Frontline Club
Encyclopedia
Paddington station
Paddington railway station, also known as London Paddington, is a central London railway terminus and London Underground complex.The site is a historic one, having served as the London terminus of the Great Western Railway and its successors since 1838. Much of the current mainline station dates...
. With a strong emphasis on conflict reporting, it aims to champion independent journalism
Journalism
Journalism is the practice of investigation and reporting of events, issues and trends to a broad audience in a timely fashion. Though there are many variations of journalism, the ideal is to inform the intended audience. Along with covering organizations and institutions such as government and...
, provide an effective platform from which to support diversity and professionalism in the media, promote safe practice, and encourage both freedom of the press
Freedom of the press
Freedom of the press or freedom of the media is the freedom of communication and expression through vehicles including various electronic media and published materials...
and freedom of expression worldwide.
Since opening its doors in 2003, Frontline Club has hosted over 1,200 events. Its founders do not receive wages and the events programme is almost self-sustaining, mainly from membership fees and ticket income.
Discussions, held most weekday evenings, are broadcast live via the club's Livestream page. Past participants include John Simpson, Robert Fisk
Robert Fisk
Robert Fisk is an English writer and journalist from Maidstone, Kent. As Middle East correspondent of The Independent, he has primarily been based in Beirut for more than 30 years. He has published a number of books and has reported on the United States's war in Afghanistan and the same country's...
, Jeremy Paxman
Jeremy Paxman
Jeremy Dickson Paxman is a British journalist, author and television presenter. He has worked for the BBC since 1977. He is noted for a forthright and abrasive interviewing style, particularly when interrogating politicians...
, Tim Hetherington
Tim Hetherington
Timothy Alistair Telemachus Hetherington was a British-American photojournalistwith work that "ranged from multi-screen installations, to fly-poster exhibitions, to handheld device downloads." He was best known for the documentary film Restrepo , which he co-directed with Sebastian Junger; the...
, Nick Robinson
Nick Robinson
Nicholas Anthony "Nick" Robinson is a British journalist and political editor for the BBC. Robinson was interested in politics from a young age, and went on to study a Philosophy, Politics, and Economics degree at Oxford University, where he was also President of the Oxford University Conservative...
, David Aaronovitch
David Aaronovitch
David Aaronovitch is a British author, broadcaster, and journalist. He is a regular columnist for The Times, and author of Paddling to Jerusalem: An Aquatic Tour of Our Small Country and Voodoo Histories: the role of Conspiracy Theory in Modern History...
, Alan Rusbridger
Alan Rusbridger
Alan Charles Rusbridger is the editor of the British newspaper The Guardian. He has also been a reporter and a columnist.-Early life:...
, Jeremy Bowen
Jeremy Bowen
Jeremy Francis John Bowen is a Welsh journalist and television presenter. He was the BBC's Middle East correspondent based in Jerusalem between 1995 and 2000, and has been its Middle East Editor since 2005.-Background:...
, Louis Theroux
Louis Theroux
Louis Sebastian Theroux is an English broadcaster best known for his Gonzo style journalism on the television series Louis Theroux's Weird Weekends and When Louis Met.... His career started off in journalism and bears influences of notable writers in his family such as his father, Paul Theroux and...
, Gillian Tett
Gillian Tett
Gillian Tett is a British author and award-winning journalist at the Financial Times, where she is the US managing editor She has written about the financial instruments that were part of the cause of the financial crisis that started in the fourth quarter of 2007, such as CDOs, credit default...
, Christina Lamb
Christina Lamb
Christina Lamb is a British journalist who is currently Foreign Correspondent for The Sunday Times. She was educated at University College, Oxford and was a Nieman Fellow at Harvard University. She is a Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society...
, Julian Assange
Julian Assange
Julian Paul Assange is an Australian publisher, journalist, writer, computer programmer and Internet activist. He is the editor in chief of WikiLeaks, a whistleblower website and conduit for worldwide news leaks with the stated purpose of creating open governments.WikiLeaks has published material...
, the late Benazir Bhutto
Benazir Bhutto
Benazir Bhutto was a democratic socialist who served as the 11th Prime Minister of Pakistan in two non-consecutive terms from 1988 until 1990 and 1993 until 1996....
