Before there was a talking Routemaster there was a newsroom, and before the newsroom there was a Master’s degree in journalism at the London College of Communication.
Francesca Lombardo worked as an editor at Ink Publishing and then as a freelance print and television journalist, specialising in film and A-list talent interviews and in the overseas property market. She set up several media companies along the way. Her work has been published by British, Irish and Italian national newspapers and magazines: the Financial Times, the Daily Mail, the Mail on Sunday, The Telegraph, the Sunday Business Post, the Sunday Times, the Sunday Express, Repubblica, Vogue and Vogue Casa among them.
Which explains the newspapers
It is not a coincidence that the funniest running joke in the series is about the press. The Grown-Ups Daily News, the Daily Warrior, the Evening Regular and the Daily Fairy Tales are all written by somebody who has filed to a real one — papers that cannot stop making stories hugely sensational and a bit too confusing, as the back cover of the omnibus puts it.
Same job, smaller readers
A feature interview and a chapter for a seven-year-old turn out to want the same things: a clear picture in the first line, one idea at a time, and no waffle. The main difference is that children notice immediately when you are padding.
