Parallels with Suzanne Moore

Why some of us in the media have (metaphorical) balls.

Earlier this year I sat back and watched award-winning Guardian columnist Suzanne Moore get shafted by all and sundry. Her crime? Daring to write a column about the impact trans issues are having on women’s rights in Britain.

Moore has been a columnist for a long time. It’s not her first time at the rodeo. What she experienced in terms of abuse, death threats, calls for her cancellation from the ‘woke’, and an absence of any tangible support from management at the Guardian, was beyond anything she’d ever experienced before.

I mean, finding out that 338 of your colleagues had signed a letter to your editors wanting you sacked, without even one of them having the decency to pick up the phone to pre-warn you or explain their thinking, would rattle anyone. Frankly.

A few weeks ago she quit and explains why here https://unherd.com/2020/11/why-i-had-to-leave-the-guardian/.It had become impossible to continue on at the Guardian, and soon after she moved her column here suzannemoore.substack.com

The parallels between what happened to her and what happened to me are, well, uncanny. I wrote one column about the very same issue, and I too was knocked flat on my arse with the nuclear fallout.

While I didn’t quite get 338 colleagues writing a letter trying to get rid of me (that I know of), I’m pretty dang sure that on a per capita basis of staff working at the New Zealand Herald versus the Guardian, I was somewhere in the zone.

Overnight I lost journos I called friends - some who’d stayed with me at my home - and it’s hard to express how that felt. Journalism should be all about free speech and diverse views, right? Call me naïve.

So watching Moore bravely cut and run from her paid gig in a big time national newspaper was a scary mirror of my own decision to do the same last year. When editors start making your life difficult because they’re scared of the ‘woke’ mob, it feels like a slow strangulation of your soul. Particularly when you’ve done the hard yards, had a solid following for years, won major awards, and earned them money. It’s disrespectful. Basically.

Watching Suzanne Moore set up her own Substack account in response to all of this has inspired my next step. This step. I’ve had a break from writing for a year, learned some new tricks, and I’m ready to get back in the saddle. And not side saddle either.

Many of you used to read me and I’d love for you to read me again. There are things I need to tell you about - what’s happening in our new media landscape, why we should be worried about freedom of speech eroding before our eyes, and why so many mainstream editors are bastards - for a start.

I possess a turn of phrase I know many enjoy and I honestly, truly, hand on heart have lost any political partisanship during this decade-long columnist journey. World’s changing too fast for that.

I’d be really stoked if you’d come along on this ‘end times’ adventure with me. A problem shared is a problem halved, right?

I’ll be free to read for now, and I encourage you to subscribe. Be good to see you on the other side. Come hang out with me and let’s see what trouble we can get into.