In June last year, my wife and I swapped roles after I was made redundant. I made hundreds of attempts to find another job as a manager but failed, so my wife gave up being a full-time mum and went out to work. I started writing my blog as a chronicle of life-change and how I cope with being a very reluctant housedad to my nine-year-old stepdaughter and our two sons, aged six and three, and how my Successful Other Half copes with the fallout.
But there is more to me than housedadding and relucting! Fundamentally, I am a journalist.
I have been a journalist all my adult life, starting on local newspapers in Greater Manchester, before moving to Liverpool, then Birmingham, to work as a reporter and features writer on those cities’ big evening papers. I covered some of the biggest stories in those days: Heysel, Hillsborough, the Toxteth and Handsworth riots. I covered the first Gulf War for the Newspaper Society, spent a few months on the Washington Post as winner of the Laurence Stern Fellowship and I even won a few awards along the way.
Then I moved to London to ply my trade on women’s magazines. I was pretty good at it and became Editor of Chat for three years. Then I got back in touch with my masculine side and became Editor of Loaded. And then moved from that to launch the Mirror’s We Love Telly listings guide. And from that, to launch and edit In The Know. And finally, I launched and edited the still thriving (I hope) food magazine Eat In.
So you can see, I’ve had a varied career and now I’m freelance. And available for work.
I can write, I can commission, I can sub-edit, I can edit. I can start a magazine from scratch, or make copy shine.
I’m using this blog to give me an audience – however small – to both me and my work. Check out the pages on the right for some FREE – yes free! – reading.
Many thanks for dropping by,
Keith Kendrick, the Reluctant Housedad and freelance journalist
Keith Kendrick Journalist 