Janice Turner

Last updated

Janice Turner
Born (1964-04-08) 8 April 1964 (age 59) [1]
Education Ridgewood School
Alma mater University of Sussex
OccupationJournalist
Known forColumnist and feature writer for The Times
Spouse
(m. 1995)
Relatives Peter Preston (father-in-law)

Janice Turner (born 8 April 1964 [2] ) is a British journalist, and a columnist and feature writer for The Times .

Contents

Early life

Turner was born in Wakefield, West Yorkshire. [3] She went to Ridgewood School [4] in the north of Doncaster. She attended the University of Sussex, where she spent a year as an elected Student Union Officer and edited the Unionews magazine.

Career

Before taking up her present post at The Times , Turner was a magazine editor for several women's titles, launching That's Life and Real. She left to write occasional columns for The Guardian and wrote a column about magazines for the Press Gazette .

Accolades

Turner won Interviewer of the Year in the 2014 and 2019 British Press Awards. She was shortlisted for best columnist in 2005, [5] 2007, [6] and 2008, [7] 2016 (highly commended), 2017, 2018 and 2019. She was shortlisted for best interviewer in 2006 and 2017. [8] She was short-listed for the 2017 Orwell Prize.[ citation needed ] Turner won the 2020 Orwell Prize for Journalism. [9] She won "Interviewer of the Year – Broadsheet" at the 2020 Press Awards. [10] She won Comment Journalist of the Year at the 2018 British Journalism Awards.

In 2016, Turner won the award "A Woman's Voice" in the Editorial Intelligence awards which she declined with the following statement: [11]

'Man is defined as a human being and a woman as a female.' Simone de Beauvoir wrote those words in 1949. And in journalism, they are still true. Marina, Rosamund, Mary and I have written about elections, war, Brexit, celebrity, poverty, refugees, sport... But whatever women columnists write, and however well we write it, our words are heard only in a minor key. A woman's voice. I would be letting down the many talented female human beings on British newspapers if I accepted this award.

Writing about transgender people

Turner is known for her columns about transgender people, [12] including "Children sacrificed to appease trans lobby", [13] "The battle over gender has turned bloody", [14] and "Trans rapists are a danger in women’s jails". [15] Helen Belcher, co-founder of Trans Media Watch, condemned Turner's columns, arguing that Turner painted trans people as "dangerous sex offenders" and claimed that the Times columns such as Turner's would lead to trans teen suicides. [16] [17] [18] Turner condemned Belcher's comments, [19] calling them "ghastly" and "libelous". [16] The Times defended Turner, writing that "Concerns of biological women must not be silenced". [20]

In 2019, Turner tweeted that trans model and activist Munroe Bergdorf was unfit to be an ambassador for Childline because Bergdorf was a "porn model" who had posed for Playboy . Bergdorf denied ever participating in porn, and stated that it was wrong to demonize persons that do in any case. NSPCC, the owner of Childline, cut ties with Bergdorf due to the controversy. [21]

Personal life

Turner married Ben Preston, executive editor of The Sunday Times , a former editor of the Radio Times , and a former deputy editor of The Times , [22] and the son of Peter Preston, in 1995. The couple have two sons. She lives in Camberwell, South London.

Related Research Articles

<i>The Observer</i> British weekly newspaper

The Observer is a British newspaper published on Sundays. It is a sister paper to The Guardian and The Guardian Weekly, having been acquired by their parent company, Guardian Media Group Limited, in 1993. First published in 1791, it is the world's oldest Sunday newspaper.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Andrew Gilligan</span> British journalist and radio presenter (born 1968)

Andrew Paul Gilligan is a British policy adviser, and former transport adviser to Boris Johnson both as Mayor of London and as Prime Minister. Until July 2019, he was senior correspondent of The Sunday Times and had also served as head of the Capital City Foundation at Policy Exchange. Between 2013 and 2016 he also worked as the Mayor's cycling commissioner for London, and in 2020 he was an appointee of Central Government to TfL's Board. He is best known for a 2003 report on BBC Radio 4's Today programme in which he described a British government briefing paper on Iraq and weapons of mass destruction as having been "transformed in the week before it was published to make it sexier". This change became widely known, in the words of newspaper headlines about the story, as being "sexed up".

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Jonathan Freedland</span> British journalist (born 1967)

Jonathan Saul Freedland is a British journalist who writes a weekly column for the Guardian. He presents BBC Radio 4's contemporary history series The Long View. Freedland also writes thrillers, mainly under the pseudonym Sam Bourne, and has written a play, Jews. In Their Own Words, performed in 2022 at the Royal Court Theatre, London.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Nick Cohen</span> British journalist

Nicholas Cohen is a British journalist, author and political commentator. He was a columnist for The Observer and is a blogger for The Spectator. Following accusations of sexual harassment, he left The Observer in 2022 and began publishing on the Substack platform.

