Local journalism made me what I am today. Without it, we’ll all be the poorer | John Humphrys

March 29, 2023, 11:00 pm

For budding journalists and citizens alike, the demise of local newspapers will leave a void that’s impossible to fill

Had things turned out a little differently back in the late 1950s, it’s just possible that the cast in the TV smash hit Succession might have featured a rather different set of characters. Instead of featuring a media mogul partly inspired by Rupert Murdoch, it could have been based on yours truly – an uppity young Taffy trying to transform his local rag, the Cardiff and District News.

It had started well for me. At 15 I had a regular column with the very successful Penarth Times. Almost every household in the posh seaside town bought a copy. Then the proprietor decided we could do the same with a new weekly in the great metropolis that was Cardiff. He called it the Cardiff and District News and not only made me the editor of the teenage page but the circulation manager, too. Sort of.

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John Paterson obituary

March 30, 2023, 9:48 am

≫ Next: Amid the Prince Harry circus lies a court battle with the highest stakes

≪ Previous: Local journalism made me what I am today. Without it, we’ll all be the poorer | John Humphrys

My former Guardian colleague John Paterson, who has died aged 80, was chief subeditor on the Rand Daily Mail newspaper in South Africa during a turbulent period of the 1970s when opposition to apartheid intensified along with state repression.

John and his wife, Maggie (nee Stent), a fellow journalist whom he married in 1965, were staunch opponents of apartheid, and like many others in their profession in South Africa, played an important role in the fight to try to reverse the racial laws of the country. However, they decided to leave when the black daily newspaper on which Maggie was chief sub, the World, was closed down by the government in 1977, and life became increasingly dangerous for journalists.

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Amid the Prince Harry circus lies a court battle with the highest stakes

April 1, 2023, 12:00 am

≫ Next: Megxit to McNugget boots: some of the best April Fools’ Day 2023 gags

≪ Previous: John Paterson obituary

The Daily Mail’s owner, the prince and Elton John could be on the road to one of the biggest media trials in British history

Why is Prince Harry bringing legal action against Daily Mail owner?

When the Duke of Sussex unexpectedly arrived at the high court on Monday morning he became the most senior royal to appear in a courtroom since Princess Anne admitted being in charge of an English bull terrier that was dangerously out of control in a public space.

Prince Harry was there to allege that Associated Newspapers, the parent company of the Daily Mail, was similarly out of control.

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Megxit to McNugget boots: some of the best April Fools’ Day 2023 gags

April 1, 2023, 4:46 am

≫ Next: You have to believe in local journalism to do it well – but rural community papers are drying up | Calla Wahlquist

≪ Previous: Amid the Prince Harry circus lies a court battle with the highest stakes

Media and brands take chance to offer up some light relief, including Matt Hancock cheddar and an Oasis reunion

Amid these often dark and difficult times – and with a rising ride of online disinformation – judging the tone of a good April Fools’ gag has become much harder for news organisations. On Saturday morning, though, readers enjoyed waking up to a wealth of stories offering some light relief.

The Sun published a piece announcing the launch of Prince Harry and Meghan’s new video game“Megxit: Call of Duke-y” ahead of the King’s coronation in May, in which the royal couple aim to reach California, dodging obstacles along the way including rival royals and the media.

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You have to believe in local journalism to do it well – but rural community papers are drying up | Calla Wahlquist

April 1, 2023, 1:00 pm

≫ Next: The Observer view on the legacies of slavery: a reckoning with our past must shape our future | Observer editorial

≪ Previous: Megxit to McNugget boots: some of the best April Fools’ Day 2023 gags

I learned first-hand that there’s no better training ground in journalism than a local paper. But the number of communities without one is growing

When I started working at the Bunbury Mail in south-west Western Australia in 2009, it employed five journalists and a dedicated editor to produce one free weekly newspaper and the biweekly Harvey Mail. Some weeks the book would be more than 70% ads. Those numbers sound luxurious now.

Up the road at the Mandurah Mail, up to 80% of page space would be ads. They barely had enough room for stories. You had to compete for space, learn the art of writing brief, and get really good at finding that one hanging word that would bring you in under length. I know people hate it when regional papers are referred to as training grounds, but some truths can’t be helped: there is no better place to learn the job of journalism than a place like that.

