One of the big themes of the next print edition of Press Gazette (July) is ‘Brand Me’ – how journalists can cut faltering publishers out of the picture altogether and become commercial properties in their own right.
And one of the stars of the issue is going to be Zoe Griffin – publisher of the eponymous website Zoe Griffin/Party Princess.
She wants to become the UK’s answer to US celeb blogger extraordinaire Perez Hilton– and having met her and experienced her awesome energy first hand, I think she might just do it.
Griffin is only 27 and already has a CV which includes stints on the Spy column of the Daily Telegraph, as Katie Nicholl’s deputy on the Mail on Sunday diary, editor of her own section at thelondonpaper and a two-year stint with a two-page bylined column in the Sunday Mirror.
Last October she packed it all in to strike out on her own. She boasts 100,000 unique users a month on the site and says she has already equalled her old Sunday Mirror salary.
She told me: “I just think that you can achieve whatever you want to achieve in life. People told me I’d never get a job at the Daily Telegraph coming from Hemel Hempstead – most of my friends from school have either got three kids or are in prison.”
Inspiring stuff, especially for any aspiring journalists who feel disheartened by the mass lay-offs in the mainstream media.
Read more about her story, and other journalists who have made it as ‘brands’ in their own right, in the July edition of Press Gazette – which is only available to subscribers and will go in the post in the first week of the month.
Details about how to subscribe are here.
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