I produce the weekend news and The Week in Review and occasionally during the week I produce the seven o'clock news and News Tonight.

The routine for each show is essentially the same, but the nature of news means that the running order that you start with at the beginning of the day can have changed beyond recognition by the start of the programme.

For the 5.30 p.m. weekend news show, I would go in at about 8.30 a.m. and pick what stories are going to be covered and allot them to the various reporters. Then I put in my running order and look at how I think my programme is going to be structured for the news that evening. As well as allotting the stories, I also talk to the reporters about how we want to cover them. It's central to my job to consider what pictures will best suit a story. The pictures must put across the information, but they must also make the viewers stop and say: "Wow this is worth sitting down and watching." The package must open with the strongest shots, so if I hear back from the cameraman or the reporter that we have something particularly strong, I'm already thinking: "That's how we open our package." But I have to depend on the reporter to be my eyes and ears, because I'm back at the office and a situation as it's developing out at a scene may be very different to how I picture it.

We run the packages for one minute, so we really have to work to get to the bones of a story and make sure that we're telling people exactly what's happened, but in a concise way. When the reporters are back in and the packages are being edited, I'm looking at the running order. Timing is very important: there are programmes going on before and after the news, and you have to make sure that you run to time.

So from 3.30 p.m. I'll be looking at timings and the running order we're going to use. If there are live interviews, I talk to the news anchors about what we want from the interview. At this stage I have to decide how I want the programme to be structured. I have to write headlines and decide the shots to use for the headlines.

Before the start of the broadcast, I go into the gallery with the director and the sound people, with everyone who's involved technically in putting the programme on air. Generally it's a team of 10 to 12 people including floor managers in studio. In the gallery, I'm watching everything that's going on. We'll go in and do a quick run-through of our first story to make sure that we have everything lined up. Sometimes at 5.15 or 5.20, when I have already gone into gallery, we may not have our top package ready if it's a late breaking story. So at that point it's up to me to go to the editors and make sure that anything still being worked on is being worked on at the fastest possible pace.

When the programme goes on air we may have to drop an item or two because we'll be running over. If we go into a live interview and a guest says something particularly interesting, we have to pick up on it. This means informing everyone in gallery and the news anchor of the items that have been dropped.

I'll also be watching the news wires on my computer in case a story breaks while we're on air. Out in the newsroom, someone will write up the story for the news anchor.

So it's not a case of the 5.30 news starts and that's it - I'm constantly waiting to see if some sort of update can be made. It's always active, always changing. I'm constantly kept on my toes and that's one of the things I like most about it.

In an interview with Olivia Kelly