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Opinion

Penblwydd Hapus Nation.Cymru – a voice for all of Wales

26 May 2022 5 minute read
Image by PX41-Media from Pixabay

Jon Gower

If you look back at the past, say half century the history of the media is one of appearances and disappearances. There was Sulyn, the short-lived Welsh language Sunday newspaper, launched in 1982. It had a tabloid format and, almost to editor Eifion Glyn’s surprise, carried ‘showbiz’ stories about Welsh bands disbanding.

In independent broadcasting there is a ticker tape of companies that came and went, such as TWW (Television Wales and the West) and Harlech TV which changed its name to HTV with the advent of colour and also because it was considered too Welsh for some of its viewers. Flush with advertising money HTV built studios at Culverhouse Cross so impressive-looking that sending an annual company report with a photo of them on the cover helped secure an interview with Colonel Gaddafi in Libya, at a time when all other media outfits the world over were being scorned.

In the late 1980s there was the digital television service BBC Choice, with marvellous content from Wales chosen by editor Nick Evans which took risks, including a soap opera about vegetables, featuring actual vegetables which was painfully funny to watch. I seem to recall Nurse Carrot sharing a post-coital cigarette with a parsnip of a doctor. Or I may be hallucinating as I type.

In all these there was a feeling of can-do, of taking a risk where the presiding ethos was often that of D.I.Y and have-a-go. It’s the spirit that instigated superb investigative reporting in Rebecca magazine under Paddy French (indeed the first stand-alone investigative site in Britain) and brought Wales Arts Review into the world ten years ago or which saw, some years ago, Cardiff Radio make more hours of original drama than BBC Radio Wales in a portacabin off Cardiff’s Dumballs Road. It’s the same spirit which has animated recent media outlets such as Desolation Radio and the investigative energies of left wing voice.wales. And it’s the same spirit that animates Nation.Cymru, today celebrating five years of existence, during which it has grown from a pipe dream to a news service which regularly attracts 30,000+ visitors a day, which often adds up to a million visitors a month.

Vision

In a country which can still be a little lacking in the vision thing the fact that Ifan Morgan Jones and Mark Mansfield brought plucky Nation.Cymru into being is itself a curiosity. You will know Ifan as the hyper-knowledgeable politics geek who could give Vaughan Roderick and Richard Wyn Jones together a run for their money. Somehow in the interstices between being a father of four, having a full-time job at Bangor University and writing a small shelf’s worth of novels he found the time to team up with Mark.

Mark is best understood by watching any one of the X-Men films in which Professor X dons a metal helmet in the thought-amplifying device called Cerebro to connect with all the sentient beings in the known universes and meta-universes. The good professor then does things mere mortals can only barely comprehend.

Mark Mansfield is uncannily similar, and I, for one, have no idea how he manages to do what he achieves in any given day, although he himself freely references Sniffin’ Glue, the monthly punk magazine established in the mid 1970s as both a reference point and touch stone: it’s a ‘zine that pretty much defines that DIY ethos which also typifies the way Nation.Cymru operates. No office. No meetings. No communal coffee machine. In fact, unlike No. 10 Downing Street, we’ve never had a party, so perhaps reaching the five-year mark might change all of that. We might even have oodles of alcohol and even more remarkably admit to it afterwards.

Democratic deficit

So what are we celebrating? There’s certainly the contribution to collective attempts by all the Welsh media – from The National Wales to the Western Mail, from Planet through the I.W.A’s Agenda to Golwg – to address the democratic deficit, caused in part by people in Wales consuming media from London, which in turn determines the way they think, shop and vote. Consider, if you will, two salient facts. The Daily Mail has an average monthly reach of almost forty million readers. There are fewer than 70 million people living in the UK.  So that’s what we’re all up against.

Nation.Cymru’s other contributions have included nurturing a range of new writers and voices, veritably dozens of them and then, of course there are the scoops, the revitalizing life-blood of any media outfit. There’s the all-Wales coverage allowed by local democracy reporting and then there’s the cultural stuff to which I’m proud to contribute.

It’s an energetic, authoritative and non-partisan news service (whatever our agitated detractors think) which believes in Wales and in a better Wales at that. It’s tiny staff – now brilliantly augmented by the addition of features editor and doyen of the Welsh music scene David Owens – works incredibly hard to make Nation.Cymru happen and take its place among the multinationals and heavyweight broadcasters, the new, spirited start-ups and welter of bloggers all of whom help us understand the country and indeed the world in which we live.

I remember when Real Radio was launched in the Valleys an editor at BBC Wales didn’t want to carry the story because it would give the oxygen of publicity to a rival. I like to think that Nation.Cymru is happier to play its part in what Geraint Talfan Davies calls the ‘ecology of broadcasting’ and the various media activity in Wales and that it has cheerily planted its bright flag firmly on the media map of Wales. Here’s to its longevity, despite the chill economic winds that blow and all the myriad challenges we face. Penblwydd hapus, iawn, iawn, iawn.


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John
John
1 year ago

Diolch am gael ffynhonell gredadwy i drafod materion Cymreig – yn y ddwy iaith.

David Clubb
1 year ago

Couldn’t be happier for you guys. Been a proud financial backer for years. And three cheers to you giving great credit all round to the media scene, I think that shows your maturity and big-heartedness. We need more of that in Wales.

GW Atkinson
GW Atkinson
1 year ago

Nation Cymru has become my first port of call for news these days. It’s the only Welsh outlet I know of that doesn’t lick the boots of the English establishment. And that’s why i’m subscribed to it and have zero problems paying for it.

Steve George
Steve George
1 year ago

Happy birthday! You’re doing a great job. Keep it up.

Llyn expat
Llyn expat
1 year ago

More original writing and reportage please, and less “omg have you seen the awful thing this tabloid newspaper / Tory / Guardian columnist has said” please. There’s a tedious example of that genre up today.

Also is there a reason why so few articles have bylines?

Gareth
Gareth
1 year ago

Penblwydd hapus, a diolch yn fawr.

Alwyn
Alwyn
1 year ago

Penblwydd hapus a diolch. Fy ffynhonell gyntaf am newyddion cyn troi at i-news a Trydar i lenwi y gweddill i mewn

Dai Rob
Dai Rob
1 year ago

Breathe of fresh air!! Da iawn bois!!!

Andy
Andy
1 year ago

Small point – it’s Radio Cardiff, not ‘Cardiff Radio’

http://www.radiocardiff.org

Crwtyn Cemais
Crwtyn Cemais
1 year ago

Penblwydd hapus i Nation.Cymru – rydych chi’n gwneud gwaith ardderchog a gwaith pwysig iawn yw e hefyd! Diolch yn fawr iawn!

Richard
Richard
1 year ago

Diolch eto am popeth dros y flwyddyn…..ymlaen at y tymor nesa. Liais ffres , newydd ac Annibynnol 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁷󠁬󠁳󠁿

Cynan ex-regular left because trolls abound
Cynan ex-regular left because trolls abound
1 year ago

Happy Birthday. Moderate your comments section

Tim
Tim
1 year ago

Still an irrelevant and biased far left news site.

Timmy
Timmy
1 year ago
Reply to  Tim

And yet here you still are

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