A Day In The Life Of… Joseph Harker, Senior Editor at The Guardian

For Joseph Harker, it all started with writing a letter. This dive into the abyss afforded him a writing position for an upstart Black newspaper, The Voice, in the 1980s, setting in motion his current position as senior editor for diversity and development at The Guardian. With tremendous success within journalism, Joseph conveys that it all ignited from one foundation: a drive to represent the victims of systemic racism.

We caught up with Joseph at the Student Publication Association’s National Conference 2024. Here, he tells us about a day in the life as a senior editor of a national newspaper, piloting an investigation into The Guardian’s origins, and injecting diversity into a notoriously exclusionary sector. All the while, he reflects on his journey, disclosing what he wishes he had done differently as a young journalist and the weight of novel changes within the industry that can be put on the backs of those racing for a career.

What does your typical day involve?

It’s funny because for so long my job has been deadlines, deadlines, deadlines. Now, it’s meetings, meetings, meetings. It sounds boring, but we are starting these projects from scratch.

For a long time, I was the editor of the opinion section for The Guardian. Alongside that, since 1999, I have been campaigning for The Guardian to bring in more diversity. I brought in a lot of writers from different backgrounds, which was great. At the time, there were very few people of colour, now there are probably a couple of hundred.

Then in 2020, everything changed. Black Lives Matter kicked off with the murder of George Floyd, and our group of people of colour met with The Guardian and the discussions became very energised at the time. As a result, The Guardian created a new position called senior editor for diversity, which was a full-time position embedding diversity and inclusion within Guardian editorial. So now, I don’t write so much anymore.

With our restorative work, we have been hiring new reporters to cover areas that have previously gone uncovered. We’ve got two race equality correspondents in the United States. We’re Britain’s first newspaper to have a Caribbean correspondent who is now just about to start. We have a South American correspondent who will be covering the African-descended communities of Brazil; as I have learned, Brazil is the second only to Nigeria in its population of Black people, who are rarely reported on. We want to put things like that right.

When I say my job is mostly meetings, I mean they are meetings that are actually producing things. We start by determining how to go forward. How do we do something meaningful in consultation with people in Jamaica, the Caribbean, and the South Eastern United States? There’s so much consultation to be done. We are starting from scratch. There are a lot of decisions to be made. There’s real momentum with all of it. The day tends to be a lot of talking to people. We don’t want to leave people behind. It’s important that we consult as widely as possible.

The second part of my job has to do with co-leading an investigation into The Guardian’s origins. In 2020 — especially with the fall of the Edward Colston statue that stood right here in the city of Bristol where we are today — a global conversation about history and how we remember Britain’s relationship with its history of slavery has expanded. It has led to questions being asked about The Guardian’s founders as the City of Manchester grew off the back of cotton, which came from enslaved people in the United States. In effect, the city of Manchester as it is today, as well as The Guardian, would not have existed without enslaved people picking cotton.

We have more we want to do. We want to do direct reparative justice work to put right the sins of the past. We are working with descendants of those who were enslaved by cotton producers. We are also working with the City of Manchester to expand the story so that the people of Manchester are more aware of their history.

Is this always what you thought you would be doing?

My degree was in chemical engineering, so in university I had a very different idea about where I would end up. It’s fair to say I never really liked chemical engineering, although I did like being a student.

When I was a student in the 1980s, there was great turmoil about race and race relations. There were lots of riots across the UK, with many stories about brutal police harassment and social exclusion. At first, I wanted to be a civil rights lawyer representing victims of police harassment. However, that would have required another two years of studies. While I got a place on a law conversion course, I soon realised that I could have just the same impact as a journalist reporting for the Black press and that’s how it all got started.

How did you break into the sector?

I wrote to the Voice newspaper, which, at the time, was only five years old. It’s now Britain’s biggest Black newspaper. I asked if they could give me a job and they seemed to like me, so I wrote a few pieces for them. I ultimately began five years in the press reporting on all manners of things relating to Black people in the UK. That was my grounding experience in journalism. I came into journalism as someone who wanted to do something about race and inequality, so that was a great starting point.

When I did leave the Black press, it was because there comes a point where you want to expand your knowledge as a journalist. You want to improve your work by branching out. A natural place for me to arrive at was The Guardian. It so happened that during my time at the Voice, I had come into contact with journalists from the Guardian while reporting in South Africa just after Nelson Mandela was released. I kept in contact and in 1992 I wrote to ask if there was any work going at the Guardian. They asked me to come in for a couple of weeks to see what happens. Thirty-two years later I am still here.

I was very lucky. At the time, the second section, known as G2, was just about to launch. There were a lot of things happening and people needed extra help, so that was the environment that I started in. Journalism is constantly changing. There are always things happening: new launches, changes in restructuring, changes in how we report, websites, and all these things that have developed massively since I started. There are always things happening that are creating opportunities. We always hear stories about how difficult it is to get into journalism, so knowing that the sector is constantly evolving is helpful.

You speak of the constant changes in journalism. What advice would you give to someone who wants to follow a similar career path as you, especially as novel advancements infiltrate the sector?

As I am a traditional journalist, I still believe in getting the stories. That’s a starting point. This is why I don’t think AI will ever take over in the sector. It may be able to have some influence over how pieces are written, but to me, the actual writing of the story isn’t the most important thing. It’s the telling of the story that’s most important. It’s about being there and knowing what is happening and digging out information. That’s the skill of a journalist.

I’ve worked for all sorts of brilliant journalists, some of whom have atrocious writing skills. They’re award-winning journalists, but their writing is atrocious. However, it doesn’t matter because they’re digging out stories. They’re finding stories, they’re getting details, and they’re bringing to light new issues that we would never have known about otherwise. That is what journalism is all about.

Sure, AI can help with grammar, but the actual uncovering and digging out stories won’t happen. Having opinions that are valued based on your life experiences won’t be there. People don’t trust others by their writing. People trust others based on their very human opinions and judgements. People trust each other based on their lived experiences that AI nor any other technologies can mimic. That’s what matters. The question of AI within journalism is a bit of a distraction from the truth: that journalism isn’t just about writing.

What about the industry do you not like?

It struck me when I left the Black press to work for The Guardian just how un-diverse and exclusive the industry traditionally has been. A lot has happened at the Guardian over the years. It’s a far more inclusive environment now with much more diversity at all levels. When I started, the Guardian was overwhelmingly white, male, upper-class, Oxbridge. That has changed now. Yet, I don’t look at the rest of the media and see the same changes.

Just a couple of years ago the director of the Society of Editors said that there was no racism in the British press right after Meghan and Harry did their interview. That was a ridiculous thing to say and it shows how out of touch this organisation which represents British newspaper editors can be. In other organisations, there’s a lot of superficial change. I’m talking in terms of race and racism and people of colour, but the same thing goes for the many years it took for women to even have a stake in the British press. The same goes for working-class people and disabled people who are vastly underrepresented. What I don’t like about the British press is its historic exclusion. We are trying to chip away at it now, but it thinks in a very traditional way.

What sort of things do you wish you had done differently while breaking into the industry?

One thing I haven’t mentioned is that when I left the Voice newspaper, I had left to set up another newspaper called Black Britain. It survived for a year before it went under. My dream was always to run a Black newspaper. If I were to change anything, it would be that my newspaper would be more successful, make more money, and that it would have been able to expand over time. That’s the one thing I would change.

There are always opportunities that we look at and think we may have missed. All I can say is that where I am now, directing diversity and inclusion as well as heading this amazing project at The Guardian, gives me two things that I am incredibly pleased to be doing now.

IMAGE BY KE ATLAS, COURTESY OF UNSPLASH.