The free press fights back...

Introducing the Nerve. From the wreckage of my old newspaper, comes a new all-women, journalist-owned, independent publication. Join us!

A note on what I’m doing and why. I’m an investigative journalist who worked for the Guardian for 20 years latterly investigating the intersection of politics and technology that included 2018’s exposé of the Cambridge Analytica/Facebook scandal. The opaque and unaccountable Silicon Valley companies that facilitated both Brexit and Trump are now key players in an accelerating global axis of autocracy. I believe this is a new form and type of power that I’m committed to keep on exposing: Broligarchy.

Some news!

This is what has kept me busy for the last six months. A terrifying exciting new all-women journalist-owned independent new publication with a “culture first” USP.

More of that below. But first a short refresher on how we got here. I set this newsletter up in November last year in a bit of a panic after finding out via a breaking news alert from Sky News, that the Guardian had entered a secret, confidential, exclusive negotiation to sell the publication where I’d worked for 20 years, the oldest Sunday newspaper in the world.

I suspected - and it turned out to be correct - that I, and other “contractors”, would be thrown under the bus. I’ve worked full-time for the Guardian and Observer for 20 years, but always on a recurring “freelance” contract. If that sounds like it might be a little bit illegal, you’d be correct. (More on that another time.)

But as someone said at the time, never work for a liberal newspaper, they’ll sack you on Christmas Eve. Or in our case, while you’re legally withdrawing your labour and standing on a picket line, 93% of the journalists voted for. Anyway, I wrote pretty comprehensively about the sage starting here right up to this valedictory post which recounted how we left.

But enough of that. It’s history. This is a fresh start. And as terrifying exciting as that is, it feels so apt that we’re doing this now. The world is on fire. The rise of the far right and my specialist subject, the enormous power of the data harvesting tech monopolies feels not just unstoppable but like it’s accelerating. Meanwhile, we live in information fog. There’s so much noise and barely any signal.

I had a fascinating discussion on here a few weeks ago with the great Karen Hao and I was gratified to discover that she was as appalled as I was by the syndication deals and partnerships mainstream news organisations are doing with AI companies. We were in a trust spiral when no-one believes anything and we are crying out for expert, human, journalist people to try and make sense of it all.

That’s what we are. In fact, we’re not just human, journalist people. We’re human, journalist women, who’ve worked together collaboratively for years and we just want to do great journalism. To bring our old skool legacy ways together with new digital whizzkids and explain what we’re doing along the way.

There’s much more to say, but tomorrow I’m up at dawn to finish an investigative piece I’ve written for our first issue on Tuesday [screaming emoji] and travelling to Liverpool for the Labour party conference. I’m doing a ‘fireside chat’ (always such a con, where’s the actual fire?!?) with the great Carol Vorderman who as well as being a brilliant broadcaster and anti-corruption campaigner is also my personal life coach, (she just doesn’t know it yet).

And then on Tuesday evening, I’m hosting a panel with Vorders, the great Stewart Lee, the comedian and writer whose Observer column was an institution and who’s joining us on the Nerve (yes!!), and the brilliant film critic, Ellen E Jones. And then we press a button, launch the site, have a party and collapse!! (If you’re in Liverpool, Liverpool-adjacent or just want a free glass of wine, reply to this email and I’ll try and get you in.)

It’s been so much hard work. And the site will probably crash and no-one’s paying us to do any of this and that’s why this post has to end with a hugely heartfelt THANK YOU.

As suspected, my 20 years of full-time work for the Guardian including the investigation that made them more money than any other story in their history, counted for nought. There was no buyout or handsome redundancy package. Capitalism sucks! So, the only reason I’ve been able to build the Nerve is because I was supported here by you. I’m incredibly privileged to that support and I don’t take it for granted. But it’s partly what gave us the nerve (see what I did there) to give this a go.

It’s a huge gamble. We’re throwing ourselves into the unknown. We just believe that journalism has to be independent, that we have to rebuild it ourselves from the ground up, that it has to be in community with its readers, and that, there are other ways a news organisation can be. Have thoughts, tell us!

I’m still going to be writing more informally here about my special interests, the beat I’ve pursued for a decade and my campaigning work with the Citizens and beyond. The Nerve is where I’m going to write long-form and push us to do the hard yards of investigating power. (Freelance investigative journalists, please do get in touch.) But what’s so brilliant about Sarah and Jane and Imogen, the editors, I’ve worked with for years (and Ursula and Lisa who are part of the wider team) is that they understand “the mix”, that you need serious and funny and quirky and earnest and fun. The Nerve is going to be all about that mix. I’m a writer with a specialism. They’re editors who understand a package. And Lynsey, the creative director, knows how to make it sing.

“Journalism is a team sport,” I said that on the first day of my trial as I stood alone in the witness box, supported by a crowdfunder not the organisation that had published the work. And it’s why this project inspires me, this team knows how to execute. They’ve done it for years. It’s why we’re putting our necks on the line and why we believe - hope - that there’s a lot of people out there who, like us, want a different type of media and will have our backs. Let’s do it differently. Tell us how. This is a genuine experiment in which we’re bound to get things wrong but as long as we’re open and upfront, hopefully you’ll bear with us.

And most importantly please check out the Nerve here and sign up for our first edition on Tuesday (if we can pull it off on a combination of caffeine and adrenalin). It’s very much a first draft of what we can do. We have to start small. But we’d love to have you on the journey.

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Socials

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As reported by Press Gazette

Former Observer big-hitters launch new title with redundancy payouts

The Nerve promises “hard-hitting investigations” blended with “fun”.

By Charlotte Tobitt

Five senior Observer journalists including Carole Cadwalladr have launched their own culture-led publication partly funded with their redundancy money.

The Nerve, which is promising culture journalism that connects the dots with tech, politics and art, is launching as a twice-weekly newsletter through Substack rival Beehiiv, with a beta website.

The aim is to expand it to a full website and twice-yearly print publication in 2026 around the launch of its first major investigation.

Cadwalladr is a two-time winner of the Technology Journalism prize at the British Journalism Awards as well as Investigation of the Year in 2018 for her work with The Observer exposing the harvesting of millions of Facebook users’ data by the now-defunct Cambridge Analytica.

She was employed as a freelance writer for The Observer on a long-standing contract arrangement but was dropped by new owner of the title, Tortoise Media. Around half The Observer’s 70-odd staff took redundancy rather than transfer over to Tortoise Media when the ownership of the title changed in March this year.

The Nerve’s founding team is being led by Sarah Donaldson, former deputy editor of Observer New Review and digital editor of The Observer, who was Cadwalladr’s editor on the Cambridge Analytica investigation.

They are joined by former Observer New Review editor Jane Ferguson, former Observer creative director Lynsey Irvine, and former New Review senior editor Imogen Carter.

The four former Observer staffers are funding their time on the project using their redundancy payments.

Donaldson said the name The Nerve had been chosen because “we realised nerve is the essential quality needed in our increasingly turbulent world.

“Too many people in positions of power are losing nerve, and the people we most admire have it in spades. We want to channel that kind of courage into a new publication. As our lives become more and more dominated by AI and algorithms we love that the name feels human and captures the idea of connecting people.”

Do please read the rest of the article here.