Life at the sharp end
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or most of those who work in the TV industry, the old cliché is true: no two days are the same. But when you’re responsible for ITV’s lunchtime, evening, and 10:00pm news, there’s a structure that can’t bend, not even when the world enters lockdown and changes life as we know it. Welcome to the working world of Rachel Corp. Corp has been ITV News’s acting editor since 2018, after years of highlevel, high-stakes news experience. She joined ITN in 2011, after a spell as the BBC’s Moscow producer, climbing to ITV News London’s editor during the mayoral election debates and the Brexit referendum. She subsequently led the 5 News team, pulling together coverage of the 2017 snap election with weeks, rather than months, to prepare, before returning to ITV News to cover, among other
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ITV News chief Rachel Corp takes Shilpa Ganatra through her working day
things, the wedding of the Duke and Duchess of Sussex. “But coronavirus is the biggest breaking news story that any of us have had for a long time,” she says. “We were watching it coming towards us from Asia, then from the continent, so it’s a breaking story that we could predict but couldn’t plan for.” Even before “the new normal”, Corp would wake at 6:00am every day in Peckham, south London, where she lives with her husband, Laurence Lee, a senior reporter for Al Jazeera, and their two young daughters. Such is the 24/7 nature of the job, mornings involve a scan through overnight updates, then exercise, either a run or workout at home, with the radio on. Defined as a key worker, she drives though all but empty streets to ITN’s HQ at Gray’s Inn Road. “I feel lucky, as just having a change of scene is healthy mentally,” she says. “I appreciate that I get to see a bit of life,
especially as the seasons are changing.” Across ITN, a team of 240 staff deliver ITV’s lunchtime and early- evening bulletins and News at Ten, in addition to any extras commissioned. They share editorial duties, but one editor focuses on the management aspects each day, while the other runs the show. Corp is at her desk before 8:00am, but the day officially begins at 9:00am with an editorial meeting. She chairs it when she’s on duty. “It used to be a big, packed meeting room, but now there’s five or six of us, spread out, two metres apart. Many more are dialling in,” she says, adding that, nowadays, she often works from home. “We’ve had to adapt almost overnight. People have variable internet quality, sometimes you can’t hear properly, but we’ve made it work. Plus, we get a good old peek into people’s houses, which is fun. “At the moment, news is wall-to-wall