Catherine Dorothea Bennett is a British journalist.

The Orwell Prize is a British prize for political writing. The Prize is awarded by The Orwell Foundation, an independent charity governed by a board of trustees. Four prizes are awarded each year: one each for a fiction and non-fiction book on politics, one for journalism and one for "Exposing Britain's Social Evils" ; between 2009 and 2012, a fifth prize was awarded for blogging. In each case, the winner is the short-listed entry which comes closest to George Orwell's own ambition to "make political writing into an art".

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Marina Hyde</span> British journalist

Marina Hyde is an English journalist. She joined The Guardian newspaper in 2000 and, as one of the newspaper's columnists, writes three articles each week on current affairs, celebrity, and sport.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Christina Lamb</span> British journalist and author

Christina Lamb OBE is a British journalist and author. She is the chief foreign correspondent of The Sunday Times.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Johann Hari</span> British-Swiss journalist

Johann Eduard Hari is a British-Swiss writer and journalist who wrote for The Independent and The Huffington Post. In 2011, Hari was suspended from The Independent and later resigned, after admitting to plagiarism and fabrications dating back to 2001 and making malicious edits to the Wikipedia pages of journalists who had criticised his conduct. He has since written books on the topics of depression, the war on drugs, and the effect of technology on attention spans.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Carole Cadwalladr</span> British investigative journalist

Carole Jane Cadwalladr is a British author, investigative journalist and features writer. She is a features writer for The Observer and formerly worked at The Daily Telegraph. Cadwalladr rose to international prominence in 2018 for her role in exposing the Facebook–Cambridge Analytica data scandal for which she was a finalist for the 2019 Pulitzer Prize for National Reporting, alongside The New York Times reporters.

1843 is a digital magazine published by The Economist which features longform narrative journalism as well as shorter reads and columns. Named after the year The Economist was founded, 1843 offers a complementary perspective to its sister publication, focusing more on narrative, rather than analysis. Like The Economist, 1843 is based in London and has a global readership. Like the newspaper, the magazine is owned by The Economist Group, a British media holding company.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Jenni Russell</span> British journalist and broadcaster (born 1960)

Jenni Cecily Russell is a British journalist and broadcaster. She is a columnist for The Times, a contributing writer for The New York Times, and a book reviewer for The Sunday Times. She has been a columnist for The Guardian and written the political column for London Evening Standard.

<i>i</i> (newspaper) British daily newspaper

The i is a British national newspaper published in London by Daily Mail and General Trust and distributed across the United Kingdom. It is aimed at "readers and lapsed readers" of all ages and commuters with limited time, and was originally launched in 2010 as a sister paper to The Independent. It was later acquired by Johnston Press in 2016 after The Independent shifted to a digital-only model. The i came under the control of JPIMedia a day after Johnston Press filed for administration on 16 November 2018. The paper and its website were bought by the Daily Mail and General Trust (DMGT) on 29 November 2019, for £49.6 million. On 6 December 2019 the Competition and Markets Authority served an initial enforcement order on DMGT and DMG Media Limited, requiring the paper to be run separately pending investigation.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Dawn Foster</span> Irish-Welsh journalist (1986–2021)

Dawn Hayley Foster was an Irish-British journalist, broadcaster, and author writing predominantly on social affairs, politics, economics and women's rights. Foster held staff writer positions at Inside Housing, The Guardian, and Jacobin magazine, and contributed to other journals such as The Independent, The New York Times, Tribune, and Dissent. She regularly appeared as a political commentator on television and was known for her coverage of the Grenfell Tower fire.

Nesrine Malik is a Sudanese-born journalist and author of We Need New Stories: Challenging the Toxic Myths Behind Our Age of Discontent. Based in London, Malik is a columnist for The Guardian and served as a panellist on the BBC's weekly news discussion programme Dateline London.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Munroe Bergdorf</span> British model and activist

Munroe Bergdorf is an English model and activist. She has walked several catwalks for brands including Gypsy Sport at both London and NYC Fashion Weeks. Bergdorf was the first transgender model in the UK for L'Oréal, but was dropped within weeks after a racial row. In February 2018, she was appointed as an LGBT adviser to the Labour Party, but resigned the following month. Bergdorf appeared in the Channel 4 documentary What Makes a Woman, which aired in May 2018.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Shon Faye</span> British writer and activist (born 1988)

Shon Faye is an English writer, editor, journalist, and presenter, known for her commentary on LGBTQ+, women's, and mental health issues. She hosts the podcast Call Me Mother and is the author of the 2021 book The Transgender Issue: An Argument for Justice. She was an editor-at-large at Dazed and has contributed features and comment journalism to The Guardian, The Independent, VICE, n+1, Attitude, Vogue, Verso and others.

