The Guardian has announced five new roles, including its first-ever Caribbean correspondent, a South America correspondent, two Africa correspondents and a new UK health and inequalities correspondent, providing Guardian readers around the world with more dedicated news, expert analysis and original features from each of these regions.
All four international correspondents will join the Guardian in the coming months, with Tobi Thomas already in post in the U.K. The news follows the appointments of Adria Walker and Melissa Hellmann to Guardian US’s race and equity team at the end of last year. The new roles are part of the Scott Trust Legacies of Enslavement program and will strengthen the overall aims by reporting on previously underreported regions and communities. Recruitment is ongoing for a Manchester-based community affairs correspondent to expand the Guardian’s reporting of race in the north west and beyond.
Katharine Viner, editor-in-chief, Guardian News & Media, says: “The response to the Scott Trust’s findings last March was a watershed moment for the Guardian. The long-term commitment set out in the restorative justice plan is vital in our ongoing efforts to address these historical wrongs and to report more deeply on the lives and experiences of people of colour around the world. Our new Caribbean, South America and Africa correspondents will cover the urgent stories and issues affecting communities in these regions today, and with a depth and breadth rarely seen in the western media.”
Natricia Duncan, the Guardian’s first-ever Caribbean correspondent, says: “Coming from a small island in the Caribbean, I understand the importance of giving voice to those who feel marginalised and invisible. Despite its rich cultural tapestry, dynamic leaders and complex environmental and socio-economic challenges, the region is often misunderstood, misrepresented, or ignored by global media. It is a great privilege to be part of the Guardian’s historic move to ensure the Caribbean gets the coverage it deserves.”
Cotton Capital, the Guardian’s journalism series on how transatlantic slavery shaped the Guardian, Manchester, Britain and the world, will publish new stories in the weeks ahead. This includes new Guardian documentary Buried, which explores the discovery of a vast burial ground on the island of St Helena — one of the most significant traces of the transatlantic slave trade in the world — as well as stories exploring memorialisation and culture in the Sea Islands and Jamaica.
The Scott Trust has also appointed three additional members to its external advisory panel who meet quarterly to guide the restorative programme of work, focusing on descendant communities from regions of the world that were most impacted. The new members are:
They join previously announced advisory panel members Dr. Cassandra Gooptar, Professor Keith Magee, Professor Olivette Otele and Professor Matthew Smith.
Ebony Riddell Bamber, program director, the Scott Trust legacies of enslavement programme, says: “I’m thrilled to welcome Antonia, Michael and Naketa to the external advisory panel who will help oversee our long-term programme of restorative justice. The focus for the period ahead is to carry out further engagement with descendant communities and begin to develop concrete options for partnerships, as well as continuing to work closely with the Scott Trust, our advisory panel, and connecting with other organisations and institutions advancing restorative and reparative justice efforts.”
Over the past year, The Guardian Foundation has successfully expanded its journalism training scheme to include three extra bursaries reserved specifically for Black aspiring journalists in the U.K. and is now progressing its second cohort of applications for 2024. Guardian Australia launched its first journalism cadetship aimed at increasing diversity in the newsroom, while a similar scheme is currently in development with Guardian US.
Readers have described the Guardian’s response as “a necessary step forward,” with a special webinar drawing nearly 4,500 views and the British Journalism Awards noting how “few publications would be brave enough to subject themselves to such scrutiny,” following a highly commended win for Cotton Capital in the social affairs, diversity & inclusion category.
For more information on the project, please visit the program webpage or contact legacies@theguardian.com.
About the Scott Trust:
The ultimate owner of the Guardian is the Scott Trust, which was originally created as a trust in 1936 to safeguard the title’s journalistic freedom. In 2008 it was replaced by a limited company with the same core purpose as the original trust: to secure the financial and editorial independence of the Guardian in perpetuity, while its subsidiary aims are to champion its principles and to promote freedom of the press in the U.K. and elsewhere. Other than to cover expenses, the Scott Trust takes no dividend from the group’s businesses, whose profits are instead reinvested to sustain journalism that is free from commercial or political interference.
About the legacies of enslavement project:
In March 2023, the Scott Trust published a comprehensive report on the Guardian’s historical connections with transatlantic slavery, sharing an apology and its restorative justice response. The research identified links between John Edward Taylor and the associates who funded the Manchester Guardian’s creation, and slavery. It was conducted in three stages — first by Dr. Sheryllynne Haggerty and Dr. Cassandra Gooptar of the University of Nottingham’s Institute for the Study of Slavery, and later by Dr. Gooptar and Professor Trevor Burnard of the University of Hull’s Wilberforce Institute for the Study of Slavery and Emancipation. The Scott Trust also commissioned author and expert Professor Olivette Otele as an external advisor, who reviewed the academic findings.
The academic research and restorative justice proposals were overseen by a committee of Scott Trust members: historian, writer and broadcaster David Olusoga, barrister and former deputy mayor of London, Matthew Ryder KC, Guardian editor-in-chief Katharine Viner, and Scott Trust chair Ole Jacob Sunde; and by a team of Guardian editorial and commercial staff, led by senior editor for diversity and development Joseph Harker and chief communications and marketing officer Brendan O’Grady. Maya Wolfe-Robinson is editor of Cotton Capital.
Since June 2023, Ebony Riddell Bamber has been in post as program director, providing project management, advancing descendant community engagement and consultation in Jamaica and the Sea Islands region of the U.S., and initiating the development of a strategic plan. This work will continue throughout 2024, including progressing partnership work in Manchester and building awareness of the city’s connections to transatlantic enslavement.
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