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Cyclonic Realm
Cyclonic Realm office in a converted Yorkshire mill with arched windows and oak tables

About the newsroom

A British news service that treats technology as weather, not as magic.

Cyclonic Realm was set up in Ackworth because the country’s next industrial arguments — power, chips, labs, labour — will be won in more than one postcode. We report from here, and we travel.

Why we exist

Too much UK technology coverage is either a product launch with adjectives or a policy notice with the adjectives stripped out. Neither helps a finance director, a permanent secretary or a plant manager. Cyclonic Realm sits in the gap: journalism with a briefing habit.

We read the instruments. We talk to the people who have to build the thing the instrument describes. We write in UK English, to UK law, for UK time zones, and we do not pretend a Californian press cycle is a British fact.

The name is not a metaphor committee’s idea of disruption. A cyclone is a rotating weather system. British technology in this decade is a rotating system of capital, permission, power and talent. We report the system.

Cyclonic Realm editorial team around an oak table in the Ackworth mill office

2019

First desk opened in Ackworth, covering northern digital infrastructure.

6

Sector desks now on the roster, from AI to healthtech.

UK

A single-country beat, reported for readers who have to act here.

Who writes

Portrait of Mara Ellison, editor of Cyclonic Realm

Mara Ellison

Editor · energy, compute, the North

Mara runs the newsroom and the energy-for-intelligence file. She previously reported infrastructure from Leeds and still thinks a connection date is more interesting than a keynote.

Portrait of Imran Shah, policy correspondent

Imran Shah

Policy correspondent · Whitehall, the City

Imran reads the documents departments wish you would skim. His beat is AI adoption, financial regulation and the distance between a speech and a statutory instrument.

Portrait of Nia Okonkwo, industry correspondent

Nia Okonkwo

Industry correspondent · chips, quantum, health

Nia covers the physical stack: wafers, cryostats, imaging kit. She is based between Manchester and the East of England and declines to treat a funding round as a product.

Editorial standards

  • Facts that can be checked are checked against a primary document or an on-the-record source.
  • Sponsored work, if we ever take it, would be labelled. We do not presently take it. Briefings are paid by the reader, not the subject.
  • Corrections are published on the same URL and noted to briefing subscribers the same day.
  • We are not a political consultancy and we do not lobby. We report.

Visit or write

The office is on Doncaster Road, Ackworth, Pontefract WF7 7BX. Appointments only — it is a working newsroom, not a showroom. For briefings and corrections, use the desk.

Contact the desk