These are the same kind of people who begrudgingly voted Labour and now find Green Party leader Zack Polanski appealing.
Byline Times sits just outside the mainstream media with its roster made up of ex-insiders like Peter Oborne and press critics such as Mic Wright.
That vantage point is advantageous for critiquing Westminster’s many failings and offering its readers “what the papers don’t say” on topics such as the rise of the populist right and its connection to systemic problems like corruption and disinformation.
Coverage by new media ventures tells a story about their founding circumstances and their pre-history. The big targets for Byline Times are corrupt politicians, their billionaire backers, and the “courtier” journalists who serve them.
It’s tempting to see Byline Times as a Brexit-era start-up. But this is only one part of its story.
The origins of the project arguably date back to the phone hacking scandal that engulfed News International in 2011. The story was so big it brought down the News Of The World after more than 40 years of outrageous gutter journalism.
Playwright turned journalist Peter Jukes covered the 8-month trial of Andy Coulson and Rebekah Brooks on Twitter in 2013 through 2014.
Although preliminary steps for the creation of a crowdfunded journalism platform began in 2014, it wasn’t until Jukes and ex-Saatchi marketing executive Stephen Colegrave took over byline.com two years later that the project truly got off the ground. Byline Times Ltd. was founded in November 2018, a few months ahead of the publication’s launch.
Byline Times might never have existed without the phone hacking scandal. But it was the breakdown of the political centre and the rise of national populism that led to the publication’s current form.
The victory of the Brexit campaign in the 2016 referendum and the rise of Donald Trump intensified the need for new media. Britain’s crisis over the Brexit process played out over the next three years, just as Trump ran rampant.
Byline Times was anti-Tory, anti-Brexit and ran critical takes on Jeremy Corbyn’s handling of the political quagmire running up to the 2019 general election. By this time, the publication was well-equipped for the post-Brexit era.
The company had established its funding model. It expanded into running its own festival and the YouTube channel Byline TV. The years spent building an online following served the brand well during the transition to print.
It’s easy to forget now, but Boris Johnson appeared triumphant in 2019. Many people at the time were expecting another decade of Tory rule, powered by the slogans “get Brexit done” and “take back control”.
Then came COVID-19, completely derailing Johnson’s ambitions and reducing his government to erratic policymaking.
Byline Times spent the first part of the pandemic scrutinising the government’s initial approach to “herd immunity”, favouring few restrictions.
Once Johnson decided to back lockdowns, Byline Times pivoted to reporting critical of the government for awarding lucrative contracts to companies with political connections.
Russia’s invasion of Ukraine offered another crucial topic for Byline Times during the Johnson era. Veteran broadcast journalist John Sweeney began reporting from the country facing destruction by Vladimir Putin.
It’s no coincidence that the war has been so important for the publication. The Ukrainian cause overlaps with the Remain base in its Europeanism and preference for liberal governance and the rule of law.
The presence of conservative journalist Peter Oborne at the magazine is significant. Once political editor at The Telegraph, Oborne is now more at home in liberal and even leftist circles than at any right-wing newspaper, least of all his former employer.
Such newspapers are no longer truly conservative, in Oborne’s view, and have adopted a much more extreme agenda to remake Britain. He feels the same about the Conservative Party and its would-be successor, Reform UK.
This is why Byline Times publishes Oborne’s diary alongside the work of left-wing media critic Wright, former Green leader Caroline Lucas, and Anthony Barnett, the founder of openDemocracy.
Most of the publication’s staff writers once supported Labour, whether in the Corbyn era or earlier. But they have forsaken a self-image rooted in the past in favour of a ruthless critique of what the party has become.
It was no surprise that Editor-in-Chief Hardeep Matharu and Jukes ran an interview with Zack Polanski in the publication’s February edition. The Polanski coalition has brought together recovering Corbynistas and the soft left to target disenchanted Labour voters.
When the Labour Party finally returned to power in 2024 – after 14 long, painful years – the publication could easily have become an apologist for the new regime. The temptation to defend Keir Starmer rather than hold him accountable is very strong in the beleaguered liberal corner of the British mediascape.
Instead, Byline Times has taken Starmer to task for building a coalition against his own government, taking an authoritarian approach to his party’s left wing and trying to buy off racist demands by aping Reform UK.
The publication dedicated its March cover story to the Mandelson-Epstein scandal. The feature drew the connections—overlooked by the rest of the media—between Jeffrey Epstein and Brexit through his dealings with Steve Bannon and Peter Mandelson.
This story followed months of work going through the Epstein files. Byline Times broke the story that Epstein talked strategy with Bannon ahead of the 2019 European elections, in which the populist right did very well.
Most outlets ignored the underlying political implications of the disclosure in favour of exploitative, sensationalist angles. Few publications are interested in why Epstein was able to mingle with the likes of Bill Clinton and Mandelson, as well as Trump and Bannon.
Byline Times is different.
Most journalists want to see themselves as crusaders taking on the rich and the powerful, but the vast majority never do. To the publication’s credit, its contributors walk the walk.
In the years since its founding, Byline Times has developed a prefigurative model for centre-left journalism outside the traditional press and its illusions.
The failings of the mainstream media, coupled with the breakdown of the centre ground and intense polarisation of British society, made this type of publication a necessity.
The liberal values of Byline Times were once middle-of-the-road. Now, its positions appear almost revolutionary in a world where a Donald Trump can do the unthinkable in full view of 24-hour news.
Somehow, support for the rule of law and respect for institutions has become a radical position. It’s encouraging that journalists who take this stunning transformation seriously have found a way to fight back.
Montage images courtesy of Byline Times. All rights reserved.
