Dear Atomic Reporters readers,

This is goodbye and hello as we switch providers this week to a new host for the Atomic Reporters website. The new site will offer more features and allow us to keep closer contact with you, our readers. You will however, have to sign up anew to keep following us. We think you’ll find the effort worthwhile.

Atomic Reporters was launched in 2013 and we wish to thank those supporters who helped us out of the cradle. We are still a toddler but in our first two years we have held workshops for journalists from the Middle East, in India and in Jordan. They’ve been well received.

We have represented the interests of journalists at a number of events, for diplomats, international emergency response specialists, and in preparation for the 2016 Nuclear Security Summit

. We have tried to make the case as forcibly as we can that in the often murky nuclear realm accountability to journalists and by default the public should not be a choice but a necessity

.

That a subject of such importance is not better covered does a disservice to the public and condones unnecessary secrecy that stifles informed debate. Atomic Reporters provides independent and reliable knowledge to journalists to help them open doors and raise shutters.

Atomic Reporters in November 2015 was the recipient of a Carnegie grant that will support a workshop for journalists in late February 2016 ahead of the nuclear security summit
. We will keep you informed.

Lastly, the following words remain as timely as when they were uttered in 1971 by Murray Gurfein the judge in the Pentagon Papers case in the US. “The security of the Nation is not at the ramparts alone
. Security also lies in the value of our free institutions. A cantankerous press, an obstinate press, an ubiquitous press must be suffered by those in authority in order to preserve the even greater values of freedom of expression and the right of the people to know.”

Peter Rickwood