News Editor for DRNO

Daily Research News has appointed a full-time News Editor, who will start in June. Tessa Russell joins from Which? magazine where she has worked for the last eight years, most recently as an Assistant Editor leading the food and health team.

Russell will work with owner and current Editor Nick Thomas and will be based in MrWeb's London Docklands office. Prior to her current position she spent five years in research positions at Which?, latterly as an SRE. She qualified in PPE from St Anne's College, Oxford and also studied Social and Market Research Methods at the University of Westminster in the late '90s.

The role was advertised on MrWeb in November last year and again in February this year, and competition was strong with several more senior candidates, but Russell's combination of research and editorial experience marked her out as a front-runner. 'We were extremely fortunate to find someone with as much knowledge of the MR industry and its techniques working in an editorial role in such a highly-esteemed publication as Which?, and very pleased with Tessa's writing and people skills' says Thomas. 'We hope she'll slot quickly into the role and have two immediate effects - increasing the level of feature content for the news (and helping to revive MRWho) and freeing up some of my time to further develop other sides of the site, notably jobs and directory content. However, I'll be continuing to work on editorial and writing copy for Tessa as well as managing her'.

Thomas has been solely responsible for writing the daily news items since May 2003, with occasional help from former editor Nicky Hardy. Designer Ian Paterson and researcher / diary manager Laurence Miranda complete the UK team, and US Director Michael Kenyon has and will continue to function as both US news source and a contributor of features. The news will also be enhanced by contributions from an Australian rep.

Daily Research News / DRNO began in March 2000. The O in DRNO stands for Online, all news items being available via www.drno.org as well as emailed to around 4,000 subscribers each day or week. As well as increasing content from three stories a day to an average of more than four, the past two years have seen the introduction of a graphical, html version for daily subscribers and, this month, for weekly readers.

Some observers have been surprised by the popularity of the daily bulletins in particular, having suggested that excessive quantities of spam and other email would limit enthusiasm for such regular updates. DRNO was the first MR news service globally to offer these, doing so from day 1, but one third of current subscribers and around half of all new subscribers prefer the daily bulletins for up-to-the-minute information. Other industry news services have recently moved from weekly-only to providing daily bulletins as demand became apparent, says Thomas: 'We send daily jobs bulletins, and have always viewed the site as a community of research professionals in constant contact: limiting news emails to once a week would have seemed like a very short-sighted approach and we're pleased that such a large proportion of the MR community apparently agree with us'.

The service has readers in more than forty countries, mostly senior research professionals and with around one third coming from the client side, reflecting the balance in the industry itself. International news has always featured and Russell's appointment should enable the team to boost this as well as giving the service a higher profile in the UK itself, where she will be attending events and talking to senior figures.

Russell says she is 'looking forward to getting my teeth into what's happening in the world of research, and bringing DRNO readers more news and features from all corners of the industry and of the world'.

Subscription to the emails is free - sign up by emailing drno@mrweb.com and asking for daily or weekly news emails, specifying clearly whether you would prefer html or text format.

All articles 2006-23 written and edited by Mel Crowther and/or Nick Thomas, 2024- by Nick Thomas, unless otherwise stated.