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The Observer view on the legacies of slavery: a reckoning with our past must shape our future | Observer editorial

April 1, 2023, 10:30 pm

≫ Next: Burkina Faso expels reporters from two French newspapers

≪ Previous: You have to believe in local journalism to do it well – but rural community papers are drying up | Calla Wahlquist

The Guardian’s research into its links to transatlantic slavery has made us aware of our broader responsibilities

An accurate and shared understanding of an institution’s history is not an academic self-indulgence or a symptom of political correctness. It is critical to understanding how they work in the here and now and their future obligations.

As the historian David Olusoga has powerfully argued, institutions all too often mask the reality of their chequered pasts in order to accentuate the heroic. In doing so, they obscure important insights about how power operates within them and what they owe the world that exists outside their doors.

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Burkina Faso expels reporters from two French newspapers

April 2, 2023, 2:51 am

≫ Next: Antony Blinken urges Russia to release US journalist in call with Sergei Lavrov

≪ Previous: The Observer view on the legacies of slavery: a reckoning with our past must shape our future | Observer editorial

Le Monde and Libération correspondents sent home in junta’s latest move against media from former colonial power

Burkina Faso has expelled correspondents from Le Monde and Libération, the newspapers said on Sunday, the latest move the junta running the west African country has taken against French media.

Burkina Faso, where two coups took place last year, is battling a jihadist insurgency that spilled over from neighbouring Mali in 2015.

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Antony Blinken urges Russia to release US journalist in call with Sergei Lavrov

April 2, 2023, 9:50 am

≫ Next: ‘In the eye of the Stormy’: how papers across the world reacted to Trump’s charges

≪ Previous: Burkina Faso expels reporters from two French newspapers

Russian foreign minister rejects request and says US must not ‘make a fuss’ over arrest of Evan Gershkovich

Antony Blinken, the US secretary of state, called for Russia to free the detained American journalist Evan Gershkovich in a rare phone call with his Moscow counterpart since the start of the war in Ukraine.

The American’s plea was rejected by Sergei Lavrov, who responded by saying that US officials and media outlets must “not make a fuss” or try to politicise the plight of the Wall Street Journal (WSJ) reporter.

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‘In the eye of the Stormy’: how papers across the world reacted to Trump’s charges

April 4, 2023, 7:33 pm

≫ Next: A tribute to Leonard Barden, the king of chess writers | Letter

≪ Previous: Antony Blinken urges Russia to release US journalist in call with Sergei Lavrov

The former president’s appearance in a New York court house dominates front pages from Europe to Britain and the US on Wednesday

Donald Trump’s historic appearance before a New York court on Tuesday has dominated global media, with the former president’s not guilty plea receiving wall-to-wall coverage across TV, newspapers and online.

The Guardian says, “Trump pleads not guilty to 34 charges in hush-money case”, with the paper highlighting the judge’s order that the former president refrain from rhetoric that could cause civil unrest.

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A tribute to Leonard Barden, the king of chess writers | Letter

April 6, 2023, 10:04 am

≫ Next: Sun publisher sets aside further £128m to cover phone-hacking cases

≪ Previous: ‘In the eye of the Stormy’: how papers across the world reacted to Trump’s charges

Steven Lorber on the Guardian’s chess correspondent, whose column has been running since September 1955

As the world chess championship begins, I would like to pay tribute to your chess correspondent, Leonard Barden, who has written a weekly column for the Guardian since 1955 (and must be your longest-serving columnist). I have been reading this since the early 1960s. Even in his 90s, Mr Barden keeps up with the latest developments and writes fresh and lively columns. In the 60s, keen schoolboys wanting the latest on Petrosian’s or Spassky’s world championship attempts could pore over the moves in the Guardian, mostly on the day after each game. The latest world championship games will, of course, be broadcast live on the internet – and I look forward to reading Mr Barden’s commentary on them in the weeks ahead.
Steven Lorber
London

• Have an opinion on anything you’ve read in the Guardian today? Please email us your letter and it will be considered for publication in our letters section.

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Sun publisher sets aside further £128m to cover phone-hacking cases

April 7, 2023, 8:38 am

≫ Next: How can you comfort a sad, scared billionaire? Call them a ‘person of wealth’ | Arwa Mahdawi

≪ Previous: A tribute to Leonard Barden, the king of chess writers | Letter

News Group Newspapers set aside £49m in 2021 to settle costs but more has been earmarked for cases, apparently including Prince Harry’s

The publisher of the Sun newspaper has set aside a further £128m to cover the cost of phone-hacking cases, apparently including the case brought by Prince Harry, which pushed the company deeper into the red.

News Group Newspapers, the publisher of the Sun and the defunct News of the World, said it hoped to approach the “tail end of litigation”.

