominated for this award is an acknowledgement of the dedication and passion that drives our success. I am truly grateful to the BSME for this recognition, and I look forward to continuing our mission to enhance and expand the world of magazine editing.

Mike Williams

Editor in chief

Sight & Sound

Being nominated for a BSME is such an honour, and being shortlisted for the Editors’ Editor Award, voted for by my peers, feels special. I liken it to an email I received recently from the office of Martin Scorsese. “Sight and Sound is so important to me,” he wrote. “When I look through the pages of the latest issue, it always lifts my spirits. Why? Because it’s made and maintained by people who care. People who love our art form. Please keep it that way.” For the world’s greatest living filmmaker to recognise the position we once again occupy at the heart of film culture is high praise, a position made possible by the dedication of my brilliant team. 

In my five years as Editor I’ve repositioned the magazine as welcoming and inclusive but no less serious about cinema, and as a result we have a wider and more diverse audience. Our line-in-the-sand arrived with the release of our once-a-decade Greatest Films of All Time poll. #sightandsoundpoll trended globally for days, inspiring the world’s media to cover the story, while film societies from Bristol to Delhi built their programming around the list. With the right leadership, magazines are as influential as they’ve ever been. 

Prior to our poll and redesign, a Barbie cover would have been self-sabotage, but the issue was our best seller in this judging period. In a year of exclusives, Christopher Nolan gave the most revealing interview of his career and David Lynch, who hasn’t spoken candidly in years, announced he may never make another film. We continued our support for Black filmmaking with the Black Film Bulletin, and reported from the frontline of the writers’ strikes. 

As we know, sales are not the sole judgement of success, but we’re proud of three consecutive annual circulation rises. With double-digit traffic growth, our newsletter reaching 40,000+ people and 50,000+ new social followers, our audience has never been bigger. 

No other magazine treats cinema with such care. It’s why it matters to our readers, why it matters to Scorsese, and why I’m proud to be the Editor.

John L. Walters

Editor

Eye (and Pulp)

Magazines are all about communities. There’s the small team of colleagues who make the mag and the wider community of professionals – writers, designers, journalists, academics – who provide titles such as Eye with words and pictures and ideas. Then there are the wonderful advertisers who enjoy using the medium of print and paper to promote their products and services to our readers. And then beyond there is the community that we love so madly – subscribers and readers worldwide.

As editors, we appreciate each and every reader, whether fleeting or loyal; browsing or examining in detail. There are collectors who are building up a library of every edition – from the 1990 launch issue to Eye 107 – and young enthusiasts who post Eye unboxing videos on Instagram. There are design students, researchers and lecturers in design libraries; studios who share each edition; and people who read just a few articles, or somehow ‘inhale’ the mag from a mention on social media. 

Eye may be a serious, expensive magazine, beautifully art directed and printed, aimed at grown-ups, but you can engage with our subject matter wherever and whenever you wish: with a typeface or a poster; an ad campaign or a movie title sequence; a logotype or a system for every road sign in the country. The graphic design community is friendly and open and we are never short of great subjects for articles and opinion pieces and reviews. 

So I would like to say thank you for this nomination for the ‘Editors’ Editor Award 2024’. It’s always good to be appreciated, and I regard it as a cool tribute to the community – my colleagues at Eye, our readers and advertisers, and the thriving and ever-evolving indie mag sector. JLW