Jack Needham

Journalist and Editor

United Kingdom

I’m Jack. I’m a freelance features writer based in Yorkshire.

I mostly write about technology, science, health and business but I also cover the weirder edges of music and internet culture.

My work has appeared in the Guardian, Observer, WIRED UK and Japan, easyJet Traveller, Atlas (Etihad Magazine), BBC, Narrative.ly, OneZero, Mixmag, Dazed and more. This includes several front page stories for ​the Guardian​, the Guardian G2 supplement​ and Mixmag.

I've also worked and travelled overseas as an on the ground reporter, covering stories in Tokyo, Marrakech, Naples, Paris, Johannesburg and Brussels.

Commission me: [email protected]

Portfolio
Vera by Virgin
07/01/2023
Justice League

In Seattle and the surrounding Cascadia region, a group of athletes is rejecting the macho culture of mainstream soccer in favour of radical equality and strengthening their communities.

Bbc
The UK landscape that hid a criminal enterprise

February is as unpredictable as it is breath-taking in Cragg Vale, a village of cobbled streets and immense natural beauty in the sprawling West Yorkshire countryside. A week before I'd planned to trek a five-mile trail known locally as the Coiners route, Cragg Vale was battered by two storms that left flooded rivers and uprooted trees in its wake.

BBC News
11/28/2021
Yemen: The woman saving a crumbling heritage

As a child, Harbia Al Himiary would marvel at the architecture of her home country of Yemen. In her own birthplace of Sanaa she admired from an early age the intricate stone carvings that decorated the Old City, a part of the capital inhabited for more than 2,500 years.

WIRED UK
He looked like a cute puppy. Then DNA tests revealed he was a wolf

Meghan loved her new dog. Bodhi had tall ears, striking brown eyes and a thick coat of white and oak-coloured fur and a ruff-like neck. The pair took long strolls on Sunday mornings and Meghan felt immensely proud of her new, adopted friend. Then the problems started.

Input
10/27/2021
Meet the teen game developer crowdsourcing IRL horror stories

Around six years ago, Jake Karns had a truly frightening experience. He was 12 at the time, and he and his sister Kate had recently moved back in with their mom and their grandmother in Victorville, Calif. after years of living with their dad.

WIRED UK
Everybody loves robots until they start punching people in the face

In May, Singapore's Sengkang Community Hospital unveiled its first specialist Covid-19 ward. Unfortunately, there was a problem: as one of the biggest hospitals in the city with 400 beds, it needed to reduce the risk of coronavirus transmission without spending huge sums on PPE or draining staff resources.

Input
04/13/2021
Inside the obsessive world of 'Monster Hunter' merch collectors

Veronica, a 27-year-old artist who lives in Southern California, can trace her love of slaying beasts back to a modded PlayStation 2. It was 2004, and her cousin had gotten his hands on a Japanese import of a video game series called Monster Hunter, in which teams of weapon-wielding warriors go off in search of titans to kill.

WIRED UK
No, don't smoke in Zoom meetings

It's a Tuesday afternoon, and during a company Zoom call someone decides to light a cigarette. Most people would likely turn off their cameras but Barry Neufeld, a Canadian school trustee, didn't. His colleagues were appalled, many called for his resignation and the matter of a cheeky cigarette caused a mini-media storm in the city of Chilliwack, British Columbia.

WIRED UK
10/03/2021
Amazon's Astro robot uses fear to get into your home

The future of home robotics wasn't supposed to be this dumb. We were promised K-9 companions, Baymax best mates, tiny droids with built-in projectors and nights out with Bender, the ultimate party robot. Instead, we got several different incarnations of vacuum and self-driving cars that can't drive themselves.