I’d like you to sign up for Guardian Membership. Not only because I think you’ll really like it, but because it will be great for me too; consider it enlightened self-interest.
When I landed at the Observer in 2000, one of my jobs was to answer the phone. Within five minutes I was talking to readers, and I don’t think I’ve ever stopped. The conversation is sometimes challenging, always educative and never boring.
A decade ago you began supplying me with a steady and diverse stream of questions about how we could live more ethical lives and I became a sort of ecological agony aunt. This isn’t a role offered by most media outlets – where non-news discussion of environmental issues is dismissed by devolving it to show-off contrarians. But ecological and social justice is central to both the Observer and the Guardian, and to our readers too.
Early on, we realised that you can’t save the world just by changing a lightbulb or switching to reusable shopping bags. Our debates quickly moved to complex policy issues – population growth, exploitation of wild prey, greenhouse gas emissions, food security, deforestation and desertification. When politicians tell me there isn’t enough interest to act on climate change or brands say consumers aren’t bothered about passively polluting oceans by using their exfoliating products, I’ve always been able to say with some degree of confidence that they’re wrong – precisely because we’ve had the conversation.
In our case, the death of the community has been greatly exaggerated. We are a community and that equates to resilience and gives us power to challenge the status quo. Our relationship was never going to be dominated by a paywall thrown up between us; instead the Guardian Membership programme is all about live events, innovative online content and discussion where we can engage more, not less. And it’s obviously a vital way of supporting the award-winning journalism of the Guardian and Observer.
I know the Guardian and Observer do this type of engagement brilliantly. From Observer TEDx, where I hosted the Bristol leg – including an unforgettable conversation between the late great Tony Benn and Dr Paul Stephenson, the human rights activist who led the successful Bristol bus boycott in 1963 – to roundtable events in the Guardian’s Scott room on the efficacy of Fairtrade, I’ve been really lucky to have access to a number of live events. The Guardian Membership programme brings more and new ways to extend and amplify our conversations.
I hope you can join in.
