Alan Rusbridger

Rusbridger was born in Lusaka,[2] Northern Rhodesia, a protectorate (now Zambia), the son of B. E. (née Wickham) and G. H. Rusbridger, the Director of Education of Northern Rhodesia. When Rusbridger was five, the family returned to Britain[2] and he was educated at Lanesborough Prep School, Guildford, where he was also a chorister at Christ Church, and Cranleigh School, a boys' independent school in Surrey. At Magdalene College, Cambridge, he read English Literature. During the vacations of his first two years at university, he worked for the Cambridge Evening News as an intern, and accepted a job offer from the newspaper after graduation. He stayed with the Evening News until 1979.[2]

He then joined The Guardian as a reporter, and subsequently wrote the paper's diary column and later became a feature writer. In November 1985, Rusbridger had a brief stint as a Royal reporter following the Prince and Princess of Wales around Melbourne, Australia. Fascinated by gadgets, at this stage he was already using a Tandy word processor and an early (slow) modem to file stories back to London.[7] He left in 1986 to become TV critic of The Observer, then an entirely separate newspaper, before moving to America to be the Washington editor of the short-lived London Daily News in 1987.[8]

After returning to The Guardian, he launched the "Weekend" supplement in 1988, followed by the paper's "G2" section. He became features editor in 1994.[9]

Rusbridger was appointed as the editor of The Guardian by the Scott Trust in late January 1995 after a decisive vote of the National Union of Journalists chapel, management and trustees in an electoral college.[10]

As editor, he defended the paper against a number of high-profile defamation suits, including those from the Police Federation and the Conservative MPs, Neil Hamilton and Jonathan Aitken. In the case involving Hamilton, and the lobbyist Ian Greer, he said: "They weren’t going to fight us in the court so they tried to do it through the TV studio." Rusbridger countered them by being available for TV interviews over three days to ensure that their version of events did not gain precedence.[9] Hamilton's case collapsed shortly before a court hearing, while Aitken was demonstrated to have perjured himself, and served a prison sentence as a result.[11]

Seen early in his editorship as a modernising new broom, he commented in June 1997 shortly after the election of Tony Blair's first New Labour government that the "old" Guardian: "opposed lots of things the Tories did which we'd now think weren't terribly bad in retrospect ... I mean, a lot of the trade union stuff doesn't seem as horrendous now as it seemed at the time."[12] From around 1997, he oversaw the launch and development of the newspaper's website,[13] initially known as Guardian Unlimited.[14]

In September 2005 The Guardian responded to the tabloid re-launches of The Times and The Independent by moving from a broadsheet format to the "Berliner" format, which is common in the rest of Europe. The print edition of the newspaper still accounted for about 75% of the company's revenue around 2012. In a profile of Rusbridger though, published in the New Statesman at the end of May 2012, former newspaper editor Peter Wilby cast doubt on whether Rusbridger's enthusiasm for online journalism, freely available without a paywall, and the large amount of money invested by the group, would ever gain a return or ensure the long-term survival of the newspaper.[13]

Until May 2016,[15] he was a member of the board of Guardian News and Media, of the main board of the Guardian Media Group and of the Scott Trust, which owns The Guardian and The Observer, of which he was executive editor. Rusbridger received £471,000 in pay and benefits in 2008–9,[16] but then volunteered to a series of pay cuts, bringing his revenue to £395,000 in fiscal year 2012.[2]

As editor-in-chief, in August 2013 Rusbridger took the decision to destroy hard drives containing information leaked to The Guardian by Edward Snowden, rather than comply with a government demand to hand over the data. An alternative action was agreed and in the presence of the authorities the drives were destroyed, Rusbridger described performing the task as "slightly pointless". "Given that there were other copies, I saw no reason not to destroy this material ourselves."[17]

On 3 December 2013 Rusbridger gave evidence before a Home Affairs Select Committee hearing on counterterrorism at the UK Parliament with regard to the publication of information leaked by Snowden.[18]

In the film The Fifth Estate (2013), about The Guardian's former association with the WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, Rusbridger was portrayed by Peter Capaldi.[19]

In December 2014, Rusbridger announced he would step down as editor of The Guardian in the summer of 2015.[20] On 20 March 2015, The Guardian announced Katharine Viner as Rusbridger's successor.[4]

Rusbridger was to have succeeded Dame Liz Forgan as chair of the Scott Trust in September 2016,[21][22] but announced on 13 May 2016 that he would not take up the post.[15] The expansion in the later years of Rusbridger's editorship led to unsustainable losses and several hundred job cuts were planned. According to a report in The Times in April 2016, staff were opposed to Rusbridger returning.[23] Viner and chief executive David Pemsel were also opposed to Rusbridger becoming Chair of the Scott Trust.[24]

On 17 December 2014, a week after it was published that Rusbridger was stepping down as editor of The Guardian, news was announced that Rusbridger had been elected Principal of Lady Margaret Hall, a constituent college of Oxford University.[25]

He is visiting Fellow of Nuffield College, Oxford, and Visiting Professor of History at Queen Mary, University of London. Between 2004 and 2013 he was Chair of the National Youth Orchestra of Great Britain.[26] He is a governor of the Ditchley Foundation,[27] an organisation which exists to promote international relations, and 10:10, a British climate change campaign for a 10% reduction in carbon emissions in 2010.[28]

He is an amateur pianist and performed Chopin's Ballade No. 1 for More4 in "Rusbridger vs Chopin", where he speaks about the difficulties of taking on a piece considered by many professional pianists as daunting.[29]

Rusbridger appears in the 2016 film Snowden, with a cameo role as a meeting moderator.[30]

He has written three children's books, as well as being the co-author (with Ronan Bennett) of a BBC drama, Fields of Gold.

In 2014, he received the Special Award from the European Press Prize for his leading role in the NSA revelations.[31] In 2020, he joined its panel of judges.

In 1982, he married the educationalist Lindsay, daughter of the politician and farmer George Mackie, Baron Mackie of Benshie.[32][33] She helped found the educational charity FILMCLUB. They have two daughters (born 1983 and May 1986). His daughter Isabella Rusbridger is a journalist, known professionally as "Bella Mackie" to distinguish herself from her father. She is married to BBC Radio 1 presenter Greg James.[34]

Rusbridger received an Honorary Doctorate of Letters from the University of Lincoln in September 2009,[35] from the University of Kingston in January 2010[36] and from the University of Oslo in September 2014.[37]

In 2010 he was chosen to deliver the annual Andrew Olle Media Lecture in Australia.

He was one of the 2014 recipients of the Right Livelihood Award.