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How can you comfort a sad, scared billionaire? Call them a ‘person of wealth’ | Arwa Mahdawi

April 11, 2023, 9:11 am

≫ Next: The Guardian view on Russia’s hostage-taking: free Evan Gershkovich | Editorial

≪ Previous: Sun publisher sets aside further £128m to cover phone-hacking cases

The filthy rich are fighting back against wealthism. They are assisted by media allies, who urge more neutral language to describe their gold-plated plight

You’ve heard of racism and sexism, but there’s a horrifying new -ism we all need to be aware of: wealthism. The obscenely rich, you see, are an increasingly persecuted minority, vilified in modern society. Wealthism is so deeply entrenched, that without even knowing it, you’re probably using anti-wealth language and making billionaires feel very sad indeed.

This public service announcement is brought to you by the Wall Street Journal’s editorial board, which just published a scathing piece about a ProPublica investigation into US supreme court justice Clarence Thomas’s friendship with a Republican mega-donor and billionaire property developer called Harlan Crow.

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The Guardian view on Russia’s hostage-taking: free Evan Gershkovich | Editorial

April 11, 2023, 10:40 am

≫ Next: Dozens of independent newspapers launched during Covid in Australia. What happened next?

≪ Previous: How can you comfort a sad, scared billionaire? Call them a ‘person of wealth’ | Arwa Mahdawi

The charges against the Wall Street Journal reporter are a chilling and unprecedented move

The Biden administration’s designation of the American reporter Evan Gershkovich as “wrongfully detained” by Russia is not merely a statement of the obvious, but unlocks additional resources to secure his release and shows that the US is rightly prioritising his case. Gershkovich, of the Wall Street Journal, was detained on 29 March on a reporting trip to Ekaterinburg, and was formally charged last Friday. The Federal Security Service alleges that he has committed espionage; the rest of the world recognises this as another shocking instance of the state’s pursuit of hostage diplomacy, and an attack on independent journalism.

Unlike the arrest last year of the US basketball player Brittney Griner – detained for possessing a small amount of cannabis oil and ultimately freed in a prisoner swap for the arms dealer Viktor Bout – this case appears not merely opportunistic, but calculated and approved from the top. Gershkovich also faces far more serious charges of espionage. Another US citizen, the former marine Paul Whelan, is serving a 16-year sentence of hard labour on spying charges after he was seized in late 2018; he too has been deemed wrongfully detained.

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Dozens of independent newspapers launched during Covid in Australia. What happened next?

April 12, 2023, 8:00 am

≫ Next: Rupert Murdoch reportedly divorced Jerry Hall by email

≪ Previous: The Guardian view on Russia’s hostage-taking: free Evan Gershkovich | Editorial

After crowdfunding campaigns, first editions and pandemic, are the startups thriving, barely surviving or sadly dying?

Michael Waite is a good talker. Friendly, knowledgable and enthusiastic, he’s the kind of guy who can turn a yes-or-no question into an entertaining, minutes-long response with more twists and turns than his remarkable journey to be that rarest of beasts – a 21st-century founder of a printed newspaper.

Which is why it says so much that one of the few times he is lost for words is when asked how it feels to have not only launched that paper in rural South Australia at the height of the Covid-19 pandemic but to still be standing almost three years and more than 100 editions later.

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Rupert Murdoch reportedly divorced Jerry Hall by email

April 13, 2023, 3:21 am

≫ Next: ‘I’m all for climate change’: Axel Springer CEO faces heat over leaked messages

≪ Previous: Dozens of independent newspapers launched during Covid in Australia. What happened next?

Report in Vanity Fair details billionaire media owner’s relationships, ailing health and business challenges

Rupert Murdoch divorced his fourth wife, Jerry Hall, by email, telling her “we have certainly had some good times, but I have much to do”, according to a report on the 92-year-old billionaire.

Hall was apparently waiting to meet her husband at their Oxfordshire mansion in June 2022 when she received the unexpected correspondence.

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‘I’m all for climate change’: Axel Springer CEO faces heat over leaked messages

April 13, 2023, 7:39 am

≫ Next: The media will have to stay vigilant in an AI world | Letters

≪ Previous: Rupert Murdoch reportedly divorced Jerry Hall by email

Mathias Döpfner’s reported comments on climate, Muslims and east Germany – and his apparent political manoeuvring – create shock waves

The German CEO of Europe’s largest media publisher tried to use his flagship tabloid, Bild, to influence the outcome of Germany’s last election and fed the newspaper his personal views attacking climate change activism, Covid measures and the former chancellor Angela Merkel, leaked messages suggest.

