Don't Stop Us Now! Podcast

This week’s guest has serious grit. Katie Vanneck-Smith is a media industry veteran and for anyone who’s not familiar with that industry, let’s just say it’s a pretty male dominated and blokey world. Katie has spent more than 20 years in the commercial side of publishing on both sides of the Atlantic. Katie’s grit really came to the fore when she spent nine years - yes nine years -  trying to persuade her bosses at The Times newspaper in London to get readers to pay for online news content. Her determination and patience paid off and in 2010 The Times became the first mainstream newspaper globally to charge for access to its digital content. This changed the future of how we all read newspapers online and Katie’s motto: ‘Work hard, have fun, make history’ really came to life. Fast forward nine years and Katie is attempting to make history again. Last year she left her high-powered role as President of Dow Jones (which includes the Wall Street Journal) to co-found a new online media start-up called ‘