Life as an investigative reporter
The Story
The Times
3.9 • 1.6K Ratings
🗓️ 23 December 2024
⏱️ 46 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
On Christmas Day, The Times' Investigations Editor, Dominic Kennedy, will spend his last working day at the paper having started back in 1993. To mark this, Dominic sits down with Luke to talk about his career in journalism and revisits three very unique and very different stories that he’s investigated over the past 31 years.
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Further reading:
- How the UK became ‘western capital’ for sharia courts
- ‘I feel like I have to pay ransom to get out of my marriage’
Guest: Dominic Kennedy, Investigations Editor, The Times.
Producer: Will Roe.
Host: Luke Jones.
Clips: Parliament TV, Times Radio.
This podcast was brought to you thanks to subscribers of The Times and The Sunday Times. To enjoy unlimited digital access to all our journalism subscribe here.
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Transcript
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| 0:32.0 | A quick warning, this podcast contains references to suicide and violence towards women. |
| 0:40.8 | From the time and the Sunday Times, this is The Story. |
| 0:44.1 | I'm Luke Jones. |
| 0:47.2 | When I walked into the Times' office in 1993, I saw clutter, paper everywhere. There were primitive word processes on each desk, |
| 0:58.9 | and old-fashioned telephones with cords attached to them. And if you talk about the actual |
| 1:04.4 | newsroom, by which I mean the news reporters, they were largely middle-aged men. And being England, they were kind of wearing |
| 1:15.1 | dandruffy suits. As you looked up, there was a sort of balcony which had been created, a gallery, |
| 1:23.8 | which was a mezzanine. And that was where the top editors sat, along with the more |
| 1:28.8 | distinguished departments, such as the leader writers. I see. And they had less dandruff on them? |
| 1:35.9 | They wouldn't have had any dandruff on them. And was everyone smoking? |
| 1:39.5 | Journalism was fueled by cigarettes. It was impossible to think that would ever change. |
| 1:46.0 | There's just a load of people, mainly men hunched over ash trays that were overbrimming with ash. |
| 1:54.0 | That was the early 90s when journalist Dominic Kennedy first arrived at the Times. |
| 2:00.0 | Now, 31 years on, Dom, who has broken some of the biggest stories at the paper, is hanging up his pen. |
| 2:06.3 | He's covered crime and social affairs, but he's best known for investigations. |
... |
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