Is the Guardian worse than it used to be?

Well, I dunno. How many mainstream newspapers in the UK would let a columnist talk about and advocate political lesbianism? I can't quite see what's obnoxious about it. But whatever.

It certainly covers some interesting ground, but I could do without the "my story" stuff. This goes for so much that passes for journalism though.

T/S: First person stories on political lesbianism vs getting really fucking important bits of news completely wrong.

Zing culture is a choice that we can make, and not a "condition" we are born with

Weekend is suddenly worse than it used to be with new redesign and Lucy Mangan going from forgettable columnist to irritating lol-advice girl.

gwuuuhhhhh

observer>>>guardian on a saturday

I picked up a copy of G2 for the first time in yonks the other week -- the very day the aforementioned political-lesbianism piece was in it -- because it had a piece by an old acquaintance of mine (this one) and it was marginally quicker to grab a colleague's paper copy than it was to look for it online.

Fuck me. G2: worse than it used to be? Jesus wept. I was astonished. There's still some excellent writing in there but what the FUCK is all that fluff at the beginning? It's woeful. And the bloody Williams woman wittering on about her baby ... good god.

I subscribe to the front-page RSS feed so I guess I'm spared a lot of that drivel when I "read the Guardian" every day ... I suppose what I'm reading is an approximation of the paper as viewed through the eyes of the duty website editor, but seeing as I'm assuming the duty website editor will be an experienced hack who knows a damn sight more than I do about what constitues The Guardian (and appears to be excluding exactly the right stuff), I'm more than happy with that.

Are these ffs on purpose?

Not with you, G00blar: what are you meaning?

lolgatures

And a ffi

This is what happens when the writer submits, e.g. a typeset PDF rather than plain text — and then the sub doesn't proofread to zap Unicode gremlins, natch.

Shit, yeh, sorry: I was skimming it so fast I missed 'em.

It'll be one of the myriad text-to-web fuck-ups: either their web-output process has suddenly stopped recognising InDesign's standard ligatures (possible; unlikely) or -- and I've seen this happen in a variety of ways with all sorts of non-standard characters, eg non-breaking spaces -- some wacky sub has decided to use manual ligatures in the print version, and what we're seeing on the web page is ... well, exactly that.

xpost Caek, I'd have thought the very action of importing text from a PDF into InDesign would make such things clear (although I can see how it might not). Not sure what you mean by "sub doesn't proofread" ... a sub is subbing, not proofreading, and if InDesign is *displaying* imported ligatures perfectly, you can understand how it might not be noticed. Hmm.

Whatever: it's a quirk of the Grauniad's production system, and is nowhere near as bad as the disaster we had the other week in which a 3000-word feature wentuponthewebsitewithnospacesbetween most of thewords.

wow

I knew you'd rep subs when I blamed this on them. I don't know the job title of the person responsible for this. (Who proof-reads, by the way?)

I get this sometimes when I paste from a PDF created by LaTeX, which does all sorts of ligature fancy stuffs, into a text editor (or web textarea) which understands unicode and tries to be too clever with these high unicode characters. Things look OK at a glance but all bets are off when you save and view in another program/HTML/whatever.

I knew you'd rep subs when I blamed this on them

Er, but ... I'm blaming subs too! ;)

Who proof-reads, by the way?

Ach, I was being slightly awkward for the sake of it there. The point is that something like that should ideally be picked up long before the proof-reading stage (by which I mean someone -- a sub, a desk editor, whoever -- reading over a final printed page shortly before it goes to press); it should ideally be spotted and fixed by whichever sub works on the copy on screen.

Of course, that depends on them being able to perceive the problem. If they're not expecting ligatures, and InDesign is parsing them perfectly on screen and in the printed product, then yes: I can see how the problem would only become apparent when the copy is taken back out of the InDesign/InCopy process. I'm assuming the Guardian's web output is automated: ie page elements are meta-tagged (headline, caption, body copy and so on) and it's automatically published to the web after the printed page is sent. So unless someone is then sitting reading everything as it goes up on the web -- which I think is very unlikely -- then stuff like this is going to be missed.

