In the City of Words

Before City of Words became a publishing house it was a newspaper column in the Guardian combining global reportage with trenchant analysis and commentary.

The column covered information technology, anthropology, language, literature, visual art, arms control, sexual politics and natural history, with reporting from London, Budapest, New York, Havana, Rio de Janeiro, Nairobi and points south.

In the City of Words collects a hundred-plus of these columns, vignettes of the world on the eve of the third millennium, with social and environmental change in overdrive, human creativity struggling to keep up, and commentators often out of their depth. ‘In the latter days of print,’ John Ryle writes, ‘it was often said that newspapers had too many columnists and commentators. Today there are far more. Those who bemoan this surge of views and opinion are likely to be commentators themselves, ie we are hypocrites. Nevertheless, it’s true, as everyone says. There are too many scraps of sensation and opinion, mostly designed to distract rather than inform. Too much lifestyle journalism, too much abject endorsement of consumerism and celebrity culture, too much falsehood and spin — too much of nothing.’

‘What there can never be enough of is honest, accurate, responsible, detailed, diligent, shrewd, historically-informed, fact-based, impartial, fearless, independent, responsibly edited, first-hand news reporting. This kind of journalism, once a source of pride for those working in a flawed profession, is becoming, like the great apes, an endangered species.’