On Friday 1 March 2019, we celebrate one year since the launch of The Speaker.
A group of four Politics students – Nathan Shoesmith, George Bowman, Henry Earl and Emily Oxbury from Norwich, England – co-founded and launched The Speaker at speakerpolitics.co.uk on March 1, 2018. Launch day came after 2 months of extensive planning, designing and building of both the concept and the website of The Speaker.
It all began in January 2018, when the group was discussing the lack of media platforms designed for young people in the UK. The students felt that there was nothing out there making politics accessible or understandable for the wider public and so they quickly set to work on finding a solution to this problem. The group identified the need for impartial political news reporting and articles that just made sense. Keeping the facts and removing the jargon was to be key in making accessible content that would reach and be engaged with by the wider public. Designed and built by the co-founders themselves, The Speaker was born on March 1, 2018.
It was one very cold and snowy launch day amidst the Beast from the East that had landed in the UK. The weather though certainly did not freeze The Speaker. When launching the website, the group of students naturally hoped the website would receive a positive reaction. In a new age of politics, the group felt that a new resource was needed in order to try and keep on top of all the goings on off politics in the UK and beyond. However, the scale to which The Speaker quickly grew beat even the group’s most optimistic hopes and expectations.
What was becoming increasingly apparent was the public’s desire for an accessible news source that could be understood both quickly and easily. The Speaker was soon featured by local media, and then national education publications. The Speaker was being used not just by the general public to keep on top of the news, but also by students studying courses requiring knowledge of politics and current affairs.
As The Speaker grew its audience, so did its team. Today, The Speaker is run by over 30 volunteers from around the world, serving an ever-growing audience now in over 130 countries. Without this amazing team, the development of The Speaker up to today would never have been possible.
The Speaker was never set up with intentions to support a political cause or agenda. Politics has never been important, and therefore it is essential that we do everything we can to provide impartial, accessible and comprehendible resources to allow everyone to get involved and have their say. A year on, our core mission and objectives continue to remain the same and play a vital part in everything we do.
Overall, it has been one incredible year since the launch of The Speaker. As for explaining the events of politics, we think we’ll need another article…
Nathan Shoesmith
Managing Director of The Speaker
_thumbnail.png)
