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My identify is Jamil Anderlini and at this time I joined POLITICO Europe as Editor-in-Chief. I first wish to pay my respects to my predecessor, Stephen Brown, who tragically handed away in March this yr. I didn’t know Stephen personally however I do know he’s sorely missed and that his idealism and dedication to nice journalism are very a lot current in my new house.
I’ve simply moved to Brussels from Hong Kong, the place I used to be Asia Editor of the Monetary Occasions, a 133-year-old enterprise publication. Leaving the FT to hitch POLITICO Europe (established in 2015) feels a bit like quitting a symphony orchestra to hitch a rock band.
Departing China, the place I’ve labored as a journalist and newsroom chief for the final 20 years, fills me with a mix of unhappiness and reduction. A lot of my grownup life has been devoted to understanding, decoding and explaining that unbelievable nation. However it’s more durable and more durable to function as a journalist because the Communist Social gathering turns into extra totalitarian at house and more and more belligerent overseas.
On my final day in Hong Kong, I sat on the deck of a good friend’s boat parked only a few hundred yards from the infamous Stanley Jail. Inside its partitions, scores of political prisoners, a few of them mates and acquaintances, are serving lengthy sentences or awaiting trial on essentially the most spurious of fees.
To land within the coronary heart of democratic Europe and never have to fret about retribution from an oppressive authorities for committing acts of journalism is not any small reduction.
However crucial cause I’ve made this transfer is the facility and potential I see in POLITICO.
This digital-native information group is shaking issues up in Brussels and throughout all of Europe. It’s rising curiosity and participation within the democratic course of in locations the place democracy is typically taken as a right. I wish to be a part of that.
In the present day, democracy is in decline and below menace all through the world, together with in its most essential bastions in Europe and North America. Younger democracies in Japanese Europe are inching in the direction of autocracy. However much more established methods can slip into complacency and corruption if they aren’t challenged by a powerful, nonpartisan, fact-based free press.
No group in Europe at this time embodies that spirit higher than POLITICO and its new proprietor, Axel Springer.
Not lengthy after he and his co-founders launched POLITICO in Washington DC, our founding editor John Harris defined why the publication doesn’t have a conventional editorial web page. He talked concerning the distinction between voice and advocacy and the way essential it was “to insist on the primacy of info over ideology” in journalism. “One of the vital distressing options of public life lately has been the demise of shared info,” he stated. Issues have solely gotten worse since he wrote that again in 2007, across the time Twitter was invented and the iPhone first launched.
Like John and all my new colleagues, I imagine strongly in journalism that’s principled however not ideological, fearless however truthful. To cite the Chinese language dictator Mao Zedong: I wish to see “100 flowers bloom, 100 faculties of thought contend” — in fact with out the vicious purges that adopted within the case of Maoist China.
Whereas remaining scrupulously nonpartisan, I would like POLITICO Europe to face up for the tolerance, plurality and openness of liberal democracy.
I wish to assist POLITICO maintain constructing a profitable enterprise mannequin for journalism that takes benefit of the newest know-how and innovation.
And I wish to have plenty of enjoyable, together with in the way in which we inform tales. As POLITICO Europe’s first editor, Matt Kaminski, likes to say: We are going to inform you what everyone seems to be speaking about however no one dares to jot down.
We promise to carry the highly effective to account and we additionally count on to be held to the best journalistic requirements of accuracy and accountability. In case you imagine we’ve got made a factual error then please get in contact at [email protected]
We promise you can be knowledgeable, you can be entertained and, typically, you can be uncomfortable.
In contrast to these in Stanley Jail, only a few POLITICO readers are confronted with existential decisions about how a lot we worth freedom and democracy. However on a regular basis decisions that get made on this capital and different capitals of Europe — on local weather, know-how, on world engagement — are cumulatively shaping historical past for the stability of this century.
We imagine we’re illuminating a few of the most essential tales on the earth and we hope you’ll be a part of us — as shoppers of our journalism, as sources and as colleagues.
Jamil Anderlini
Editor-in-Chief
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