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In Jez Ford’s first-person retrospective on What Hi-Fi?, published on 8 October 2026, the magazine’s pre-digital production ran on typewriters, faxed reviews printed on thermal paper, hand-cut page layouts and physical proofs carried by motorcycle courier. Most reviews were written by freelancers working from home. The later move to in-house reviewing and listening rooms is, in Ford’s account, the change that reshaped the title. Ford joined as assistant editor in 1988 and tells the story from memory, so the dates, figures and legal episode below are his recollections rather than independently checked records.
Copy arrived by fax, on thermal paper
Ford says the desk he inherited held a manual typewriter, and that he began work with his own compact word processor. He recalls that machine holding 32 characters in its 4kB of memory. The review contributors were mostly external freelancers, and their copy reached the office by fax, on long sheets of thermal paper. Editors then had to turn that paper into something printable.
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From fax to finished page
Ford describes a production chain in which nearly every stage involved physical material. In the order he recalls it:
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1Clear out junk files and repair common Windows errors2Scan for outdated or missing drivers - takes under a minute3Repair Windows errors before they cause bigger problems- Editors cut and rearranged the faxed pages by hand and marked corrections on them.
- The marked copy went to a typing pool to be set in type.
- The typeset text came back as bromide columns.
- Art editors cut the columns apart and pasted them onto tracing-paper layouts using Spray Mount adhesive.
- Photographic slides were projected and sized with a visualiser, then sent for scanning into offset printing plates.
- The plates were checked at printers. Ford recalls these as being in Whitstable or Cornwall.
Corrections found at the printing stage were the hardest to absorb. Ford says a late fix could mean cutting and re-spacing text on the layout before the page was replated.
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Couriers, slides and the risk of a crash
Proof bags and original slides travelled by motorcycle courier. Ford presents this as the most fragile part of the chain. A crash could damage a layout or lose the images it was carrying, and nothing in the process could easily recreate them. These are his recollections of how the work was done at the time, not a description of any current workflow.
Who wrote the reviews
The editorial staff, Ford says, were generally journalists rather than specialist reviewers. Andrew Everard was the technical editor. Freelancers wrote most of the reviews, so the judgement on a piece of equipment usually came from one outside writer, working separately from the rest of the team.
Before and after the in-house change
Ford treats the later decision to bring reviews in-house, and to set up listening rooms, as the point where the working method changed most. The table below sets out the contrasts he draws. Where his account does not give a detail, the cell says so.
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|---|---|---|
| Who wrote reviews | Mostly external freelancers working from home | Reviews brought in-house; his account does not name the proportion of staff reviewers |
| How copy arrived | Fax, on long sheets of thermal paper | Not stated in detail; his account says computers were brought into use after a delay |
| How layouts were built | Cut bromide columns pasted onto tracing-paper layouts with Spray Mount | Computer-based; Ford does not describe the steps |
| How review judgements were checked | Individual external reviews | Reviewers heard products in a shared process, and several reviewers cross-checked opinions |
| Movement of review equipment | Couriered between freelancers and the office | Couriering reduced, according to Ford |
Why reviews moved in-house
In Ford’s telling, the shift had a practical logic. When reviewers worked in a shared process and heard products in the same rooms, several people could check one another’s opinions, instead of relying on a single freelance verdict. The change also cut the couriering of review equipment and made the Awards easier to decide. Ford offers this as his own explanation of what happened. It is not an independently audited evaluation of the magazine’s reviews.
Awards with price categories
Ford recalls that the annual Awards were expanded to include price categories. In his account, this made the Awards useful to readers across different budgets, rather than only at the top end of the market.
Ford’s career at the magazine
Ford’s account moves from assistant editor to deputy editor. He then took over Hi-Fi Answers as it transformed into Audiophile, left for a three-and-a-half-year break of travel, and returned to become editor of What Hi-Fi?. He says he later left for Australia.
His memory of the computers is tied to an internal technology dispute. He says the machines were reportedly in storage for 18 months before they were brought into use, and he links the delay to a dispute involving the National Union of Journalists. The timeline is his own recollection and is not documented elsewhere in the account. In his words: “There were no computers. There were no listening rooms.”
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Ford says the magazine was sued by lawyers for The Verve after a cover line encouraging readers to make their own CDs used an image of the band’s CD. He says the company’s lawyers had approved the feature, and that the CD had been supplied for magazine use by the record label’s PR department. According to him, the claim was paid, because the amount sought was slightly below the cost of defending the case. He dates the suit to 1998, qualifying it with “I think.” The account gives no court record or case name, so treat this as one person’s recollection of a legal episode, not a documented case history.
Quick Recap
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Reading the account for what it is
- It is a personal retrospective. It works as scene-setting for how a magazine was produced before computers, not as a guide to any current process.
- It contains no product recommendations and cannot be used to choose hi-fi equipment.
- The 50-year anniversary framing comes from the publication’s own 2026 context, which Ford’s piece adopts.
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