Is the Guardian worse than it used to be?

also a shame it's a spurious load of old bollocks

The media landscape is a vale of shame and old bollocks.

Stephen Fry joins demand to end NSA and GCHQ mass surveillance

lol

http://www.theguardian.com/music/2013/sep/27/danny-brown-old

As well as trading verses with performers such as southern rap rising stars A$AP and Tech N9ne

Been meaning to come here to say that the Qatar forced labour story is a great piece of investigative journalism.

It is, though the use of similar techniques across the gulf is hardly a secret, it's great to see someone making a big issue of it.

http://www.theguardian.com/science/brain-flapping/2013/sep/18/how-to-pick-up-women-with-science

Darwin gets a capital letter, Skinner doesn't.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pVySc2Qu3WI

I don't think I can even piece together the thought process that led to this being created

SKINNER DOESN'T DESERVE A CAPITAL LETTER

Big rusbridger/graun thing in the NYer: http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2013/10/07/131007fa_fact_auletta?mbid=social_retweet

i enjoyed this ^
there are some perhaps contradictory indications about its paywall but its kinda utopian free-access ideal is pretty nice to read

I know the Guardian would happily liveblog a day in a goldfish bowl, but doing "Later...With Jools Holland" feels like another level of pointlessness altogether.

http://www.theguardian.com/music/musicblog/2013/oct/01/later-jools-holland-franz-ferdinand-live

that "chat and dave" comment particularly missed the point. i watched it this morning and their chat with jools was all about east end culture and music hall and oral tradition and how the songs would be lost otherwise. and skiffle. but, no, he only live-blogged the dull bits.

(chas and dave documentary on bbc4 recently was similarly interesting. not a fan of the music and that gig footage looked like my idea of HELL but... oh, it also contained the factoid that it's one of chas or dave who was sampled on that huge eminem hit)

lol wait he was liveblogging... from home?

I forgot that Time Jonze was the guy who wrote the Morrissey interview that led to Moz suing the NME, when I googled him just now the third result is a Morrissey forum that has about 20 threads devoted to Tim Jonze character assastionations

Diehard Morrissey fans must be such a good judge of character

Man, imagine if Morrissey had been in Die Hard instead of Bruce Willis.

Every Die is like Sunday

yippee-ki-yay mother, i can feel the soil falling over my head

Morrissey fans go after anyone who disagrees with Morrissey. I think it was probably worse in Tim's case as he's a huge, huge fan of The Smiths and his palpable sense of disappointment was more cutting than a character assassination ever would be.

Yeah, that's pretty accurate. You can really only be referring to Morrissey Solo, which has the curious position of doing shit like that while being completely despised by Morrissey himself.

They are hated for loving.

I hold no brief for Morrissey or his fans but I share their ire at Tim Jonze, he's a useless writer.

They are hated for loving.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-kjxnJzfdoM

I think there's something Chris Morris-esque about this Guardian advert from 1990.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g9YiEu6eNOA

I hadn't realised that the Guardian running oddly conceived adverts was not just a recent thing. Some of these are great and some of these are awful, but they're all better than the 3 little pigs ad.

I'm mystified by the guy in the changing room room cracking up over the Guardian, is he meant to be reading a particularly funny 'If...' strip or something? Was the Guardian selling itself on the quality of its humour writing in the 80s?

90s masthead was so great.

yeah

tempted to go and look for an 80s edition of the guardian on ebay

there's always nexis but it's not really real

i have a copy of the hong kong handover issue with this on the front page

http://www.theguardian.com/world/1997/jul/01/china.andrewhiggins

90s Guardian design was fantastic generally as far as I can remember.
I just had a look for 90s editions of the Guardian on ebay and found someone trying to get £6.99 (plus £3.60 postage) for a two page Haim interview that was in the Observer review a couple of weeks ago:

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Days-Are-Gone-HAIM-PHOTO-INTERVIEW-UK-GUARDIAN-NEWSPAPER-2013-/271283308948?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_3&hash=item3f29bec994

They're also selling this weeks NME for 7.84 plus £5.89 postage. Is this a common thing? Is the idea that if even the odd person buys one of these every now and again it's worth the time you've invested, considering the prices?

