Hugh Cudlipp lecture: Poised for journalism’s golden age
January 23, 2012 7:05 pm 11 Comments
Channel 4 News Presenter Jon Snow gives the Hugh Cudlipp lecture at the London College of Communication on 23 January. You can read the full text of his speech below.
Thank you Lady Cudlipp, the Cudlipp Trustees, and Staff and Students of the London College of Communication for inviting me. I’m excited to be here tonight.
How timely that we should be celebrating the life of so legendary and pivotal figure as Hugh Cudlipp: a man who inaugurated one of the finest periods of tabloid journalism. The nearest I ever got to Hugh Cudlipp – beyond shaking the hand of his dear wife Jodi, present
with us tonight – was to be employed at LBC by his nephew Michael Cudlipp, who literally told me to get on my bike and become a proper reporter.
How apt then that we should be paying obeisance to an emblem of a Golden Age of tabloid newspapers in what is inescapably the darkest and bleakest moment this end of the industry has ever known. It is salutary to think of what Hugh Cudlipp achieved and to wonder what he would have made of today’s tabloid leadership…
And what a life! – Leaving school at 14: Becoming a peer less than fifty years later in recognition of his life’s achievement.
I feel hugely honoured to be allowed to speak in his memory here tonight – hugely honoured to follow in the footsteps of Michael Grade, Andrew Marr, Alastair Campbell, Alan Rusbridger, and Lionel Barber. (I may have left a couple out there…)
Tonight, I want to focus on the art, the trade, the power of journalism – in print, onscreen, online and beyond, and the breath-taking opportunity that is beckoning us on into a new Golden Age of journalism.
Continue reading and comment
