John Gibson (editor and journalist)

Sir John Gibson (1841–1915) was a journalist who spent most of his career at Aberystwyth as editor of the Cambrian News.

Gibson was born in Lancaster on 14 February 1841, the son of a hatter.^[1] Around 1863 he joined the Oswestry Advertiser as a printer and began to write for the paper.^[1] For the next ten years he appears to have worked as a journalist in various places in Wales and the English border counties.

Influence

In September 1873, he became the manager and editor of the Cambrian News at Aberystwyth.^[1] The newspaper had been established in the wake of the 1868 general elections, and its early editions had focused on allegations of evictions made in Wales at the time of those elections. In 1880, a consortium assembled by Gibson purchased the Cambrian News, and for the next thirty years it became one of the most influential weekly papers in Wales.^[1]

This owed much to Gibson's personality and independent views. As a by-product of his newspaper, his book, The Emancipation of Women, appeared in 1891 and was reissued in 1894. Gibson remarked in a note to the second edition that "the laws of this country still treat women as the inferiors of men – as mere slave stuff. It can never be said that the work of political and social reform is finished until women are not only politically enfranchised, but are able to take their seats in both Houses of Parliament, and to hold even the highest positions in governments, trades and professions."^[2]

Appreciation

Gibson was knighted in 1915, but died on 16 July in the same year.^[1]

References