= americans

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/EMPIRE-Magazine-UK-THOR-DARK-WORLD-Loki-TOM-HIDDLESTON-CHRIS-HEMSWORTH-/271274176090

Yeah, I though it might be that (rather than people who could pick it up for a third of the price in their local Asda), still boggling at the idea anyone would pay that much, though.

fans/collectors who must have EVERYTHING Haim or Thor, innit?

I take it the NME is because of the redesign/relaunch.

or Bowie completists

Finding the Guardian's coverage of Morrissey's autobiography a bit nauseating, in its search for "clicks". The content of the book has been covered on other threads here but the multiple stories (news, blogs, reviews, comedy previews) on guardian.co.uk feels a bit too much. A news story and a review would suffice, wouldn't it? The issue isn't just about quantity: so much of the coverage feels tossed off and lazy, too.

(Note: I'm interested in the book and will read it at some point).

Hi, I was responsible for much of that Morrissey coverage in the Guardian. Yes, much of it is a search for clicks - but that's because people want to read it. And while it's easy to say we shouldn't hunt clicks, the fact is it's really hard to make money in newspapers and every click brings in a little bit of ad revenue. And the more ad revenue we can get from doing Morrissey stories, the more money we can invest in serious reporting: that's the absolutely crucial point (also, as I say, a lot of people did want to read the stories; no one's forcing those who don't). The overnight news stories, well … you're not going to get Martha Gellhorn when someone who's done a full day goes home for three hours, then goes back into the office to work through the night reading and filleting the book.

The unfunny preview blog was mine, too. Not my finest hour. Alone on the music desk this week, having to do a shedload of stuff, and some suffered. More pleased with Savage's piece on what Morrissey represented in 1983, which I commissioned.

"And the more ad revenue we can get from doing Morrissey stories, the more money we can invest in serious reporting"

this argument is vulnerable to reductio ad comment is free.

hi michael!

well … you're not going to get Martha Gellhorn when someone who's done a full day goes home for three hours, then goes back into the office to work through the night reading and filleting the book.

Sympathy rating zero.

dude, somebody needs to fillet minor ex pop stars' autobiographies

x-post.

Very gracious of you to reply.

My sense is that the quality of the "brand" - by which I could mean both The Guardian and your own name - gets undermined in these situations. Especially by that "unfunny preview blog" ...

xpost Wasn't asking for sympathy. Just telling you what happened.

xpost Well, I know what you mean about the brand, But if bashing out some pieces on Morrissey also earns me the freedom and goodwill from bosses to do 7500 word oral histories of the Paisley Underground or 5000 words on Big Star's Third or gains me the trust that I can commission a piece on rural Mississippi hip-hop, then I can live with it. Cos they're certainly not going to let me do that stuff unless I'm also responsible for some ratings grabbers.

It's true that real-time knowledge of readership - and we know exactly how many people per minute are reading a given story - has changed the nature of commissioning. And, yes, as someone whose first 18 years in journalism were spent worrying exclusively about print, that saddens me. It's harder to commission things now just because you think they're good stories; in the past you threw them out and never knew how many – or, more accurately, how few – people read them. So no one could pull you up for publishing it. Now they can. But that battle is over. Once you know how exactly many readers you're getting, you can't pretend it doesn't matter.

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/oct/19/bigmouth-morrissey-strikes-again

Though the above article contains some worthwhile information (eg. "Friday's news that rents rose nationwide by 9.2% last year was as nothing compared to Thursday's news that British Gas prices are set to rise by exactly the same amount. You probably didn't even hear about it because, while 36% of the population rents, almost no one in public life, in government, in the media does."), it seems a bit harsh/troll-y to blame Morrissey or even a supposed "Morrissey-generation" for current political ills.

i definitely blame morrissey