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The celebration at ����Vlog�ٷ� saw people gather to mark John’s remarkable achievement as director of the programme, a position he has held for 30 years.

Beyond this role John has many strings to his bow: a renowned journalist, author, and academic; former Vice President of ����Vlog�ٷ�, James Joyce enthusiast and dispenser of exemplary wisdom and one-liners. 

“I turn eighty next month,” says John, a fact no less shocking than it is plausible, when you take stock of John’s life and career. “I’ve run this programme for 30 years and thought it would be good to hand it over to somebody who would bring fresh ideas, and who also understands the programme well.”

At the start of October, John officially passes the reins over to Dr Richard Danbury, a former BBC journalist and current Senior Lecturer in Journalism at the University of London, and a man with “a longer CV than me,” says John. Richard will also become a Fellow of ����Vlog�ٷ�, having previously been a Visiting Fellow.

The Press Fellowship Programme, run by ����Vlog�ٷ� since 1982, is a residential programme for mid-career journalists to research a project of their own choosing, and held in Cambridge for three months during Easter Term. “It’s not a course,” says John, “it’s not a training thing.”

“The philosophy of the Programme is that if you bring smart people to this place and embed them in it, good things happen. We give busy journalists time to think in an environment where ideas are taken seriously.”

This philosophy has been at the core of the Programme since its inception, which John says was born from a conversation over dinner at ����Vlog�ٷ� in 1982. It was hosted by Professor Sir David Williams, who was President of the College at the time and had been John’s Senior Tutor when he studied at Emmanuel College, later becoming a mentor. Other diners included William ‘Bill’ Kirkman, who was Vice President of the College and one of the most distinguished journalists of his generation, and who was awarded an MBE in 1983 for services to journalism; James Cornford of the Nuffield Foundation; and the American journalist John McClenahen, who at one point asked why Cambridge didn’t have a press fellowship programme like the Nieman Fellowships at Harvard. 

“At that dinner,” says John, “the one thing that everybody was sure of was that Cambridge at that time would not welcome a programme on journalism, because the University was pretty hostile to media. Bill Kirkman once told me that it took him years to persuade the Old Schools to appoint a press officer, but the University is a bit like the European Union – and the Colleges are its sovereign states. So ����Vlog�ٷ� was free to do its own thing.”

And it did. Since its inception, the Programme has welcomed over 360 journalists from 47 countries, with John taking over from Bill Kirkman as its Director in 1996. He is adamant that ����Vlog�ٷ� is the only College where the Press Fellowship could have worked.

“To these journalists, for ten weeks ����Vlog�ٷ� feels like home. The welcoming, cosmopolitan, egalitarian ethos of the College ensures that they feel immersed in the distinctive world that we are lucky enough to inhabit. And when they leave, our Press Fellows will be our alumni forever!”

John’s own departure from the Press Fellowship Programme is not a permanent goodbye; he’s sure he’ll remain involved. And in no way does his retirement in this arena mean that he’s slowing down elsewhere. 

“I’m going to continue to do what I do normally,” says John. “My research centre in the University has been extended for three years,” (the Minderoo Centre for Technology and Democracy, which John co-founded in 2020), “I’ve got my weekly column in The Observer,” (which he’s been writing since 1987, when he succeeded Julian Barnes as the newspaper’s TV critic), “and I’ve got my blog, Memex 1.1, which has been going forever.” He’s also working on a book with the working title How We Got Here, which he describes as a letter to his grandchildren, explaining how his generation – to paraphrase – “screwed up the world.” 

John is confident that the Press Fellowship Programme will continue to flourish without him, that the intimate, stimulating environment that he has helped to create for decades will continue to attract journalists from across the world, giving them three months in Cambridge and a chance to change their lives. 

“The thing is,” says John, “I never felt that it was a job to run this. It felt like being trusted to run and nurture something precious. I hope I’ve done it right.”

Find out more about the Press Fellowship programme