, Boris Berezovsky, the late Alexander Litvinenko
Alexander Litvinenko
Alexander Valterovich Litvinenko was an officer who served in the Soviet KGB and its Russian successor, the Federal Security Service ....
, and his widow, Marina Litvinenko.
The building includes a restaurant open to non-members, a club room, meeting rooms, two lodging rooms and a discussion forum. The club also hosts film and documentary screenings and organizes training and workshops in such skills as camera operation
Documentary film
Documentary films constitute a broad category of nonfictional motion pictures intended to document some aspect of reality, primarily for the purposes of instruction or maintaining a historical record...
and film editing
Film editing
Film editing is part of the creative post-production process of filmmaking. It involves the selection and combining of shots into sequences, and ultimately creating a finished motion picture. It is an art of storytelling...
. It is a registered charity
Charitable organization
A charitable organization is a type of non-profit organization . It differs from other types of NPOs in that it centers on philanthropic goals A charitable organization is a type of non-profit organization (NPO). It differs from other types of NPOs in that it centers on philanthropic goals A...
.
In May 2011, award-winning broadcaster Louis Theroux
Louis Theroux
Louis Sebastian Theroux is an English broadcaster best known for his Gonzo style journalism on the television series Louis Theroux's Weird Weekends and When Louis Met.... His career started off in journalism and bears influences of notable writers in his family such as his father, Paul Theroux and...
said in an interview with the Evening Standard
Evening Standard
The Evening Standard, now styled the London Evening Standard, is a free local daily newspaper, published Monday–Friday in tabloid format in London. It is the dominant regional evening paper for London and the surrounding area, with coverage of national and international news and City of London...
that the Frontline Club was his favorite London club.
History
It specialized in war reporting for television. Vaughan Smith
Vaughan Smith
During the 90s Smith also ran Frontline News TV, an agency set up in 1989 to represent the interests of young video journalists who wanted to push the envelope of their profession. The workings of Frontline News TV captured the imagination of a generation of young freelancers and was described by...
, one of two surviving founders of Frontline News TV, turned the operation into a club, offering a meeting place for those who believe in independent journalism, as well as to honour dead colleagues. It also aims to lobby for better support for the freelance journalistic community.
The clubroom has a display of relics drawn from the history of war reporting since the Crimean war
Crimean War
The Crimean War was a conflict fought between the Russian Empire and an alliance of the French Empire, the British Empire, the Ottoman Empire, and the Kingdom of Sardinia. The war was part of a long-running contest between the major European powers for influence over territories of the declining...
, including the boots of The Times
The Times
The Times is a British daily national newspaper, first published in London in 1785 under the title The Daily Universal Register . The Times and its sister paper The Sunday Times are published by Times Newspapers Limited, a subsidiary since 1981 of News International...
correspondent William Howard Russell
William Howard Russell
William Howard Russell was an Irish reporter with The Times, and is considered to have been one of the first modern war correspondents, after he spent 22 months covering the Crimean War including the Charge of the Light Brigade.-Career:As a young reporter, Russell reported on a brief military...
. Other cabinets show personal items, some with shell still embedded, that have stopped a bullet and saved a journalist's life. The walls of the Frontline Club display examples of war photography and artwork.
In December 2010 Vaughan Smith, the owner of the Frontline Club, offered Julian Assange
Julian Assange
Julian Paul Assange is an Australian publisher, journalist, writer, computer programmer and Internet activist. He is the editor in chief of WikiLeaks, a whistleblower website and conduit for worldwide news leaks with the stated purpose of creating open governments.WikiLeaks has published material...
of Wikileaks
Wikileaks
WikiLeaks is an international self-described not-for-profit organisation that publishes submissions of private, secret, and classified media from anonymous news sources, news leaks, and whistleblowers. Its website, launched in 2006 under The Sunshine Press organisation, claimed a database of more...
his private home in Norfolk as an address for bail. Assange had been staying at the club for two months.
External links
- Frontline Club website
- Frontline Club social network
- New York Times on the Frontline Club
- http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/life_and_style/food_and_drink/giles_coren/article2133749.eceFrontline Club restaurant Giles CorenGiles CorenGiles Coren is a British food critic, television presenter and novelist. He is known for expressing controversial opinions, and for his television appearances with the comedian Sue Perkins.-Personal:...
's review in The Times]