The Story Behind WPF News

There are easier ways to build a platform than the way I built WPF News.

Most people do not start an independent press project while studying, commuting between cities, working at the same time, and sleeping in cars, on trains, and coaches just to keep everything moving. But that is exactly how this began.

WPF News did not start as a business idea. It started as a belief — a belief that truth matters, that the public deserves honest reporting, and that important information should not be locked behind political bias, corporate pressure, or inaccessible language.

The roots of the platform go back to 2002, when I was studying psychology and becoming increasingly interested in epistemology — the question of how we know what we know. That probably sounds academic, and it is, but at its core it is really about truth, evidence, belief, and the difference between knowledge and noise.

That interest changed everything.

The more I studied how people form beliefs, interpret evidence, and absorb information, the more interested I became in the press itself. Not just news as entertainment, but news as a public function. News as something that shapes reality for ordinary people. News as one of the main ways societies decide what is true, what matters, and what gets ignored.

That naturally led me toward press freedom.

Back then, there were a few of us documenting the work around Reporters Without Borders and contributing to early discussions and framework ideas connected to the World Press Freedom Index. Watching that grow into something globally recognised made a huge impression on me. It showed me that press freedom was not some abstract principle for academics and campaigners to debate. It had real consequences. It affected what could be said, what could be exposed, and what the public would ever get the chance to know.

By 2006, I decided to act on that belief and bought my first domain, WorldPressFreedom.com.

From the start, the platform operated as a not-for-profit free press advocacy project. That was not a temporary choice or a stepping stone. It was the point. I believed then, and still believe now, that the strongest reporting comes from people who are not trying to sell a version of reality to the highest bidder. Independence matters. Integrity matters. Trust matters.

By the time I was awarded my MSc in 2008, the platform was already gaining real traction. The site had become well known and was regularly attracting around 3,000 to 4,000 visits a day. That was a huge moment for something that had been built from genuine conviction rather than commercial ambition.

What makes that period even stranger to look back on is that none of it was especially convenient.

At the time, I was living in Stoke, commuting to Manchester for work, and travelling to Cambridge to study. The logistics were ridiculous. I slept in places I probably should not admit to quite so casually — my car more times than I would like to count, trains, coaches, wherever I could make the schedule work. I even remember thinking at times that the travel itself had become part of the experience. Exhausting, yes. Practical, not at all. But I enjoyed it.

What is even more ironic is that I never planned to work in psychology in the traditional sense. I studied it because I loved studying it. Before Cambridge, I had started with the Open University, but it just was not engaging enough for me. I wanted more. I wanted depth, pressure, challenge, and the feeling of being fully immersed in difficult ideas. So I applied to Cambridge.

I was interviewed and, honestly, I thought I had ruined it. I fumbled badly enough that I came away convinced I had thrown the chance away. So when I got in, I was genuinely shocked. Delighted too, obviously, but shocked. In that moment I was so ecstatic about being accepted that I barely thought through the logistics of actually getting there and making it work. That reality came later.

Still, I made it work.

And somewhere in the middle of all that travel, study, work, reading, and writing, the World Press Freedom platform kept growing.

By 2012, that growth led to the expansion into WPFNews.co.uk, a UK-specific independent press platform built around a simple idea: news without the tribalism. News for people who want facts without being dragged into party lines. News for readers on the fence, readers who do not want every story filtered through somebody else’s political loyalty.

That became a defining part of WPF News.

I have always believed there is a large audience of intelligent, curious people who are tired of being spoken at by highly partisan outlets. People who do not want propaganda dressed up as reporting. People who want to understand what is happening without feeling like they are being recruited into somebody’s ideological team. WPF News was built for them.

One of the most distinctive parts of the site came from another long-standing interest of mine: courtrooms and public cases.

When I was younger, some of my favourite films were courtroom dramas, but that interest did not stay in fiction. I regularly read real public court cases and became fascinated by how difficult the legal world often is for ordinary people to access. So much of it is technically public, but practically unreadable to anyone who does not already understand the language. Important information exists, but it is buried inside legalistic wording that puts most people off before they even begin.

That became one of WPF News’ most popular sections.

We started linking readers to specific court cases and providing commentary that explained what those cases actually meant in normal language. Not dumbed down, just translated into something real people could engage with. It turned out there was a huge appetite for that. The courtroom section became one of the most visited areas of the site because it was doing something simple but valuable: making complex public information understandable.

As the platform grew, so did the audience.

At one point we were reaching around 20,000 hits in a single day, which already felt massive for an independent platform built on principles rather than profit. Then came 2025, when our best day climbed to a little over 50,000 hits. That works out to roughly one site hit every two seconds. For something that began with a small group of people deeply interested in press freedom and truth, that level of growth was beyond anything I ever thought possible.

And perhaps most amusingly of all, one of our biggest audiences is not even from the UK.

It is from America.

So to our American readers: thank you. Genuinely. Your support, interest, and curiosity have played a huge part in helping the platform grow into what it is today.

Through all of this, one thing has never changed. We remain not-for-profit by choice.

That matters to me more now, not less.

In a media world where so many outlets are driven by clicks, pressure, sponsorship, ideology, or access, staying independent is not just a branding choice. It is a protective measure. It means we are not greedy. It means we cannot be bought in the same way profit-led platforms can. It means we are free to report honestly, ask difficult questions, and refuse to take sides when the facts do not justify it.

That, to me, is what good reporting should be.

Not performative neutrality. Not false balance. Not spin disguised as journalism. Just a genuine commitment to truth, evidence, and the public’s right to know.

Now, in 2026, that same instinct is still driving new work. We are still publishing literature, still expanding ideas, and still building platforms that make research, commentary, and reporting more accessible to normal people. That is one of the reasons we also created our research division on a separate platform, OMGWTF.ltd.

It is a very different style, yes. Stranger, sharper, more chaotic, more satirical. But underneath it is the same core principle: factual reporting and research-led writing for ordinary readers. It is for the people who care about truth but do not want to fight their way through a 24-page abstract just to get to the point. It is serious thinking without the self-important presentation.

In many ways, that is what I have always been trying to do.

To make truth more readable.
To make public information more public.
To make serious reporting accessible without making it shallow.
To create something independent enough to say what needs saying without fear of who it might upset.

That is where WPF News came from.

Not from marketing. Not from boardrooms. Not from a trend. From research, curiosity, exhaustion, persistence, and a very real belief that free press still matters.

It mattered in 2002.
It mattered in 2006.
And it still matters now.

WPF News exists because the public deserves better than spin, noise, and bought narratives.

That is why I started it.
And that is why it still exists today.