The internal chats, emails and text messages published by the German weekly Die Zeit on Wednesday clash with the public presentation of Axel Springer SE’s chief executive, Mathias Döpfner, who recently said he wanted to bring “non-partisan” journalism to a too-polarised US media landscape through his acquisition of the English-language title Politico.

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The media will have to stay vigilant in an AI world | Letters

April 13, 2023, 10:09 am

≫ Next: A few scoops down at the local: the rise and fall of a community paper

≪ Previous: ‘I’m all for climate change’: Axel Springer CEO faces heat over leaked messages

Readers (and ChatGPT) respond to articles on artificial intelligence chatbots and other content-creating AI tools

Re Chris Moran’s article (ChatGPT is making up fake Guardian articles. Here’s how we’re responding, 6 April), barely a day passes without new risks arising from the use of artificial intelligence to generate factual material. This exciting new technology already offers journalists, whether from mainstream media or niche online sites, the promise of rapid newsgathering, analysis of complex data and near-instantaneous stories written to order. Almost irresistible, especially for news publishers on a budget. But the potential threats to news authenticity, the difficulty for both journalists and consumers in verifying seemingly plausible information, and the near certainty of bad actors creating convincing but spurious content get more concerning the more you think of them.

This is a challenge for all media. With audio and video increasingly capable of digital generation, the risk to the reputation of print, online and broadcast journalism requires an industry-wide response. It is urgent that publishers and regulators come together to agree best practice. This month, Impress, the regulator formed in the wake of the Leveson inquiry, has started the ball rolling, with all its publishers now required to ensure human editorial oversight of digitally generated material and to signal to readers when AI content is included.

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A few scoops down at the local: the rise and fall of a community paper

April 15, 2023, 7:00 am

≫ Next: Sheila Yarwood obituary

≪ Previous: The media will have to stay vigilant in an AI world | Letters

A new exhibition charts the fortunes of an idiosyncratic freesheet, the Abertillery and Ebbw Valleys Dynamic, and the two men who tried to keep it afloat

The Abertillery and Ebbw Valleys Dynamic launched in 2015. The fortnightly newspaper was conceived by two local men, Tony Flatman and Julian Meek, who met in the library one quiet afternoon and got talking. They were both men of letters: Flatman had written reports on economic subjects, “the Channel tunnel and so on”, and Meek was a poet and one-time mayor of the town, with a bit of a newspaper background, having once worked as an editor’s assistant on regional papers. “I was very much in the old-school journalist tradition,” he says, “start at the bottom and end up at the bottom.” Chatting, they bemoaned the absence of any news coverage of the town – the Cardiff and Newport papers had long since given up offices in this corner of the valleys – and they thought there might be a niche for a paper that told heartfelt local stories with a bit of a smile on its face. “In London terms,” Flatman says, “we thought somewhere between the Guardian and Private Eye.”

The Dynamic office in Abertillery.

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Sheila Yarwood obituary

April 16, 2023, 9:55 am

≫ Next: Russian judge rejects WSJ reporter Evan Gershkovich’s detention appeal

≪ Previous: A few scoops down at the local: the rise and fall of a community paper

From 1966 to 1978, my sister Sheila Yarwood, who has died aged 91, was the theatre critic for the Stratford-upon-Avon Herald, edited by Harry Pigott-Smith (father of the actor Tim). It was said by one within Royal Shakespeare Company circles that when a new production was not well reviewed by the national press, the response was: “Let’s wait until we see what Sheila says.”

Writing mostly as Sheila Bannock, and later Sarah Eiley-Wood (a near-anagram of her name), she was highly regarded as a theatre critic, reviewing most of the plays performed in Stratford, and the regional theatres, and occasionally writing for the nationals. In 1965 in the Herald, she gave Alan Ayckbourn a rave review for his comedy Relatively Speaking, the first of his 89 plays to become a hit.

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Russian judge rejects WSJ reporter Evan Gershkovich’s detention appeal

April 18, 2023, 4:49 am

≪ Previous: Sheila Yarwood obituary

US journalist to remain in detention until trial at end of May on charges of espionage

Russia-Ukraine war – latest news updates

A Russian judge has rejected an appeal by the Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich against the decision to hold him in detention before his trial on charges of espionage.

Gershkovich, 31, is the first US journalist to be detained in Russia on espionage charges since the end of the cold war and, if found guilty, could face up to 20 years in prison.

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