Julian Champkin - CV

Julian Champkin

Hemingfold Oast, Hastings Road, Battle, E. Sussex TN33 0TU

Tel: 01424 773610  m: 07549 682022

julianchampkin@gmail.com

Overview

I am a Fleet Street-trained feature writer and editor specialising in the environment, science, and business magazines.  I spent a decade as a feature writer on the Daily Mail. I have been Features Editor of Saga Magazine, the largest-circulation subscription magazine in the UK. For eight years I edited Significance, a very successful outreach magazine and website published by the Royal Statistical Society; I then saved Ceramic Review from closure. I currently work on business-to-business magazines.

My career has based on the quality of my writing. I am also an experienced editor and ghost-writer, for would-be authors from all backgrounds. Making complex subjects interesting and understandable to non-specialists has been a speciality. My website with examples of my work is at https://sites.google.com/site/julianchampkin/

Employment

2016 – present

Editor and Feature Writer, Global Data UK. Having held several positions within the company I am now feature writer for Cranes Today and Hoist magazines, and for Tunnels and Tunneling International, the magazine of the British Tunnelling Society.

2014 – 2015

Editor: Ceramic Review, a glossy magazine for craft potters, collectors and sculptors

in clay. I was brought in to revive the magazine and increase its circulation. I introduced columnists, more accessible writing, and more varied features, while retaining the emphasis on internationally-renowned artists. The magazine now has a secure future.

2005 - 2014

Editor: Significance, bi-monthly magazine and website, published by the Royal Statistical Society and the American Statistical Association.  It is aimed at statisticians and at non-statisticians and shows the relevance of statistics to issues that affect society. Cover stories ranged from climate change to counting penguins from space, from Big Data to whether nightingales sing in tune, and from salt in the diet to whether computers can compose like Chopin.

I set up a website, with new postings from a team of volunteers almost daily. Under my editorship the magazine so impressed the American Statistical Society that they bought into it as joint publishers, and its circulation increased fivefold from 7,000 to 35,000.  I had entire responsibility for content; the magazine’s stories were frequently taken up by major outlets such as the BBC. Re-writing dry academic contributions to make them interesting and readable was a major and vital activity.  Duties also included presentations at conferences, liasing with academic contributors, and giving courses and lectures on writing for non-specialist readers.

2006 - 2007

Features Editor: Saga, the award-winning monthly magazine for the over-50s, recognised for its standards, success, and its high (600k) and loyal circulation.  Managed columnists, health, finance and web-site editors, co-ordinated art and sub-editorial staff. 

1997 -2006

Freelance writer specialising in science and the environment. Published in Guardian, Telegraph, Times, etc.  Regular columnist in various magazines.

1987 - 1996

Staff feature writer, Daily Mail.  Writing features for main editorial pages on breaking news stories; comment and analysis on science and other stories; ghost-writing technical experts and politicians to cabinet level, and frequent major Op-Ed features. Specialised in science, international affairs, history and adventure.   The position required much foreign reporting - e.g. from Mount Everest (three times) and Antarctica.

1985 - 1987

Sole staff writer, from launch, of A la Carte, a prestigious IPC glossy setting new standards for food and wine publications.

1984 - 1985

Freelance writer specialising in international aid and development.  Published in the Guardian, Telegraph, New Internationalist, and various magazines.

1981 - 1983

Famine Relief and Development field officer, Oxfam, Uganda.  Organised and administered food-for-work projects in a remote and dangerous area of Western Uganda.

1977 - 1980

Voluntary Service Overseas.  Teaching secondary school students in Western Kenya.

Education:  St Catharine's College, Cambridge, 1974 - 1977 

      2.2 Degree in Engineering (Part I) and

      History and Philosophy of Science (Part II)

St Paul's School, London, 1967 - 1973

Awards:  AGI Geographical Journalist of the Year 2002

Other Experience:  I own and maintain a Site of Special Scientific Interest haymeadow in East Sussex as part of a 40-acre smallholding. Various climbing expeditions (Mount Everest 1994, 1995 and 2001; Caucasus, Andes); crewed an 8-man yacht from Tasmania to Antarctica, and sledged Arctic Canada to the North Magnetic Pole.

Date of Birth 27. 06. 1955