Five Questions with_ Jasper Hamill

Hi Jasper, You’ve just launched a new publication, Machine, which you describe as a “digital meta-tabloid covering tech, science, and ideas.” Can you tell us a bit more about why you started this new venture and what you hope to achieve?

My career started with the launch of a magazine more than 20 years ago. Ever since then, I've been planning to start my own publication again, but I kept getting seemingly miraculous job offers that were just too exciting to turn down. And, frankly, I was never in a financial position to become an independent publisher.

After spending the past few years developing marketing skills in areas such as copywriting and PR consultancy, I finally got to the position where I could launch Machine and fund it by selling services. Hopefully, this will bridge the gap until we have an audience that’s large and focused enough to generate advertising revenue.

When you work in the mainstream media, you don't really have the chance to publish what you want - whenever you want. Machine lets me do that and I want to give other journalists the same privilege. I don’t believe that the hierarchies and structures of the traditional press are necessary in the digital age, so always wanted to do something different. Now it's time to put my beliefs into practice!

I call Machine a meta-tabloid because it is self-consciously and self-referentially built in the style of the British tabloids - without the bad bits.

As a journalist with years of experience writing about technology, how are you seeing the latest advancements (particularly in Artificial Intelligence) affect your sector?

I'm not convinced real traditional journalists have much to fear from AI. Computers can never interview people. Neither can they write brilliant headlines or perform the investigative, contact-based role of a true reporter or correspondent. Personally, I'm excited about AI because it means someone like me can do more with fewer resources.

However, fewer and fewer people get to be a traditional journalist these days. Churnalism is now a predominant model in the British national media, which too often breaks the spirits of young journalists by forcing them to spend their days office-bound, rewriting stories from other publications. That job can clearly be done by AI.

We're now seeing redundancies at some of the main churnalistic publications, which is a tragedy. A whole generation of journalists was put to work doing the demoralising job of ripping off other people's stories so did not develop the skills or contacts needed for proper in-depth reporting. They can and will be replaced by AI. Frankly, it’s a disaster.

This grim reality is why people like me need to start our own publications. I'd like to see more journalists learn the commercial skills that enable them to survive and earn a semi-decent living whilst developing their own projects.

I'd rather the media was a galaxy of small shining stars, rather than a few supermassive black holes sucking everything into oblivion. Machine is founded on that belief.

Where do you get your news from? Which publications are you reading, and do you use other platforms (X, Bluesky, LinkedIn, for example) to find stories and experts? 

Journalists need to get news from a diverse variety of sources - so that's what I do. I use most of the social networks including X, Bluesky and LinkedIn - but not Threads or Meta, although this may change. LinkedIn is where we’re getting the most traction right now.

My two main papers are the Mail Online and The Guardian (I loathe bias and partisanship, so need to get the perspective from both sides), and I read the tech press as well as following influencers on social. I’m also a bit of a TikTok fiend - but am trying to shake that particular monkey off my back so just deleted the app.

You cover a lot of different sectors, but which emerging technology of today excites you the most, and why?

I've always had a pathological need to be at the cutting edge. As a teenager, that meant immersing myself in the arts, literature and music. In the digital age, all of those wonderful art forms have lost their relevance and importance. It is tech which now defines the zeitgeist. I'm indulging my need to be at the cutting edge by writing and thinking about the very latest developments in this space. It’s “the new” which excites me. Right now, that’s found more in tech and science than in any other area.

And finally, how can our PR and Comms friends get in touch with you, and what will get them on your ‘always open’ list?

To be honest, there is no “always open” list. Ideas will fly one day and crash the next. Flexibility is the most important skill of the 21st century. With flexibility comes variability. Machine will never be locked down by a rigid editorial agenda. There will be no editor saying: “That story’s not for us.”

Why? Because that's not how digital journalism works. We need to respond to the nature of modern publishing, in which loyalty is almost non-existent and most traffic comes from aggregators. I'm open to all ideas because you really don’t know what will work and what will fail. You have to try everything and see what hits the spot.

Rigidity and inflexibility are legacy mindsets. Iterative experimentation backed up by insights from hard data and real-time analytics is the key to success in today’s digital media and content landscape.

PRs can contact me at jasper@machine.news or on LinkedIn - which is quickly becoming my main social platform.

I promise to try and avoid acting like the egomaniacal journalist of yore who snaps and snarls at PRs. Machine is new media - so we have a new collaborative, flexible attitude to our work with marketing and public relations professionals. I literally work with PR folks sometimes and imagine the synergies between the light and dark sides are only going to increase. We reporters need to recognise that reality and adjust our behaviour accordingly.