Journalist Spotlight – Ruth Prickett, Editor of Financial Management

Cision Europe recently reviewed the UK’s financial media industry and produced various rankings across social and print media, including the top 25 UK finance magazines. Top place went to Financial Management, the Chartered Institute of Management Accountants’ magazine. It covers all aspects of managing the finances of organisations and the role played by management accountants from financial controllers and analysts to FDs and group CFOs.

Ruth Prickett has been Editor of Financial Management since 2003, having joined the title in 2000. From early days as a sub-editor on the weekly Estates Gazette, she has worked on a variety of business titles including CIPD magazine People Management and Accounting Technician. She has also founded and continues to run her own magazine, Illustration.

“I studied history at Cambridge University and when I went up people were leaving with three or four job offers,” Ruth says. “When I graduated in the depths of the 1990s recession most companies weren’t recruiting anyone at all and the ‘milk round’ fairs had pretty much dried up.” Ruth’s first journalistic break was at a small private magazine aimed at rich tourists to London, distributed in the big hotels and airport lounges. “They’d just got their first computers so I learnt to make up the magazine on a Mac Classic. I did everything from chasing ads, buying stamps and fetching and carrying ad copy from the big agencies to fobbing off the landlords when they complained that we were behind on the rent”. However, Ruth did get the opportunity to review theatre, film and restaurants and after nine months moved to Estates Gazette as sub-editor.

After Estates Gazette, Ruth took on the role of sub-editor/features writer at the fortnightly magazine People Management. She says: “People Management provided excellent experience and a lot of the team were still in their mid-twenties so we had fun. After a stint on the news desk, I then moved across to be deputy editor on the monthly title Accounting Technician when Redactive won that contract from the AAT.”

A year later Accounting Technician’s editor became head of magazines at CIMA. She relaunched Management Accounting as Financial Management and introduced a separate student magazine called CIMA Insider. Ruth was offered the twin roles of deputy editor on the CIMA member magazine and editor of CIMA Insider. “The idea of splitting the magazine wasn’t a bad one,” she comments, “but I’m not sure anyone realised the full effect that online advertising would have on recruitment sales. The idea then was to make it more generally appealing to business readers and less focused on the technical aspects of management accountancy. Readers, however, liked the layout, but disliked any impression that it was ‘dumbing down’ or losing its specialist focus.” By 2003 the magazine had re-introduced some of the in-depth technical accountancy pieces. It was then outsourced to Caspian Publishing and re-amalgamated into a single title. “Members generally welcomed having the student articles back in the main magazine because it enabled them to keep abreast of changes to the syllabus and helped those managing students to understand what they were studying. This also coincided with the period when continuing professional development was made compulsory, so member development gained importance.”

Financial Management has always been regarded as a key benefit for CIMA members and students and is the main channel of professional information for most of them. “Member surveys show that it is well read and that it enjoys a very high level of member satisfaction. This is great, but it does mean that readers feel proprietorial about it and are happy to let you know exactly what they think of changes to format, content and design” Ruth says. “The up side to this, of course, is that we get a lot of interesting material from members who regularly contact me and ask about opportunities to contribute articles or case studies. We are also lucky that the subject is so wide ranging – almost everything and anything to do with managing finances in business – and that we have such an amazing pool of CIMA members to talk to. Our readers occupy a vast range of roles in organisations of all types and sizes in over 150 countries around the world, so it’s a vast and fascinating subject. The financial crisis of the past few years and continuing issues surrounding the recovery have provided opportunities for us to cover incredibly interesting international topics – from the latest thoughts on risk analysis and management to the ethics of investing in certain markets and currency wars.”

CIMA’s major growth areas are south-east Asia, South America and China, so Ruth says Financial Management has huge potential to develop stories of global financial significance. “The continuing focus on economic recovery and international markets means that management accountants have never been in a more important position, both for their organisations and for national economies. Non-accountants sometimes think accountancy sounds dull, but in reality the work our readers do (and, therefore, the things we can write about) underpins everything that affects all of us – from what we earn to where we shop and what we buy to how much we pay, our pensions and new product development.”

CIMA recently awarded the contract for Financial Management to Seven Squared, so it’s all change again at Christmas. “The change of publisher in the new year will lead to a redesign and some changes, but CIMA has made it clear that it does not intend us to make any fundamental alterations to the current editorial mix or the topics we cover. The key subjects that we write about will, of course, remain as important as ever, since they reflect the main concerns of our readers and the challenges they face in their day-to-day roles.”

In addition to working on Financial Management, Ruth set up her own magazine, Illustration, with a couple of colleagues in 2004 and it publishes quarterly. It covers all aspects of illustration – from books, magazines and posters to film storyboards and packaging, historical and modern (www.illustration-mag.com). “It’s great to be able to use the skills I’ve gained as a sub, features writer and news hack over the years to produce something that’s totally our own and is unique in its market. It doesn’t make our fortunes (we plough most of the proceeds back into production) but it’s enabled me to meet some of my heroes (eg David McKee, creator of Mr Benn) and to learn huge amounts about a subject I’m fascinated by – I’ve always collected illustrated books, but this has taken me into areas that I knew nothing about, from 1960s graphic novels to medieval German wood-engravings. A more unexpected advantage is that it’s given me real insights into setting up and running your own small business, which has proved extremely useful for understanding this side of FM’s work.”

UPDATE: Ruth’s Pitching Tips for PRs

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