Roy Greenslade (born 31 December 1946) is a British author and freelance journalist, and a former professor of journalism. He worked in the UK newspaper industry from the 1960s onwards. As a media commentator, he wrote a daily blog from 2006 to 2018 for The Guardian and a column for London's Evening Standard from 2006 to 2016. Under a pseudonym, Greenslade also wrote for the Sinn Féin newspaper An Phoblacht during the late 1980s whilst also working on Fleet Street. In 2021, it was reported in The Times newspaper, citing an article by Greenslade in the British Journalism Review, that he supported the bombing campaign of the Provisional IRA. Following this revelation, Greenslade resigned as Honorary Visiting Professor at City, University of London.
Greenslade's father, Ernest Frederick William, was an insurance clerk, and his mother Joan Olive (née Stocking) was a book-keeper. The family lived initially with his mother's parents in Dulwich before moving to a council house in South Ockendon. They later bought a bungalow in Leigh-on-Sea, and he travelled 32 miles each day to a grammar school in Dagenham, the Dagenham County High School, from 1957 to 1963. He has a younger brother.
Greenslade started work at the Barking and Dagenham Advertiser aged 17, and also delivered the newspaper to newsagents to supplement his low wages. After three years he joined the Lancashire Evening Telegraph in Blackburn as a sub-editor, before spending 18 months as a sub-editor at the Manchester office of the Daily Mail. Greenslade was an early member of the Communist Party of Britain (Marxist–Leninist).
The Sun, Daily Mirror and elsewhere (1969 to 1991)
In 1969, Greenslade entered Fleet Street as a news sub-editor on The Sun, which had just been acquired by Rupert Murdoch. He had a brief spell with the Daily Mirror in 1972 before returning to The Sun as deputy chief sub-editor, first with the news desk and later in the features department.
Greenslade left The Sun in 1974 to write his first book and to take a degree in politics at the University of Sussex. He worked his way through university with part-time sub-editing jobs at the Brighton Argus, BBC Radio Brighton, the Sunday Mirror and Reveille. After graduating in 1979, he joined the Daily Star in Manchester for six months until being seconded to the Daily Express in London. He was soon appointed features editor of the Daily Star.
In 1981, he returned to The Sun as assistant editor. He was involved in the move from Fleet Street to Wapping. Five years later, he transferred to The Sunday Times, first running the Review Section before becoming managing editor (news). In 1990, he was appointed editor of the Daily Mirror by Robert Maxwell.
While editor of the Daily Mirror, Greenslade rigged a spot-the-ball competition in the paper to make sure it was un-winnable on instructions from his proprietor, Robert Maxwell. He admitted his behaviour in his 1992 biography of Maxwell (see below), which he repeated in October 2011 during a seminar at the Leveson Inquiry, saying: ″Mea culpa, mea culpa, mea culpa.″
Greenslade departed from the Mirror in March 1991. He was briefly consultant editor to both The Sunday Times and Today newspapers.
The Guardian and other outlets (1992 to 2016)
From 1992 until 2005, Greenslade was media commentator for The Guardian. He spent three months with The Daily Telegraph in a similar capacity before returning to The Guardian to launch a daily media blog, which ended in 2018. He also wrote a weekly media column for the Evening Standard. His column for the Standard lasted for ten years until April 2016. In the context of a changing industry, Greenslade concluded his last column for the Standard with the observation: "Whatever happens, this I know: journalism, the trade I have practised for more than 50 years, must survive. Without it, democracy itself is imperilled".
He presented BBC Radio 4's Mediumwave (1993–95) and in 1996 was the launch presenter of Britain Talks Back on Granada Talk TV. He was a regular broadcaster on media matters.
Greenslade is on the board of an academic quarterly, the British Journalism Review, and was a trustee of the media ethics charity, MediaWise. In 2003, he was appointed Professor of Journalism at City University, London, in succession to Hugh Stephenson. He stepped down in 2018, becoming an Honorary Visiting Professor until 2021.
Greenslade has been credited with coining the term hierarchy of death as well as writing extensively on the subject.
Greenslade is the author of five books: Goodbye to the Working Class (1976), Maxwell's Fall (1992), Press Gang: How Newspapers Make Profits from Propaganda (2003), The Peer, the Priests and the Press: A Story of the Demise of Irish Landlordism (2023) and Rogue: The Rise and Fall of Mazher 'Fake Sheikh' Mahmood (2025).
His other published work includes:
"William de Belleroche, 1912-1969" (The Fine Art Society, London, 1989)
"Subterfuge, set-ups, stings and stunts: how red-tops go about their investigations" in Investigative Journalism, ed. Hugo de Burgh (Routledge, 2000)