Guido Fawkes publisher Lord Kempsell at JournoFest 2025
News Associates graduate and political journalist Lord Kempsell spoke at our tenth JournoFest conference at Twickenham Stoop.
Here, full-time fast-track trainee Freya Thomson shares what she learnt.
Ross Kempsell’s unique path as News Associates graduate turned journalist turned political advisor turned Lord, and now, publisher of the Guido Fawkes political news website, certainly raised a few eyebrows at JournoFest.
Kempsell was nominated for a life peerage in Johnson’s Resignation Honours.
The Lord admitted that the House of Lords is the least democratic element of the UK’s political system, with reference to the ‘powerful revising function’ of the institution.
“I’m still figuring out how I feel about the House of Lords,” he said.
However, he also said that since the Prime Minister of the day only has so much power, the ability to deliver some of the political allies to key roles is important to get things done.
Ultimately, the House of Lords is not designed to be representative and derives its legitimacy from the way the key system functions.
“It’s a hell of a lot better than other systems around the world,” Kempsell said.
He spoke of a media revolution which will mark the eventual decline of legacy media, which he describes as some of the least trusted brands in the UK.
“It’s not to say legacy news titles don’t have a function. A lot of UK news begins with the newspapers,” he said.
He explains that though stories begin with legacy media they then move to other outlets meaning that traditional news is losing control of the story.
“Most people now get their news from Facebook,” he said.
“Distribution means are no longer meditated by legacy media.”
As such, Kempsell argues that the journalism model must evolve.
The fundamental skills, such as concise writing and interviewing remain the same, he attests.
On bias in the media, he said: “We don’t need to have this pretence of objectivity amongst political reporters.”
Kempsell was pretty disparaging about lobby journalists who he said ‘spend all their day tweeting’.
He also made it clear that he doesn’t believe background or social class has any bearing on success in journalism and finds conversations around it boring.
“I don’t care about anyone’s background,” he said.
He added: “In journalism you literally are your output. The people who succeed will be the people who bring the stories.”
You can read all the highlights and top tips from JournoFest 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020, 2021, 2022, 2023 and 2024 here.