How the Guardian is made

8am: News editors arrive at the Guardian offices and start to gather stories from home and abroad. 9am-9.30am: Each of the sections of the paper and website has a conference to discuss the main stories they will be covering that day. They compile a newslist of all the stories that they will be focusing on. Photograph: Guardian

10am: Morning conference. Editors discuss the paper that was put together the previous day, as well as web traffic. Each section will list their stories for the day. There will be a debate on a big issue currently on the news agenda. Everyone who works at the Guardian is welcome to attend morning conference. Photograph: Guardian

Throughout the morning stories are assigned to reporters. Desk editors will do an initial check of the reporters’ finished stories and may rewrite the opening paragraphs before they send it to subeditors for a second edit. Most stories that appear in the paper will have been launched on the website the evening before. If a story is breaking news, it is likely to be launched on the website as soon as possible. Photograph: Guardian

There are key times when more content is launched on the website, because more people will be online: in the morning people check their phones and tablet devices at home and on their way to work; at lunchtime people at work check the website on their desktop computers. Photograph: Guardian

12.30pm: Print editorial conference: editors meet to decide where stories will appear in the paper, and to allocate space to the different sections. They use flatplans which show where all the articles and adverts will go in the newspaper. The picture desk show a slide show of the best images of the day so far. The picture desk look through around 20,000 pictures per day. Photograph: Guardian

1-8pm: Subeditors check the facts in stories, and highlight any legal issues to the Guardian’s lawyers. They check the spelling, punctuation and grammar, make improvements to the writing, and cut the stories to the right size to fit on the page. They also write the headlines and standfirsts. Designers arrange the stories on the page and make sure it is readable and attractive. Photograph: Elli Narewska/Guardian

Subeditors for the website also write search engine optimised (SEO) headlines, which means the articles will be found easily in a search engine such as Google. They also include links, choose and crop pictures and write the captions, prepare galleries, embed videos and launch pages on the website. Photograph: Guardian

The website includes lots of additional stories and multimedia content such as galleries, blogs, videos, podcasts and interactives. Live blogs cover big news stories of the day which continue to evolve, such as political stories, sports events and disasters. Photograph: Guardian

5pm: Final editorial meeting for print. Finished pages are printed out and displayed on a board, to see what the final product will look like. Last minute changes to layout, pictures, headlines and writing can be made before the pages are sent to printers. Photograph: Guardian

4pm-9pm: Pages are sent to the Guardian Print Centres for the first edition of the paper. The final page to be sent by the 8.30pm deadline is usually the front page. There are two print centres; one in London and one in Manchester. Papers are distributed around the country from these two sites. Photograph: Sarah Lee/Guardian

9pm-2am: Night editors come on in shifts. Two more editions of the paper are printed, at 10pm and 1am. These will be updated to include any new stories. The number of stars in the bottom left corner of the paper shows which edition it is. Photograph: Sarah Lee/Guardian

Readers can access the Guardian website on desktop computers, tablets and mobiles; the site is responsive so that the layout will automatically change according to the device used. Readers on mobile devices can also access the Guardian’s journalism using Guardian apps. The Communities team helps readers engage and interact with stories. They monitor feedback and comments and make sure the Guardian is making connections with a range of online communities including Facebook and Twitter. Photograph: Felix Clay/Guardian

The Guardian also has an office in New York producing the US front page of the website and an office in Sydney, which produces the Australian front page. Photograph: Adam Gabbatt/Guardian

Because we have offices around the world in different timezones, we can continually update the website 24 hours a day. When it is the evening and late at night in the UK, Guardian US can handle any big, ongoing or breaking news stories. In the very early morning in the UK, the Australia team take over. Photograph: Guardian