Matilda Battersby
Matilda Battersby is a senior news reporter at The Bookseller, covering book and publishing industry stories with a focus on education, author access and the social impact of reading. She combines news reporting, long-form features and author profiles, bringing together the trade perspective with the lived experience of writers, teachers and organisers. Her work draws on more than a decade of experience as an editor and journalist across newspapers, magazines and specialist trade titles.
Education and author access in schools
Within The Bookseller’s news coverage, Battersby reports on how publishing and school life intersect, especially when authors visit classrooms and school libraries.
She has written on rising cancellations of school visits by LGBTQ+ authors after complaints from parents, examining how such decisions affect both writers and pupils and what they signal about inclusion in education. In this area she focuses on the practical consequences of school policies, parental pressure and risk-averse decision-making on children’s access to books and storytellers. Her reporting links those individual cases back to the wider children’s book market and the responsibilities of publishers, events organisers and schools when they plan author outreach.
Publishing industry news and AI trends
Battersby plays a breaking-news role on The Bookseller’s desk, writing up book and publishing industry stories with an emphasis on exclusives, AI-related developments and emerging market trends. Her coverage spans business-side updates, technology shifts and how new tools change the way the trade commissions, produces and markets books. She treats AI as an industry story rather than a gadget topic, looking at contracts, rights, workflows and the concerns of authors and publishers as they respond to automation and data-driven systems.
Across this work she combines fast news pieces with deeper features, using her editing background to give context on what each development means for the wider trade.
Books, property and legal sectors across other titles
Alongside her reporting for The Bookseller, Battersby continues to work as a freelance journalist and editor, contributing news and features to a range of national newspapers and specialist magazines. She holds senior reporting responsibilities at Today’s Media titles, and her stated specialisms are property and books, reflecting extensive work for housing, built environment and trade property publications as well as for the book trade.
In those outlets she covers housing and property stories, family law issues and related social policy, giving her a broader view of how legal and economic pressures shape people’s daily lives. That cross-sector experience informs her book and education reporting, grounding stories about authors, schools and publishing in an understanding of housing, law and social infrastructure.
Features and author profiles
Battersby also writes author profiles and interview-led features, bringing literary figures and emerging voices into focus for trade readers. Her work includes profiling poets and playwrights, exploring how they use verse and performance to bear witness to social and personal histories. These pieces sit alongside her news reporting, giving room for creative practitioners to explain their work, influences and relationship with the book trade. She teaches journalism at a university and uses that vantage point to reflect the concerns of early-career reporters and editors, as well as the expectations of students and educators engaged with books and media.
4 more education journalists.
Ajit Niranjan
Ajit Niranjan links climate science, policy and hard numbers to how extreme weather and environmental damage disrupt daily life, public services and industry. He is European environment correspondent at the Guardian. His beat includes violent heat, pollution, wildfires, air quality, EU green policy, corporate responsibility, energy transition, clean home heating, public health and long-term risks to landscapes and ecosystems. He examines how lobbying, supply chains and regulation shape environmental harm, from data centres and fish farms to fossil fuel industries. His reporting covers schools, hospitals, transport, homes and infrastructure as climate stress points. He previously reported on climate for DW News. He combines data, scientific research, eyewitness accounts and on-the-ground reporting. He also produces explainers, dossiers, factsheets and Q&As that translate complex technical debates into clear, precise language.
Albert Tait
Albert Tait is Education Editor at The Telegraph, leading coverage of schools and universities as institutions whose decisions have direct consequences for staff and students. He focuses on how regulators, senior leaders and governing bodies respond when safety, standards or integrity are under scrutiny, and how those responses affect classrooms and lecture halls. His work links school inspections and teacher safety to regulatory frameworks and conditions on the ground, and he reports on incidents such as knife attacks and “Code Red” alerts with attention to immediate impact and emergency protocols. He produces multi-part investigations into university governance, including extensive reporting on Cambridge’s handling of Jason Arday’s appointment and resignation. He also covers curriculum debates such as changes in how scientists view evolution and inheritance. He began at The Telegraph as a news reporter and previously covered community news at a local paper.
Beth Kennedy
Beth Kennedy is editor at The PIE News and stands out for reporting on how UK policy, institutional strategy and new delivery models reshape international education. Her beat covers UK study visa rules, international student flows, Home Office and UCAS data, alternative study pathways, language schools, and mergers and acquisitions across the sector. She reports on the practical effects of visa changes, scholarship schemes, online and transnational education, school closures, job losses and sector consolidation. Her work is direct and data-led, with clear explanations of complex systems and a focus on what policy and market shifts mean for universities, language schools and private training organisations. She has over a decade in specialist media, including years reporting for primary healthcare professionals before joining The PIE in 2024.
Callum Clark
Callum Clark is a multimedia journalist at STV News who covers education through the lens of university finances, restructuring and their impact on students, staff and local services. He focuses on stories where cost‑saving plans, job losses and service closures reshape community life, such as Dundee University’s nursery and botanic garden closures, and sets those decisions within wider restructuring efforts. His reporting is direct and fact driven, built on official documents, statements and precise figures that show both the scale of savings targets and monthly losses, and the number of posts at risk. Clark’s background in local news and public service coverage, including mental health service reforms and redundancy schemes, shapes a methodical style that tracks formal processes while keeping the lived experience of workers, families and service users in view.