I am very sorry to hear of all the changes at The Telegraph. I adore that paper, which absolutely won’t be the same without the incredible Liam Halligan and (reportedly; I do not know the details) Allison Pearson, a complete hero of mine. I am very sorry for all the people who have lost their jobs, and for what this will do to journalism. The new owner’s plan for The Telegraph to become “a global, AI-powered premium media and intelligence business” sounds bleak, especially when the existing product is so good.
I have written for The Telegraph myself, under the direction and guidance of Wesley Rock and Ben Felsenburg (who have now left, but were fantastic). I look back to those days as some of my happiest in journalism. We broke some cracking stories, such as one about a trans artist who received £64,000 from the National Lottery for “their” show about finding a sperm donor - and an £800,000 taxpayer-funded study that claimed the “disproportionate representation” of William Shakespeare in the theatre has propagated “white, able-bodied, heterosexual, cisgender male narratives”.
I somehow doubt these types of story will “make the cut” in the future, though, because Axel Springer - the German media group that purchased The Telegraph - has its own LGBTQ+ “Umbrella Network” titled “Axel Springer Queerseite”. It is a far cry from The Telegraph’s positions on gender ideology. The paper has been a stalwart against this extreme movement.
A webpage about Queerseite reads:
“Since 2014, Axel Springer Queerseite has represented the interests of the LGBTQ+ community of the companies and their employees at Axel Springer SE.
“The Axel Springer Queer Page isn’t just a nice perk for LGBTQ+ employees; it’s more like a safe haven or a queer family. We are a group of colleagues across the entire Axel Springer Group who want to promote a positive cultural shift for all queer people and allies.
…
“One of our main goals is to make Axel Springer one of the leading employers for LGBTQ+ people worldwide.”
You can see what this looks like in practice on Axel Springer Queerseite’s Instagram page, where there are posts about “Trans* Day of Remembrance”…
… a “trans feminine leader”…
.. and Trans* Awareness Week…
Axel Springer is also tagged as a collaborator (meaning it accepted the tag) in this post by “Dax Puppy”:
Great!
Elsewhere Axel Springer Queerseite has its own LGBTQ+ glossary, which explains terms such as:
cis/trans
cisnormativity
cross-dressing
fetishization
flaming queen
genderqueer
misgendering
nonbinary
safe space
Dear oh dear…
Where is our “safe space” from all this nonsense?
Sadly, it no longer appears to be The Telegraph.
WATCH: Axel Springer explaining its commitment to inclusivity. You’d think you were watching a cult…
‘Get woke, go broke’. I expect we’ll be seeing another example of this shortly…
The cultural space for conservatism has been shrinking for several decades as the left took over schools and universities whose graduates now work in media, museums and other institutions. The Telegraph was the last, somewhat variable, bastion and its has now gone too it seems.
Substacks are not the public sphere which will now be dominated by centrist and left outlets almost exclusively. GB News survives (if you stomach its formats and style) but Ofcom are coming for it.
Dark days ahead.