This is John Mair's fortieth book as an editor. All have been 'hackademic' volumes
mixing the work of leading journalists and academics. He invented the genre with
Richard Keeble. In the last year he has edited 11 books, five on the pandemic,
three on the future of the BBC, two on Boris and Brexit for Abramis and one on
'Oil Dorado' in Guyana. His previous books have covered a wide piste from the
Arab Spring, the Leveson Inquiry, data journalism and the works of VS Naipaul.
He invented the Coventry Conversations which attracted 350 media movers and
shakers to Coventry University. Six million have downloaded the podcasts. Today
he runs the weekly My Jericho events in Oxford (myjericho.co.uk) which attract
local and national movers and shakers. In previous lives he was an award-winning
producer/director for the BBC, ITV and Channel Four and a secondary school
teacher.
Tor Clark is Associate Professor in Journalism, BA Journalism programme
director, Deputy Head of the School of Media, Communication and Sociology
at the University of Leicester, UK, and a Senior Fellow of the Higher Education
Academy. After studying Politics and History at Lancaster University, he worked
for the Northamptonshire Evening Telegraph, before becoming editor, first of the
Harborough Mail in Leicestershire, and then of Britain's oldest newspaper, the
Rutland & Stamford Mercury. Previously he was Principal Lecturer in Journalism
and Associate Director of Learning and Teaching at De Montfort University in
Leicester. As a political journalist he has covered eight UK general elections, the
last four for BBC Leicester, where he is a regular commentator on politics and
media.
Neil Fowler has been in journalism since graduation, starting life as trainee
reporter on the Leicester Mercury. He went on to edit four regional dailies,
including The Journal in the north east of England and the Western Mail in Wales.
He was then publisher of the Toronto Sun in Canada before returning to the UK
to edit Which? magazine. In 2010/11 he was the Guardian Research Fellow at
Oxford University's Nuffield College where he investigated the decline and future
of regional and local newspapers in the UK. From then until 2016 he helped
organise the college's prestigious David Butler media and politics seminars. As well
as being an occasional contributor to trade magazines he now acts as an adviser to
organisations on their management, external and internal communications and
media policies and strategies.
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Raymond Snoddy OBE, after studying at Queen's University in Belfast, worked
on local and regional newspapers, before joining The Times in 1971. Five years later
he moved to the Financial Times and reported on media issues before returning to
The Times as media editor in 1995. He is now a freelance journalist writing for a
range of publications. He presented NewsWatch on the BBC from its inception in
2004 until 2012. His other television work has included presenting Channel 4's
award-winning series Hard News. In addition, he is the author of a biography of
the media tycoon Michael Green and of The Good, the Bad and the Ugly, which
looked at the UK national press in the 1990s. He was awarded an OBE for his
services to journalism in 2000.
Richard Tait CBE is Professor of Journalism at the School of Journalism, Media
and Culture, at Cardiff University. From 2003 to 2012, he was director of the
school's Centre for Journalism. He was editor of Newsnight from 1985 to 1987,
editor of Channel 4 News from 1987 to 1995 and editor-in-chief of ITN from
1995 to 2002. He was a BBC governor and chair of the governors' programme
complaints committee from 2004 to 2006, and a BBC Trustee and chair of the
Trust's editorial standards committee from 2006 to 2010. He is a Fellow of the
Royal Television Society and the Society of Editors, and a board member of the
International News Safety Institute.
