After 39 years working as a journalist, and 17 years as the head of Sky News, John Ryley retired in May. In a series of articles for The Property Chronicle he reflects on how the news business has changed and how it will develop in the future.
“It was a bright cold day in April and the clocks were striking thirteen…”
It was 1984. I had spent the last three happy years studying Latin at Durham university, where I was able to translate, analyse, and dissect anything written by Tacitus, Horace, or Lucretius. However, I was totally unable to spell, punctuate, drive a car, or use a typewriter. So, naturally, I started to look for a job in journalism.
It’s now almost 40 years since I started work as a journalist. As well as looking back on those four decades working in the news industry, in this article series I intend to peer into the future 40 years from now and try to imagine what the news industry will look like in 2063…
Breaking news from 1984
George Orwell wrote “Nineteen Eighty-Four” in 1948 at the start of the Cold War – arguably now the “first” Cold War. Orwell peered into the future and saw a grim world of Newspeak, Doublethink and Big Brother.
1984 was a huge year for news – it was the year of the Miners’ strike led by the leader of the National Union of Miners, Arthur Scargill, which would be Britain’s most socially divisive industrial dispute for nearly six decades. It was the year that the IRA tried to assassinate Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, along with her entire cabinet in the Grand Hotel in Brighton. It was the year when Britain was threatening the European Community with dire consequences if it didn’t get a better deal on its EEC budget contributions.
