Sarah Whitehead’s Incoming President’s Speech

Below is the full text of Incoming President Sarah Whitehead’s speech to the Society of Editors Annual General Meeting held on 4 December 2024. 

A huge thank you to you all for nominating me as this year’s President of the Society of Editors. It is a huge honour and I’m humbled as I look back at this year and what the Society has achieved. And I’m excited about the year ahead and what as an organisation we can do.

2025 is already shaping up to be a challenging year for the media. In their Future of the News report, the Lords committee – led by Baroness Stowell – said that “if current trends continue, the gap between those consuming professional journalism and those who do not will widen at pace. There is a realistic possibility of the UK’s news environment fracturing irreparably along social, regional and economic lines within the next five to ten years.” The committee said it did not believe any silver bullet solutions exist for these problems and that “much of the work needs to be led by industry itself”.

And that’s where the Society of Editors comes in. I am calling on all our members and other editors around the country to see what the Society of Editors offers — a fantastic space for people running news organisations across the country to get together and take these issues on. I believe that together we are stronger and I know that we can push on on some of the biggest issues in our industry. From the questions surrounding AI, disinformation and the continuing concerns around SLAPPS, to ways to promote and sustain local journalism and look after the safety and freedom of journalists to do their jobs.

The world we’re living in is very demanding but the Society of Editors is a place where as an industry we can work together on shared issues and strive to drive change. It’s also a place to celebrate our successes. Last month’s Media Freedom Awards recognised some extraordinary feats of journalism. Scarlet Howes for the Sun’s Huw Edwards investigation, Sam Poling for the extraordinary story of Emma Caldwell’s murderer and the Sunday Times campaign into infected blood were 3 winners whose journalism has really stuck with me. All 3 had spent huge amounts of time, dedication and tenacity to achieve what they achieved. They had the backing of their news organisations and all of that was celebrated at the Society’s awards. It’s important. Their success spurs people on to do more and makes it clear how fantastically alive and kicking investigative journalism is and how important it is. The awards had a stellar guest list, packed with the big names of our business and young journalists smashing it on their way up. There was incredible diversity of story and journalists in the nominations, something we still need to be better at, and crucially there was fantastic representation from so many media organisations.

And that encapsulates the Society for me and is what we must hold onto over this coming year. Making sure that extraordinary journalism that changes things continues, that we work in a healthy news environment that is trusted and respected and that our diverse community continues to offer everyone the opportunity to achieve their goals.

Taking on this role I stand on the shoulders of 2 amazing people – the outgoing President, Kamal Ahmed and Vice President Alison Philips. I want to say a huge thank you to them both and hope that they will continue to offer sage advice, great ideas and impetus to what we want to achieve.

And of course none of this would be possible without the incredible work of Dawn Alford, the Society’s Executive Director, Claire Meadows our campaign and advocacy officer and Angela Upton, the Society’s administrator and it’s beating heart. We have plenty of work to do. We have an important conference in the Spring and the subjects we will be grappling with just keep piling up.

There is no more important time for the Society of editors and I look forward to working with Joy Yates who is taking on the role of Vice President, Dawn, Claire and Angela. What an incredible line up of women. And we will work with the extraordinary board of the Society, our fantastic chairman Ian MacGregor and the ever increasing number of members. Together we can achieve so much. Thanks very much.