The Frontline Club: Founder, Vaughan Smith
The Frontline Club is a media club near London's Paddington Station. It has a strong emphasis on conflict reporting and aims to promote independent journalism.
The Frontline Club opened in 2003. Vaughan Smith, one of the surviving founders of Frontline Television News, turned the operation into a club, offering a meeting place for those who believe in independent journalism, as well as to honour fallen colleagues, those killed whilst reporting from conflict areas. The clubroom has a display of relics drawn from the history of war reporting since the Crimean war, including the boots of The Times correspondent William Howard Russel. Other cabinets show personal items, some with shell still embedded, that have stopped a bullet and saved a journalist's life. The walls of the Frontline Club display examples of war photography and artwork.
Discussions, held most weekday evenings, are broadcast live via the club's website. Past participants include John Simpson, Robert Fisk, Jeremy Paxman, Jeremy Bowen, Christina Lamb, the late Benazir Bhutto, Boris Berezovsky, the late Alexander Litvinenko and his widow, Marina Litvinenko.
The building includes a restaurant open to non-members, a club room, meeting rooms, two lodging rooms and a discussion forum. The club also organizes training and workshops in such skills as camera operation and film editing. It is a registered charity.
