At Christmas we hope for balance, both at work and at home

Editors find themselves half hoping for something extraordinary to happen to sell their newspapers; but they also keep their fingers crossed for a quiet couple of days

At Christmas time we brace ourselves for a degree of culinary over-indulgence. Half of you wants to guzzle that extra glass of something fizzy, cram in another pig in a blanket and say “yes” to a second helping of Christmas pud; the other half is quietly desperate to shout “no” when the chocolates come round again, craving nothing more than a simple salad.

Journalists experience something similar when it comes to the news over the Christmas period. Organisations don’t tend to issue press releases about research findings for instance, and neither the parliament nor courts are sitting, so the run of the mill stories that can be relied on during “term time” aren’t available. It’s the big events that will ensure there is something for the front page – a natural disaster or celebrity death, or perhaps some travel chaos or terror attack.

Editors thus find themselves half hoping for something extraordinary to happen; something that will get readers rushing out to buy a paper, or logging on to read the headlines, or tuning in to the TV bulletins. Then there will be no anxiety about whether there is enough news to fill pages online or in print, or a half hour of radio.