A Day In The Life Of… Bethany Dawson, Politics Reporter at Politico

The knack of political journalism is having one ear to the ground and a taste for gossip. Few do that better than Bethany Dawson, who co-authors Politico’s famous London Playbook Diary reports.

Over the last few years, Bethany has freelanced for the BBC, the Independent, the Times, Private Eye, and more, covering everything from breaking news to culture and climate change. She sat down with Journo Resources at the Student Publication Association National Conference in 2024 to talk about a day in the life of a politics reporter, what she’s proudest of, how she turns off from the news, and the long hours that go into that 7am Playbook email.

What’s a typical day for you at Politico?

The Diary reporter job is a slightly odd time schedule, so I start my workday at about 2pm. We’ll start it off with the meeting where we figure out what Playbook is going to look like. Obviously, sometimes people do things like resign or get honey-trapped and then the whole thing changes, but the general idea of what’s happening. Then I start writing the newsletter, I’ll build the CMS file for it.

So I start doing that and then I will generally go off and maybe go to an event or to meet somebody for a drink. That’s the core part of the Diary role, chatting to people about what’s happening in Westminster, who’s doing what, what people are up to. My job is to figure out what people are talking about in the queues for coffee in Parliament or over the proverbial water cooler. Then I will go home and I will finish the file, that takes me to about 1am. Then I log off and probably watch some really bad reality TV to try and turn my brain off.

In a sentence or two, what do you aim to give your readers with the Diary?

The colour of what’s happening in Westminster. It’s stuff that’s slightly more fun than: “Here’s the proceedings in the House of Commons”. I’ll go to an event and chat to people and try to figure out what people are whispering about.

What do you miss doing from previous roles that you don’t manage to do as a diary reporter?

I’m really lucky, I get to do a mix of longer-form pieces and I’ve always really, really loved doing that. I don’t do them every day, but if there’s time and if there’s one to write, I’ll do it. I think I’m really lucky, this is a really mixed role.

Maybe I miss doing a bit of breaking news? I started out doing breaking news and that’s quite fun. When your heart starts racing because someone’s resigned, that’s really exciting. But I think my role is really, really fun and it’s not something that I’m crying about. I feel like I’m a bit of a student again, actually, because I sleep from about 2am until 10am.

What would be a good day’s work for you?

I’m new to this role, I’ve only been doing it for about a month [in April 2024]. It’s still [mainly] building contacts and meeting people. I think it’s quite hard in politics to judge a good day because everything changes so quickly, but a good week would be seeing people from all political persuasions and making sure that you’ve got a good overview of what’s going on in every camp.

Obviously, I think all journalists wish every week that they could break some massive, agenda-defining story, but that doesn’t happen. I think it’s just good if you get enough sleep, meet lots of different people, and have fun. I’m very lucky that a lot of my job is about having fun.

What are you proudest of from before the Playbook?

I was really happy when I joined Politico, I did a big story on disabled politicians and their experiences. We do have disabled politicians, but we have very few; less than 1 per cent of our elected officials are disabled, and one in four people are, so it’s not very representative.

At Insider, which was my job before, I did a big investigation into an American charity called Let Them Live, which promised women money if they were pregnant and planning to have an abortion, if they cancelled their abortion. The idea is that it’s funds to look after their child, but I spoke to a lot of women who didn’t get the money and so they told me they were conned into having a baby. I was quite proud of that. They all got the money that they were owed after the piece came out, which I was really proud about.

I also think just generally getting into journalism, which sounds really silly, but I was at the SPA National Conference in 2019 when I realised that I wanted to be a journalist. So it feels great being back and being a journalist. Journalists want to break big stories all the time, and it’s great when you can do that. But I think it’s not a job that often offers you an opportunity to take a step back and look, and I think it’s quite important that we do that.

How did you go about getting into freelancing and how would you recommend others do?

I just started sending pitches and they were genuinely some of the worst pitches that I think any editor has ever read. I’m praying that nobody remembers me from them. But I still sent them and I think it’s good to have ideas. When I started freelancing, I think it probably took me about a year before I was regularly placing stuff because I was still at university when I was doing it.

But I would rework pitches that I still thought were good ideas that I’d sent, but that just were really badly done. I know that now it’s harder to be a freelancer, budgets are much tighter (and they weren’t great when I was when I was doing it), but I used the Journo Resources pitch templates — I actually think some of mine might be on there.

I used that and Twitter (now known as X) was such a great resource. I genuinely don’t think I’d have a career if I wasn’t just a bit annoying on Twitter and would chat to editors about what they wanted, or journalists at different organisations about what gaps there are to fill in terms of freelancing.

What skills did you get from student media and what did you have to learn on the job afterwards?

I think student media is really great for finding stories and that’s one of the [key] things with freelancing, but also just journalism in general, so practising that. Obviously, your audience is smaller in a student paper, but that doesn’t mean that it’s less important.

I got in trouble with so many people, but I reported on sexual assaults in our sports tour [culture]. Lots of people didn’t like it, but that’s a big story, right? Actually, that ended up going into The Telegraph and a couple of other places, which was cool. But even things like the prices of drinks changing, things like that, those are big stories [to your audience]. Knowing what a story is and what your audience is interested in is a really, really key skill to hone because it changes with every news outlet. Every news outlet has a different audience, so if you learn how to adapt to what people are looking for, that’s really important.

You can still do things like FOIs, which are great, those are really good skills. Things like building WordPress files are really helpful. Politico runs on WordPress, so, when I got there, I was like: “Yeah, I know what to do”. Because my paper was tiny, we didn’t really have a style guide. Things like that, the more professional aspects, might take you a minute to change. Stuff like that I think maybe comes slightly after student journalism, but that doesn’t mean that you can’t lay the foundations when you’re in university.

How do you relax at the end of the day and stop thinking about work?

As journalists, you are so hungry for it. I think with your first jobs or when you start freelancing, it can be quite hard to switch off because you just want to get there. I’m an incredibly impatient person and you can be like: “I can’t take a weekend off, I can’t take a week off, because, if I do that, then I might not land a pitch or I might not get those shifts”. You’ve got to switch off — no one expects you to be a machine. If you’re working somewhere or freelancing somewhere where they expect you to be a machine, that’s not a good place to work.

I think taking time and being quite strict with it [is important]. I’m quite strict with it in this job. I won’t start work before 2pm unless there’s a very specific meeting I have to go to or there’s something that I can’t not go to, but then I will take a longer break in the evening. I’m quite strict with it because you will just go a bit crazy. I say that like I don’t do it now! For that story about the women in America, I would work my normal work day and then speak to them until midnight, sleep for six hours and then go back to work. I’m not following my own rules here.

I also really like video games! I’ll play the little Stardew Valley farm games. When I was at university, I was very: “I have to be the smartest person in the room and I must only read political non-fiction”. I now love a crime thriller. Do things really different to work. Just read things that are so not what you do and don’t make you think of work, because you can go crazy. Also working out, swimming’s good. Find a hobby that has nothing to do with your job, because it will keep you sane.