Chris Wheal award-winning journalist/editor

AOL Money: About Chris Wheal

Chris Wheal has carved out a niche in writing about finance – not just personal finance, but the insurance industry; business; accounting; trading, investing and financial markets; and public sector finance. He also writes about technology and construction.

Chris has edited the financial news, analysis and features pages for Capital.com. He managed a team of ten freelance journalists and ran news shifts as well as commissioned and edited features, working with the company’s in-house SEO experts. He has since done similar work for other websites, focusing on SEO for MoneySuperMarket and, currently, Uswitch.

Prior to that, Chris helped set up AOL Money and launched the site before the full-time editor could start. He previously edited AOL’s UK version of Daily Finance and merged that with its sister AOL site, Walletpop. He has edited two weekly magazines, Insurance Times and Property People, plus the monthly Service Management.

Kate Wheal writes daily online news for Channel Islands business and events group BL Global, as well as producing its bimonthly Businesslife magazine.

The Guardian

Guardian: Poll tax is history

Chris was involved in the launch of The Guardian’s Society Finance page in January 1998 and provided specialist articles for many years (click on the image to read Poll tax is history).

Chris has contributed to the leading insurance weeklies Post Magazine and Insurance Times. He has written for the Chartered Insurance Institute Journal and has contributed to several Lloyd’s and London Market magazines. He ran the Daily Finance website for AOL using a team of freelances, while at the same time writing early morning web news for Insurance Times.

Award Winner

He was the 1999 British Insurance Brokers’ Association broadsheet journalist of the year for an article in the Guardian on council insurance. And in July 2003 he was named the BIBA tabloid journalist of the year 2002 for an article in Choice magazine.

In 2007 he was highly commended in the BIBA trade press category for an article in Insurance Times about household insurance. And in 2008 Chris was named BIBA’s business journalist of the year for an article in Healthcare Finance about foundation trust insurance. He has been shortlisted several times, including for his online work and was highly commended for the trade press feature award in 2006 and online journalist of the year for 2018. He is currently (2020) shortlisted in the thought leadership category.

Time Out

Time Out: Interview with Ken Livingstone

But it’s not all about finance. In 2002 Chris began a series analysing the impact of London’s first directly elected mayor, Ken Livingstone, giving Ken the right of reply in an interview (click on the cover, right, to open a PDF version). He has written a number of articles for Time Out since then, including his prediction that the Olympics would cost too much.

For three years he edited a monthly celebrity interview column for Local Government Chronicle in which he asked famous people about their local council. This led to a feature in the Guardian headlined Infamous delivery.

Some of those articles (new windows)

Freelance editorial virtual office team available for remote working

A crack team of freelance writers will shortly be available to add news and features to your website or to start up an editorial project such as a newspaper, magazine or mobile news service. We can run an entire editorial service without an office and without the overheads. We can Read more… →

Post Magazine: injury infographic

Compiling the data for a Post Mgazine infographic comparing the payouts for similar bodily injury claims was a challenge. The government won’t give you the data because it has sold it. My idea was to have two badly injured bodies depicted next to each other. One would be poorly bandaged, Read more… →

Deadlines for Journalists and PRs

One of the worst press offices of 2014 was the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA). As the main regulator for the financial services industry this is not good news for financial journalists. My experience of the FCA press office in January suggests there have been no positive New Year resolutions. Telegraph Read more… →

Is it best to phone or email a PR?

To phone or to email: that is the question. As a journalist, if you phone a PR, they will ask you to email your questions over, but if you just email, press officers never answer – until you call to remind them. Or is it just me?