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September 11, 2013

Christina Patterson on leaving The Independent: ‘We journalists always knew we’d lose our jobs’

By William Turvill

Journalist Christina Patterson has spoken out about losing her job earlier this year after a decade at The Independent.

Her redundancy came in the same year that she was shortlisted for the Orwell Prize for a series of articles about the NHS.

In a blog about the death of journalism, Patterson said that job losses are an inevitability but that her departure still came as a “shock”.

She wrote: “We journalists always knew we’d lose our jobs. We knew it in the way smokers know that sucking a little stick of tobacco gives you cancer. We knew it, but when it happens, it’s still a shock.

"For me, the week before it all blew up – and I think we can probably say that shouting at the editor so that he threatens to call security does count as 'blowing up' – I had been asked to address a seminar at the House of Commons and present a film for The One Show to coincide with the release of The Francis Report.

“One moment, I was being asked, by politicians, and TV presenters, and radio presenters, for my opinion on whatever I’d written about that morning. The next moment, I didn’t have a job."

She added: “The next moment – the next day, to be a little more precise – I was telling Harriet Harman, on the phone, while pacing round my study, that I’d been looking forward to doing the interview we’d fixed, for a series on 'women and power', but that it didn’t seem all that appropriate any more, since I didn’t have any power – and that my career as a journalist on a national newspaper seemed to have come to a sudden end.”

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In April 15 journalists left The Independent and Independent on Sunday as the two titles were merged. 

The Independent is currently in the process of making 27 further journalists redundant ahead of a planned comment-focused relaunch.

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