Helen Clare Belcher is a British transgender activist and Liberal Democrat politician. She has been featured in The Independent on Sunday’s Rainbow List for her work on LGBT issues, particularly those affecting the trans community. In 2010 she co-founded Trans Media Watch, a trans-awareness charity for which she appeared on Newsnight. Belcher is a Wiltshire Councillor and stood unsuccessfully for Parliament in Chippenham at the 2017 and 2019 general elections.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Tortoise Media</span> British news website

Tortoise Media is a British news website co-founded by former BBC News director and The Times editor James Harding. It went live in April 2019 and is complemented by a weekly newsletter and a variety of podcasts, such as "Tortoise Daily." Tortoise Media has covered a range of topics, including artificial intelligence, climate change, political turmoil, populism, and the future of work. The company employs over 50 journalists, producers, and editors.

Sarah Ditum is an English opinion columnist and freelance writer whose work has appeared in publications including The Guardian, New Statesman, The Times, and UnHerd. She is based in Bath. Ditum's writing has covered issues including violence against women, gender identity, parenting, British parliamentary politics and cancel culture. She also writes regular book reviews. In 2021, Fleet acquired Ditum's book Upskirt Decade: Women, Fame and The Noughties, which is scheduled to be released in 2023.

References

  1. "Janice Smith TURNER personal appointments - Find and update company information - GOV.UK".
  2. Turner, Janice [@VictoriaPeckham] (8 April 2022). "I have never once shared my Wordle bollocks, but it's my birthday and I had a mare" (Tweet). Retrieved 12 April 2022 via Twitter.
  3. "Regeneration in the newspapers: Fast train set to pull in new business" . Retrieved 7 January 2018.
  4. Turner, Janice. "Can you succeed if you go to a comp?". The Times. Retrieved 7 January 2018.
  5. "British Press Awards - first shortlists". Press Gazette. 11 February 2005. Archived from the original on 10 September 2012. Retrieved 19 September 2018 via archive.is. Janice Turner, The Times
  6. "US". The Independent. Retrieved 7 January 2018.[ dead link ]
  7. "British Press Awards nominees". The Guardian. 4 March 2008. Retrieved 7 January 2018.
  8. Busfield, Steve (20 March 2006). "British Press Awards as they happened ..." The Guardian. Retrieved 7 January 2018.
  9. "Janice Turner". The Orwell Foundation. 9 April 2020.
  10. Tobitt, Charlotte (3 April 2020). "Press Awards reveal winners despite cancelling ceremony over Covid-19". Press Gazette.
  11. "Women's journalism prize is more desperation than balance". TheGuardian.com . 27 November 2016. Retrieved 25 December 2019.
  12. Mayhew, Freddy (11 December 2018). "Buzzfeed's LGBT editor worried by transgender media coverage as Times columnist Janice Turner urges free debate on issue". Press Gazette. Retrieved 4 March 2019.
  13. Turner, Janice (11 November 2017). "Children sacrificed to appease trans lobby". The Times. Retrieved 19 January 2022.
  14. Turner, Janice (16 September 2017). "The battle over gender has turned bloody". The Times. Retrieved 19 January 2022.
  15. Turner, Janice (8 September 2018). "Trans rapists are a danger in women's jails". The Times. Retrieved 19 January 2022.
  16. 1 2 Tobitt, Charlotte (22 October 2018). "Times withdraws from comment awards over treatment of columnists as it defends 'diversity of opinion'". Press Gazette. Retrieved 4 March 2019.
  17. PA Medialawyer; Press Gazette (26 April 2019). "Activist loses IPSO complaint against Janice Turner column in Times about trans suicides". Press Gazette. Retrieved 28 June 2019.
  18. "07454-18 Belcher v The Times". Independent Press Standards Organisation. Retrieved 15 October 2019.
  19. Turner, Janice (20 October 2018). "Suicides should never be a political weapon". The Times. Retrieved 19 January 2022.
  20. Tobitt, Charlotte (15 October 2018). "Comment awards organisers defend nomination of Times columnists after nominees and judge withdraw". Press Gazette. Retrieved 19 January 2022.
  21. Jones, Owen; Perraudin, Frances (11 June 2019). "NSPCC staff condemn decision to cut ties with trans activist". The Guardian. Retrieved 19 January 2022.
  22. Hodgson, Jessica (15 April 2002). "Turner leaves Real life behind". The Guardian. Retrieved 7 January 2018 via www.theguardian.com.