5 Big Questions: SUSIE BONIFACE

What is the point of print media in the digital age?

Did the Leveson report do what it intended?

And can just anyone be a journalist?

In this week’s 5 Big Questions interview we talk to journalist, free press campaigner and broadcaster SUSIE BONIFACE

• Twitter: @fleetstreetfox

Known for:

• Columnist – The Daily Mirror
• Host – ‘The News Agenda’ podcast
• Author – The Diaries Of A Fleet Street Fox
• Author – Bluffer’s Guide To Social Media
• Author – Bluffer’s Guide To Journalism
• Visiting Lecturer in Journalism – City University, London (UK)

The 5 Big Questions:

1. 1. How do you measure the impact of what you do?
   2. How should people/businesses be preparing for the future?
   3. How do we build the workforce we need for that future?
   4. How do you use creativity to solve problems?
   5. How do you collaborate?

Key quotes:

“I’m a hackneyed Lois Lane tribute act. I don’t wanna go to school anymore, I’m going to write things and save the world… and then on my first day I crashed the pool car on my local paper – day one.”

“If you constantly worry that you’re not being good enough, it does make you work harder.”

“The traditional concept of journalism is that it was stuff that was printed by unpopular people, living in a slum, sold to the everyman in the street, and that pissed off the authorities. From the invention of printing. It’s unwelcome stuff by unwelcome people that guarantees all our freedoms.”

“Along with the emergency services, journalists are the people who run towards danger.” — Mark Austin

“Leveson made people frightened to do some types of journalism and Leveson cost a lot of money to a lot of newspaper groups, which meant journalists got sacked. And these were journalists who didn’t do anything wrong.”

“You’ve got be the kind of person who picks at scabs. You’ve got to be tough enough to walk up someone’s front step and bang on the door and know you’re going to ruin their Sunday afternoon.” 

“Journalism has survived every despot that’s ever existed.”

Useful links

• Susie Boniface / Fleet Street Fox (Wikipedia) // wikipedia.org/wiki/Susie_Boniface
• SusieBoniface.com
• ‘The Damned’ — The Mirror special report on historic nuclear testing // mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/news-agenda-facebook-live-mirror-24138610
• The News Agenda podcast (Spotify link) // open.spotify.com/show/24Zk96YnQqKCb4n6NYGG0y?si=650f39aefd3d42ac

This episode was recorded in February 2022

Interviewer: Richard Freeman for always possible

Editor: CJ Thorpe-Tracey for Lo Fi Arts