On 22 September 1966, the launch issue of the world’s first weekly technology newspaper was published – today Computer Weekly is the UK’s oldest business IT title. What’s changed the most for you since then? Here, our award-winning chief reporter, Karl Flinders, looks at how he became the unlikeliest tech journalist he knows.
I am ashamed to say I once used a Sinclair ZX81 as a frisbee – but the British Computer Society gave me an award anyway.
When I tell people I don’t know much about computers they can’t fathom the idea. “But you write for Computer Weekly?”
The number of times I have tried to explain that I am a journalist who happens to write about the use of IT in business. I now just say Computer Weekly has got nothing to do with computers – obviously not true, but a handy line.
Back to the 1980s and the ZX81. A friend was given one but had grown tired of it after a couple of years of being underwhelmed – the games on a Commodore 64 had made it defunct to an early teen. I never had any sort of computer until 1998 but had used them through friends – although only once as a frisbee. It didn’t really work anyway – I doubt we would have attracted much seed funding.
Perhaps what I am saying is I never really had any interest in computers. I studied development geography at university, then went on to study journalism, before starting work writing about politics.
My first experience in IT journalism was through a reporter job at Computer Reseller News and my attraction to that was not the computers but the resellers, having worked at a magazine for office product resellers before that.
How much different could it be? Well, before the interview I had to ask a friend what ADSL meant. I hadn’t even used the internet much at that time in 1999.
Long story short, I ended up at Computer Weekly in 2007.
“I never really had any interest in computers… Somehow, I ended up helping expose one of the biggest miscarriages of justice in British history”
Karl Flinders, Computer Weekly
I have to admit I didn’t think I would still be here two decades later. I would surely move into something more glamorous – who knows, the next Watergate? (Laughing emoji would go here).
Somehow, I ended up mixed up in helping expose one of the biggest miscarriages of justice in British history. (Scratching head emoji).
Since 2010 I have been investigating and writing about the Post Office Horizon scandal. Today I have written almost 700 articles on the subject, 300 of which were before the ITV drama in January 2024 that made the scandal nationally famous.
I didn’t need to know much about how computers work to do this – other people have that knowledge that I can tap into.
Two of the highest points in my career came in courtrooms. I was shaking when in 2019 Alan Bates and the Justice for Subpostmastrers Alliance defeated the Post Office in the High Court. Then in 2021 it was pure joy to be with subpostmasters like Jo Hamilton, Scott Darlington, Janet Skinner, Seema Misra and others, when their wrongful convictions were quashed at the Royal Courts of Justice.
The scandal wasn’t to become truly mainstream for a couple more years through a TV drama, but these events led to the ITV production being made.
That brings me to my point. IT is mainstream today – IT companies are household names and IT disasters are mainstream news. I have been able to fulfil my journalistic ambitions at Computer Weekly, writing important articles that make a difference.
The rise of AI
Things are beginning to get even more interesting with the phenomenal rise of artificial intelligence (AI).
I was meeting friends at the pub the other day – on my way I walked past two separate groups having conversations about AI in the street and when I arrived at the pub my friends, all journalists, were talking about it. Usually, it’s about how long certain jobs will be available, including our own.
My kids are answering essay questions about AI, and their generation have a totally different view of it. Where my generation thinks of HAL refusing to open the pod bay door for Dave, they think how it can open doors for them through knowledge. Well -actually, I am probably a bit deluded on that.
But I have to talk about my reporting beats at Computer Weekly and the huge changes I have seen in the last two decades.
With no tech background but an understanding of the IT channel, outsourcing was a natural area for me to cover. My second beat, financial services IT, was more of a challenge, but in tech terms a rich area for big news.
Both sectors have completely transformed since I began writing about them. The IT outsourcing sector is difficult to define these days and the finance sector seems to have developed an entirely new sector of its own.
Outsourcing and fintech
If I take the former first, the IT outsourcing sector was all about “lift and shift” and offshoring – it was people intensive and largely about cutting costs.
Today, while it is still about cutting costs, it is about accessing tech capabilities impossible without partners. The digital revolution moves at such a pace that all but a few megacompanies can keep pace on their own.
Then in finance, the arrival of fintech has created a whole new global industry worth trillions of pounds. Governments are backing it like their Victorian predecessors bet on the industrial revolution. And today, with the right regulated cloud-based service, almost any business can be a financial services provider.
Who know what the next decade will bring? Maybe a robot journalist will be writing the equivalent of this in 2036.
