Defence columns for The Daily Telegraph, 2024
It’s been a privilege, rewarding and fun to write regularly for the Telegraph in 2024. I’ve written 96 opinion pieces at an average of 1.9 per week. For a side hustle, it appears I’m not short of opinions…
The spread across topics looked like this:
…with RN, Red Sea and Black Sea dominating (although readership on Red Sea articles has noticeably waned throughout the year). I wrote surprisingly few on China and the SCS (compared to 2023); might change this year…
Comments
(Average 275 per article, max 1454, min 19)
Going ‘below the line’ and into the comments is essential if you want to inform the discussion. But I can also see why most writers do not. It’s hard to have a sustained conversation there and you do suffer some abuse (5-10% of comments, higher if the article is about Russia). About an hour after anything I write on Russia the bots appear, often with names like Jack London. They rarely have anything useful to say…
As a general rule, the spikier the headline the more comments the article receives. Obvious really but it can lead to a discrepancy between what’s in the text and what’s in the header that can jar. Many people still don’t realise the author doesn’t write their own headline. Others yell at the headline without having read the article or get the rage because it’s behind a paywall.
Over the year, four areas of misunderstanding have repeatedly appeared in the comments:
- The role of the Royal Navy (or not) in the Channel
- How ships far from the UK are still protecting our interests (connected to 1)
- Exaggerating the utility of drones (often based on events in Ukraine and in the Black Sea)
- Underestimating the difficulty of maritime targeting (connected to 3) and therefore overestimating their vulnerability to drones, hypersonics etc.
I’ve addressed each of these at various points but there is still much to do. I wrote something on AUKUS and a comment suggested that our SSNs should be tackling migrants in the channel…
There is little correlation between number of comments per article and total number of readers (max 508k). Some of articles that have appeared on the ‘most read’ screen in Telegraph HQ have attracted only modest comment numbers.
Nevertheless, these were the top three for comments:
…and the bottom three:
And, of course, this was my favourite
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2024/06/30/nuclear-submarines-royal-us-russian-navy-richard-sharpe/
This is the spread of comments looked like this (with the odd ChatGPT glitch included)
This year I plan to start a YouTube channel to reach some different audiences. It will also allow me the chance to diverge from the Tele guardrails into more commercial shipping issues (increasingly the day job) as well as take off the odd sharp edge that writing for a national paper demands.
Thank you to the editorial team at the Telegraph who make my stuff better and also to the handful or so of people who I regularly use for advice and questions. Outstanding and invaluable.
Tom Sharpe OBE 