Phil Wisdom

In a society which is, more than ever, slow to praise and swift to blame, and when the media - even weekly newspapers in deepest Cornwall - are widely regarded as the willing tools of a right-wing/left-wing (delete as appropriate) conspiracy to undermine freedom and civilisation it would be unfair to condemn Phil's work as without merit simply because, in the six years he's been producing his column for the Cornish Guardian, only 11 people have ever said they liked something he'd written, one of whom was his mum. It's more significant that no one has ever said they didn't; few journalists today, however blameless and sincere, are likely to escape unreasonable censure especially when, as in Phil's case, their brief is simply to knock out 500 words about whatever happens to come into their head.

His primary motivation has always been to entertain, often seeking to find an oblique angle on events west of the Tamar, be it the furore over an elected mayor for Cornwall or someone selling a rodent taxidermy kit on Facebook Marketplace; nor is he above turning out short fiction if it serves his satirical purpose. Over the past year and more, however, Phil has also used his platform to highlight news stories from the local area which haven't received the exposure or the critical analysis they deserved. These have included a forensic examination of the business case (or rather the lack of one) for sinking millions of pounds of public money into building a spaceport for the sole benefit of the privately owned Virgin Orbit satellite launch company and a report on a Cornish parish council's discovery that tonnes of raw sewage were being pumped into their river when it hadn't been raining - something the water company had repeatedly denied - which was published several months before the BBC made headlines with the similar findings of its own inquiry. Though it's becoming ever clearer that reports of newspapers' death have been wildly exaggerated - certainly in the far West - the investment which would enable their owners to capitalise on the enduring popularity of print remains elusive, and so there's merit in anything which adds value to a product people are expected to pay for. Content which goes online is, with very few exceptions, of a type which is known to get views, but what that strategy precludes is the possibility of the reader stumbling on something surprising. One thing readers of the Cornish Guardian can be guaranteed each week is that what they discover in the middle column on page 21 will be something they definitely weren't expecting, and that they won't read anywhere else.