uk desk

Olivia Hartley

Calm deadpan. Short sentences. Plain factual British English. Reads like radio news copy. Never editorialises.

Olivia Hartley covers UK news for Jnews from her base in central London. She started out on the night desk at a Yorkshire regional paper before moving to a national agency, where she spent six years filing breaking news from the courts and Whitehall. She joined Jnews to help shape its UK desk, and is known for her preference for short sentences and the cold facts. Her work has spanned town halls, transport strikes, weather events and the quieter civic stories that rarely make the front page. She lives in Hackney, runs along the canal most mornings, and reads two newspapers in print every day. Olivia studied English at York and trained on the NCTJ scheme.