I have never been very good at goodbyes. I don’t like to make a fuss. A quiet exit from the building is much more my style.
After more than nine years at the Guardian Weekly, five of them as your editor and four as deputy editor, it is time for a change.
Come the end of August, I will depart the editor’s chair for new challenges, taking up a master’s degree at SOAS, at the University of London. I will delve deeply into Japanese studies, an area of great interest. As a (much) younger journalist, I spent more than eight years living and working in Japan, some of them during the boom years, immersed in the wonder of Japan Inc. Although I have lived in Hong Kong, San Francisco and London in the years since, I’ve maintained a love of the country and its culture; I continue to wrestle with the language in private lessons during lunch.
Learning is a way of life.
In my time at the Guardian, and on the Weekly, I’ve absorbing new ways of seeing the world. I’ve worked with intelligent, insightful correspondents. In any given week, I’ve read more broadly and more widely than most academics. I’ve edited editions that have captured some of the biggest news stories of our time: the election of Barack Obama; the Paris climate accord; the migration crisis in the Mediterranean; the terror attacks in London, and Paris, and now Barcelona; the Fukushima meltdown; and most recently the twists and turns of the Trump administration.
And I’ve learned from you. I often say in my editor’s blog that we produce the Guardian Weekly with you, our readers, in mind. I’ve meant it. I’ve scrutinised each edition, each headline, each story, thinking, questioning, reworking, and aiming for a newspaper that’s edited with creativity, accuracy and integrity. I trust that I have delivered.
I have had the immense pleasure of leading the team here at the Weekly – astute, experienced and dedicated journalists who approach the week with humour, intelligence and energy. I leave the Weekly, and you, in their care.
It’s a big world. It’s time for me to get out from behind this desk and take up some new challenges. Thank you for reading our newspaper, for sharing your letters and other contributions, and for endlessly proving that you care about this planet and its people. It has been an honour. Abby Deveney, editor
