The Slow Newsletter

Good afternoon. Welcome back to Tortoise’s weekly Slow Newsletter.

The Backstory

Andrew Neil launched his new podcast this week. It’s a weekly interview for Tortoise called The Backstory and he begins by questioning the former head of the CIA, David Petraeus, about the battles within President Biden’s administration over the use of US military power.

It’s an interview that, among other things, returns to America’s exit from Afghanistan – a humanitarian crisis that the media has largely abandoned, but General Petraeus has not forgotten: he is withering about the Biden administration’s withdrawal from the country and the price paid in Afghan lives and American power. 

It is the first in a series of interviews, which we hope will show what we learn about our times when some of the most influential and experienced people in the world take the time to talk, one on one, to the UK’s most formidable interviewer. 

Listen wherever you get your podcasts.

Mariupol

For more than a month, we have been trying to piece together from first hand accounts, intelligence reports and aerial photography, what’s really happening at the scene of a war crime: Mariupol. 

This week, the city is on the brink of defeat and beneath the rubble lie countless civilian bodies and evidence of atrocities. This week’s Slow Newscast investigates one week of the siege of Mariupol from the bombing of a maternity hospital on 9 March to the attack on a theatre on 16 March. 

Before the evidence is destroyed or attention moves elsewhere, Basia Cummings – with reporter Xavier Greenwood and producer Matt Russell – do the essential reporting to identify who is responsible for the annihilation of a city. It’s accompanied by a collection of photography, put together by Jon Jones, our photo editor, that makes for indelible viewing. Do please look and listen to Mariupol. 

Making sense of dating apps

Tortoise has published a number of pieces about the safety and ethics of dating apps over the last few years. Now the world is opening up again, most major dating apps have reviewed their safety procedures and policies. We're interested to explore whether people who use dating apps are aware of these policies, and whether they work in practice.

Take our survey and join Tortoise editor Liz Moseley next Wednesday for a ThinkIn where we’ll be trying to make sense of dating apps. Are apps like Tinder and Bumble just a way of commercialising loneliness? How do their algorithms work? Tell us WYT.

That’s all for this week. If you aren’t a member yet, and feel like helping us build a different kind of newsroom, why not be my guest at Tortoise for the next 30 days? I hope I’ll see you soon.

Katie