A Day In The Life Of… Megan Wallace, UK Editorial Director at Gay Times

From securing an internship at Crack Magazine to becoming the UK editorial director of Gay Times, Megan Wallace’s ascent has been incredible. They started a freelance career eight years ago, going on to hold staff roles at Cosmopolitan UK, HUNGER, and Woo, and now set the direction for a historic and innovative publication. Megan’s rise shows that the graft pays off.

We caught up with Megan at the Student Publication Association’s 2024 National Conference to discuss how not to take edits personally, running a team, and their background in the zine boom of the late 2010s.

How do you start your day?

I’m a late riser. I normally wake up at 9am and start work at 10am. I’ll roll over, get my laptop, and make a cup of coffee. And then I’ll look at something like News Now, which has a broad spectrum of coverage across the political and media complex. I’ll post those in the team Slack channel and check on the scheduled features — which I like to schedule for 8am.

What does your typical workday involve?

We officially start work at 10am and I have an editorial meeting at 10.30am with everyone, hearing about the editorial and social teams’ whereabouts for the day, and if anyone has any pitches for social media or the website. I’ll sometimes have commercial meetings, do workshops with in-house writers, have correspondence with our freelancers via email and phone calls, speak to the design team, have PR meetings, and go to various events. And I do a lot of editing, working on strategies, and writing analytics reports.

How did you get started in journalism?

I’ve had staff roles (touch wood) since 2019 and, before that, I was doing my MA and interned at Crack magazine for four months. I started writing freelance in 2016, with various culture magazines and zines and stuff.

Why do you think you got the job you do currently? 

I think I’ve always reported on queer life in my work. In my freelance stuff I’ve been working on for the past eight years, it’s always been a theme. When I was at Cosmopolitan UK as the sex and relationships editor, that looked after the LGBTQIA+ coverage and that was very inbuilt.

I would say I’m digitally minded, as I’ve worked on loads of social media campaigns for Rankin/HUNGER and Cosmo, which put me in a decent position. I’m very enthused by Gay Times’s history and mission, and how queer media is adjustable for audiences, refusing the idea of being pigeonholed. The ambition of the team is very inspiring to me.

What are you most proud of in your work?

Bringing a more investigative edge to Gay Times has been great. Harm reduction is very important to me, and we’ve been able to commission articles about the rise of Chemsex-related deaths in the UK, and conversion therapy conferences in the UK.

At the beginning of my career, I was passionate about reporting on sex workers’ rights in Scotland, and I was able to work with some really great editors on that.

It’s also important to me to bring more awareness of ethical non-monogamy in a more mainstream space. I was writing about polyamory before it was something everyone started talking about, reflecting my own lifestyle, so I’m still committed to telling those stories at Gay Times and having a diverse output that respects contemporary queer communities.

Did you always think you would be a journalist? 

I didn’t really know what I wanted to do. I wanted to be a lawyer at one point. I think the zine era of the late 2010s was the catalyst for me with writing and sharing my opinion. I thought their opinionated form was professional for publications made in cafés by small groups of people. I loved the era of people who did journalism degrees and continued their student projects and made them much bigger.

What is something you were told early on which stuck with you?

Your writing is like clay on a wheel. It’s raw material for an editor to work with, edit, and workshop. That’s been helpful for not taking edits personally.

What advice would you have for someone just starting out? 

Try not to have a perceived idea of what your career will look like. Because things are changing a lot. Essentially, you’re doing storytelling. Journalism, PR, social, comms — it’s all storytelling. I think we need to reject ideas that one is better than the other, and you haven’t failed if you can’t get a media job off the bat. Just keep going, and your talent isn’t dictated by who you work for.

What is one thing you would most like to change about the journalism industry?

I’d like to see it become more sustainable, and have it nurture diverse creatives. That includes working-class and disabled individuals, as well as individuals of different genders, ethnic and cultural backgrounds, and LGBTQIA+ experiences. It’s about making sure that there’s a mix of voices in the room and making sure they’re progressing beyond the entry-level roles. It’s about changing the homogeny of the culture to allow people to thrive and progress within a workplace, because microaggressions can push these people out.

I think that the low entry-level salaries also disqualify a huge amount of people. I also think that we need to change the funding model and do away with the concept that people should feel lucky to have the job. We need to push to have these voices in brand meetings and have more platform-sharing and diversity in as many spaces as possible.

How do you relax outside of work? 

I really like calling my mum and seeing her, and I like to see my partners. And I like to read. I read a lot of theory books because I think it’s important to always keep thinking. It allows me to not get so stuck in the day-to-day because we’re one small cog in a wider social system, and it’s really important to step outside of that and get some perspective.

Header image courtesy of Megan Wallace.