“I was staggered and terrified,” says Conor McNicholas, of scooping the top job on the New Musical Express. “I’d been an obsessive NME and Melody Maker reader for years and had never in all my days thought I’d be working here, let alone editing the thing.

“I’d done two weeks work experience on the newsdesk and found it distinctly unenjoyable – no one was playing music, everyone was pretty unpleasant and I swore I’d never return. Hilariously, when I did, I returned as editor.”

Since taking up the reins of the iconic music publication seven years ago, McNicholas has been celebrated and attacked in almost equal measure. Formerly a writer for dance magazines, including Mixmag and Musik, he was taken on to revamp NME in the difficult period post-Britpop.

“NME had got to a place where it really needed to be repositioned to appeal to a new generation,” says McNicholas. “I think I was seen as a great magazine technician who could rework the whole thing and freshen it up.”

He relaunched it as a glossy, lively magazine – “As a newspaper, it was struggling to bring in new young readers because those readers just didn’t understand the format – it looked too wordy” – and he started to champion bands such as The Strokes and The White Stripes, who he saw as the start of a new musical revolution.

Although he succeeded in turning the magazine around, detractors have complained of a dumbing down in content, a point on which McNicholas is somewhat slippery.

“People talk about the NME in tremendously nostalgic terms. They’ll say it was better in the 1970s, it was better in the 1980s or the 1960s. It’s been relevant and exciting in all those generations, but it’s looked, felt and read completely differently.

“That’s the job of the magazine, to take the essence of what we do – which is documenting alternative culture and providing a touchstone for people who want to talk about music that means something – and make it relevant.”

He claims the people who snipe about a reduced quality of writing “tend to be in their 40s and they tend not to have actually read the bloody magazine for three or four years.”

“The fact is, there’s some brilliant rock writing in NME,” he says. “Do we publish pieces of the ilk Paul Morley was doing in 1983? No, we don’t, but although they were amazing pieces of journalism for the time, if you go back and read some of the stuff NME was publishing in the 1970s and 1980s, it’s absolute impenetrable nonsense.

“We don’t underestimate our readers, we lead them and use a cadence of language they won’t get anywhere else, but our job is not to preserve a style of writing perfected in 1978.”

In fact, he is not bothered if his writers come to him unable to string a sentence together. More important, he says, is original thought.

“I’d rather have someone who was mad and couldn’t write a thing, because we can dictate what they’re saying – the ideas are more important. I’m trying to encourage more polemic in the live reviews actually.”

Despite his propensity for giving corporate soundbites (for example: “The first time I heard the Killers’ demo, I thought, these three-and- a-half-minute pop songs are going to be massive in radio.”), McNicholas insists it is still passion that fuels the magazine. Most of the bands featured are ones he and his team love.

“I don’t think the world is clamouring for The Horrors to be on the cover of the NME, but it’s something the rest of the team and I feel so passionately about we’re going to do it anyway,” he adds. “This is the stuff I’m into. You can’t detach yourself from it and see it as an intellectual exercise.”

The magazine can’t be said to have lost its reputation for controversy. A 2007 feature focusing on Morrissey’s views on immigration has led to reports of the former Smiths frontman suing the magazine for libel.

Unsurprisingly, McNicholas can’t talk about this: “I’d love to, but my lawyers would have my balls,” he says.

Conor McNicholas is one of the guest interviewees at tonight’s media networking event The Space. He is joined by film editor Terry Rawlings, whose credits include Alien and Blade Runner.

  • 7pm, £5/£3, 01273 687171