Is the Guardian worse than it used to be?

Oh yeah, there's a US portal now. At least you're allowed to choose.

US advertising money.

adblock plus tho innit

Adblock plus is the best thing I ever did. I haven't put it on the work computer and the US ads on the Guardian site are 'this one weird old trick' but for car insurance or something.

The AdBlock Element Hiding Helper extension (FF) is indispensable. It lets you hone in on annoying frames full of text ads, competitions, plugs for the site's other brands etc, and obliterate them completely.

£1.20. I didn't buy it today.

Was discussing the price rise in the pub with the missus tonight. Decided I would happily pay a subscription to the Guardian, providing it was hypothecated. Would happily pay £500 per year providing it went toward a salary for Nick Davies, Nancy B-S, Larry Elliott, Veronica Horwell, Barney Ronay, even Polly T. Would not want a penny going to, eg, Hadley Freeman, Tim Dowling, etc etc.

hadley freeman is offensively trite and a woefully muddled writer, plus how do you pay a fashion columnist who apparently hates fashion?

http://www.guardian.co.uk/mobile/guardian-kindle-edition

UK: £9.99/month, £0.99/issue
US: $9.99/month, $0.75/issue
Rest of world: US$17.99/month, US$1.99/issue

Undelines the Guardian's play at the US market. Hoping the ipad app won't have this sort of ridiculous structure but not confident tbh.

I bought it today. I had to root around in my pocket for a 20p piece, which was an awful thing to have to do.

Why are you guys reading Hadley Freeman's fashion column in the first place?

i remember the arguments in the letter pages when it went up from 50 to 55p

hadley freeman's written some great pieces of late. the one on nafissatou diallo, the dolly parton interview, the like a prayer post. also i'd think it fairly obvious from her fashion column that she likes fashion but thinks the fashion industry can be silly-going-on-appalling, which...is how most journalists think about their particular fields tbh.

larry elliott? just another economics writer who keeps the subject as clear as mud for me.

Never read her once write a positive article about fashion. As for why i'm reading her articles, cos I browse the guardian and have 5 mins to spare, and cos I am interested in fashion, but please teach me to use every living moment joyously oh zen time recyclers.

I don't think it's crazy to expect a fashion writer not to just drone on about some standard guardian fear of pretension week in week out in awful ott prose.

"if you don't like it don't read it" is seriously one of the biggest Internet cop outs ever.

I didn't start a campaign about it I just agreed with a post and added three lines!

It's a big world of words each day, bound to be some you disagree with.

Ps: I ate a salad while typing this and listened to a record, carpe diem!!!

i like reading hadley freeman because it means every week or two i can mention something and people go WHAT, YOU FOLLOW FASHION

this probably won't work if i start hanging around with actual fashionable people ever

how do you pay a fashion columnist who apparently hates fashion?

I assume they're trying to pull a Matthew Norman style diary-thats-not-a-diary (except it's not as good).

I used to think Hadley Freeman was pretty weak writer, but at least compared with some of their recent web-only hacks, she's fine. She also seems to be one of the few G2 writers who hasn't decided to turn into an ineffectualy swearing-only version of Charlie Brooker.

I love it when LG gets all pissy and defensive.

It's funny because I think this has been a banner year for the Guardian, it's been fantastic, even if the lifestyle stuff that gets highlighted in this thread getting worse and worse, I dunno, it's clearly not aimed at me so why bother? It'd be like making a call on the state of the BBC based on an episode of Bargain Hunt I happened to catch.

but matt the point isn't what's in the guardian or what the guardian has done, it's bitching about the guardian, and if you have to rake over the designed-to-be-throwaway bits or loftily snip at a writer that you read half a piece by once, four years ago, then so be it!

yes but they just raised their price by 20p lex

i assume that means you are being paid 20% more per word

In fairness I read and bitch about so many politics/football/music writers I dislike and disagree with, so I'd never say 'if you don't like it don't read it', but at least those are vaguely aimed at me.

I wasn't being defensive in the slightest, I was having a laugh. "if you don't like it don't read it" followed by let's have a "who is being defensive" contest, it's like an Internet argument course here.

Coupled with "why do you care", well as I said, I don't, massively, but you thought my ridiculing that question was being defensive...

As for lex, some wild assertions there, I read the guardian every day actually.

All this over three lines, Jesus.

it's like an Internet argument course here.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kQFKtI6gn9Y

You read the Guardian every day and then post all this stuff on this thread?! Dear Lord, you're like a fashion writer who hates fashion! Except you're not getting paid for it ho ho.

Would be worse if I was!

But now you posted here you're stuck in the game too.

i like reading the web only hacks actually

gives me hope to see people without writing skills can still get published. i can still dream that maybe one day i can play in a football team.

yeah but the web-only guys are the equivalent of those dudes who make up the majority of Masters teams who you don't remember

Making some big claims based on one (crap) episode of a tv show
http://www.guardian.co.uk/tv-and-radio/tvandradioblog/2011/sep/22/last-nights-tv-220911?newsfeed=true

"pseudo-punk", stopped reading when I got to this.

Accurate though isn't it? Or do you object to all uses of "pseudo"?

i'm sure Fresh Meat is fucking awful but so's the word "pseudo" espesh if u use it re: punk

Dunno, that whole "we used to love the rolling stones and the faces, but since they are out of fash, we got spiky haircuts" phase sort of defines "pseudo-punk". (you can stop reading now)

Yeah, it's exactly what the character of Vivian is.

Ah, I have read the article now. Dude didn't like the Young Ones oh woe is him.

No, I was replying to NV about the "pseudo-punk" angle, not all uses are wrong. That article certainly is.

If Vyvian is a pseudo-punk on the grounds of Ade Edmundson was not actually a punk himself (untrue), then "The Queen" as played by Helen Mirren is a pseudo-QueenofEngland.

Hang on, "Fresh Meat" had a femidom joke? They don't even make them anymore!

punk is arguably a "pseudo" genre. making claims for an authentic punk is a bit ridiculous given the circumstances.

True. Most (if not all but the very young) of the original punk bands sacked their covers of the Stones/(Small)Faces once they got going.

i kept waiting for the bit where that article would cleverly undercut its fulsomeness, perhaps with the sentence fragment "IN OPPOSITE LAND"

First episode of Fresh Meat was pretty funny actually. Some of the characters are very obviously funnier than others but the whole thing has potential.

"I want it to go dark" is the lame comedy hack's answer to everything. Surely we had enough "going dark" in the 00s?

enough going dark forever. there's not much dark about being a student.

It's pretty dark as it is though, any further and it would start to lurch into Nighty Night territory.

I bought the Guardian today.

Because I want to support the paper, at least a bit.

I went into a newsagent and the old fellow said: '£1.20 - new price'.

I counted out numerous coppers.

His presumed grandson counted them in, as though preparing to take over the shop one day, as he always does.

lol

Amanda Knox and her former Italian boyfriend

Yep, he's not italian any more!

Even the Mail employs a token leftie or two so I assume he's the Guardian's designated coalition cheerleader in the interests of balance. Still aggravating though, because he tends to appear as the man from the Guardian rather than an outlying columnist.

― I've been dancing since 9 and I'm tired and hungry (Dorianlynskey), Tuesday, February 8, 2011 4:37 PM (7 months ago) Bookmark

Julian Glover makes it official.
http://www.politicshome.com/uk/article/36967/cams_new_sam_seaborne_julian_glover.html