A New Yorker living in Germany tells of his love for the Guardian, which began in Morocco thanks to the late actor Richard Harris
Good to meet you … Cordy Swope
I fell in love with the Guardian on a holiday long ago in Morocco, where I stayed at the same resort as the late actor Richard Harris. He’d leave his copy by the pool every morning after breakfast for me to filch. Now, as a native New Yorker who has lived in Germany for the past eight years, I have a new perspective – that of a native English-speaking European – that has been largely formed by what I continue to read in the Guardian.
I used to be a loyal New York Times reader but, as my trust in it has waned, the Guardian has continued to produce proper investigative reporting. To me, not only does it thus use its gifts to make the media industry a better place, but the quality and craft behind most of what I read in it also allows me to tell my American friends it’s the best news organ in the English language today.
Having recently discovered the Guardian iPad edition, my reading patterns have been transformed – it fits my hectic travelling schedule, and allows me to meander horizontally and vertically through the paper. I’ll always read Simon Jenkins, whose well-grounded command of the facts is compulsive, and I maintain my strange addiction to the football coverage – it arms me with a heap of banter usable across the globe!
Interview by Oliver Laughland