The most interesting thing is why it isn't happening more often, to be honest. But I'm making all sorts of assumptions about the Guardian's production operation here, which might be massively unfounded. If you really want, I'll tap up their head production honcho about it, but ... I don't really think it's worth it ;)

http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2009/feb/25/women-upskirting

ColonialOutcast
25 Feb 09, 4:00am

Whilst taking upskirt photographs is sinister and sleazy, I would love to know if it is considered unacceptable to sneak a peak at a woman's knickers if the opportunity presented itself (wind gust lifting skirt/dress etc).

I don't see any harm in it myself, though I'm talking only a fleeting glance not leering.

heave ho weighing in there

haha

With hundreds of thousands of photographs taken up unsuspecting women's skirts being posted online, the practice of 'upskirting' is clearly on the rise. Emine Saner reports

this article is awful of course, but i can't help but notice that the way that the guardian formats these summaries — mostly in the part that i bolded — can't help but set the writer up for epic failure. "x reports" is like a built in challop

also the "self-conscious white guy writes about rap" story that dom posted on his blog (dunno if it's in here as well) is up for worst piece of journalism of the decade, def a lock for the top 5

Those smug byline grins are hugely irritating. Pictures should be taken as per passport photos, i.e. neutral expression, stare straight ahead etc.

Better still, get rid of the bylines altogether.

More white people discussing hip hop

xpost

weird feeling i know the writer, but can't place it.

"With loads of space to fill in a paper, the practice of 'upwriting' is clearly on the rise. Frantic Subber reports"

Coming from Scotland I know this does not just affect women, indeed there is a gay porn site called 'upyerkilt' (though I happen to know it is staged).

weird feeling i know the writer, but can't place it.

Plan B?

While the image of the "Peeping Tom" may seem quintessentially British, upskirting is not confined to the UK

Uh if we were going to work with quasi-xenophobic stereotypes here surely the Japanese would be comfortably in that number one spot?

Oh, you said that awready. x-post

While the image of the "Peeping Tom" may seem quintessentially British

Eh?

Emine Saner is a pretty good journalist and is not a major offender in the Daddy, I Want A Pony byline pic stakes ('winner': V. Coren).

A few of the actresses I've interviewed say they would be a-OK with paparazzi as an occupational hazard if they did not do this, and they've been calling it upskirt for YEARS.

Peeping Tom is on ITV at midnight tonight, watch and learn.

Everyone has been calling it upskirt for YEARS.

Peeping Tom is on ITV at midnight tonight, watch and learn.

It's a filthy German who does it though

also the "self-conscious white guy writes about rap" story that dom posted on his blog (dunno if it's in here as well) is up for worst piece of journalism of the decade, def a lock for the top 5

― J0rdan S., Thursday, 26 February 2009 09:53 (19 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

The thing is, if you were trying to come up with, Onion-style, a fake name for a self-conscious white indie music critic trying to demonstrate knowledge of rap, "Louis Pattison" is pretty close to what you'd end up with.

LBZC will henceforth be referring to him as Lpattz.

I think it might be a bit late for Coren to ask for the pony.

There's nothing wrong with that Saner byline picture you fucking weirdos.

YEOOOOOOWCH. xpost

I think the 'weird' thing is that she's cute, blonde and doing a job certain people here quite covet.

She's stunning!

I worry for her somehow - maybe cos she's so stunning. All the inferior envious scumbags should leave her alone.

moderator, nu-godwins

Upskirt top ranking

^^^ Thank fuck for the voice of reason.

Give that man a byline pic

I love this:

It is impossible to judge how many women have been victims of upskirting,

i.e. the cross reference for people who need "women" explaining to them...

Stuff a Canon up my crack an' ting...

All those thrusting Thatcherkids are too busy going bust to find out what "women" are!

While the image of the "Peeping Tom" may seem quintessentially British

Eh?

OrigiNAL Peeping Tom that fellow who went blind looking at Lady Godiva?

But Lady Godiva wasn't wearing a skirt...

I don't think she even existed did she?

If she did though and she had been wearing a skirt no doubt some pervy Englsihman would have tried to make a drawing of it and sold it down the market.

She did, but there is no contemporary report of her riding naked through Coventry.