When interviewing women for our case studies, it’s not often that they tell us that interviewing others is at the very centre of the skill and craft of what they do, but that was certainly the case with Janet Tansley and Dawn Collinson, the two halves of Copy Media. So you might say that we felt slightly daunted when heading down to their offices in Liverpool’s business district one crisp morning. But we needn’t have worried because Copy Media were fantastic interviewees and have a brilliant story of their journey into self-employment that we want to share with you!

‘If it needs writing we can do it’ Janet Tansley told us when asked to describe the business Copy Media. ‘Our business, in essence, is copywriting – writing features for magazines and national newspapers, press releases for PR companies, website content, ghostwriting books – we can turn our hand to most things.’


Dawn Collinson continued: ‘We write copy for individuals as well, so if people need papers preparing, business pitches or sponsorship applications writing, then we can work with them on those too.’

Between them Dawn and Janet have more than 60 years’ professional experience. Both have journalism backgrounds and actually trained together at the University of Central Lancashire back in 1983. Janet says: ‘We’ve been in the business a very long time. I first worked on a weekly newspaper in Stockport as a crime reporter and then joined the Liverpool Echo, where for 28 years I was a news reporter, women’s editor, features editor and ultimately a features writer.’ 


If like Dawn and Janet you would like to access expert advice to start a business, contact the Enterprise Hub team on 0151 706 8111 or email enterprisehub@thewo.org.uk