Is the Guardian worse than it used to be?

Creme Chickens

is this thread just where dudes c&p sentences from whatever guardian page they're on at the moment because i often struggle to see the worseness in many of these

to each his own - i just personally find an article about someone making creme eggs with their kids to on the bemusing side of tedious and vapid.

With two huge bags of chocolate, a heap of fondant icing and a little help from a master chocolatier, Zoe Williams and her children create a homemade version of the Easter classic

well that's saved 50p then

the last step in the recipe is somehow selling an afternoon of your life to a global news website, that covers the cost of the entire thing

i just personally find an article about someone making creme eggs with their kids to on the bemusing side of tedious and vapid

Pretty sure it's not aimed at you though. Or me either tbf, and I haven't bothered to read the actual text but the piece itself is surely actually of some use to ppl with kids, right? Which puts it above a lot of space-filling lifestyle shit you read.

the piece is kind of fun, and i'm interested in how to make a creme egg even if i'll never do it, and i think zoe williams is often very good.

Perhaps they should replace it with an article in which Zoe Williams reads solemnly from Doktor Faustus, a child on each knee, pointing out the parallels to the rise of fascism.

the daily mail isn't aimed at me either

(I don't actually like Zoe Williams at all but this seems harmless enough)

it's completely harmless. personally i don't like the presumption that we should care about a columnist's life. people bake things with their kids all the time - that's great, but i don't need to read about it in the paper. the world does not revolve around your classic family home.

god this thread is bullshit

take it easy - people are entitled to an opinion

"this feature doesn't address my interests as a 30something single childless male" = the guardian is worse than it used to be

Perhaps they should replace it with an article in which Zoe Williams reads solemnly from Doktor Faustus, a child on each knee, pointing out the parallels to the rise of fascism.

Would actually read.

Isn't the point that readers should care about how to make Creme Eggs with their own kids? Most parents I know are desperate for novel ways to keep them occupied for an afternoon.

yeah its the process, not the cheapness nor making them tastier than actual creme eggs, i'm guessing

though it would not be hard to improve on hershey-era creme eggs, but that is another story

but yeah this is about women and kitchens and domestic life and therefore not important or deserving of coverage in the guardian, do i have that right?

His live sets are notoriously unpredictable. At the Wireless festival in London last summer he was reportedly booed after pausing the music to offer the crowd an extensive mid-set rant. On the other hand, his Watch the Throne tour with Jay-Z was regarded as one of the greatest hip-hop tours ever.

Whatever else might happen, it’s unlikely West’s Glastonbury appearance will be uneventful.

The Guardian is Glastonbury’s media partner.

This is genuine Phil McNulty vapidity though.

stevie OTM. Most of these recent examples are harmless.

Meanwhile they continue to publish cobblers like this.

I'm not really sure what Guardian readers are supposed to gain by reading Simon Jenkins on any subject but still ffs.

yeah i mean i find the empty politics-as-sports punditry endlessly more egregious and tiresome than any lifestyle piece tbh

but yeah this is about women and kitchens and domestic life and therefore not important or deserving of coverage in the guardian, do i have that right?

self-righteousness doesn't work when your first instinct was to throw out personal insults.

i resent the elevation of male pundits' personal lives as well - i don't really know why somebody is supposed to care about a journalist's life. not least now when they can read their friends or relatives writing about their lives or their families very easily and readily. nor should people have to live to some stupid standard of family existence.

i mean honestly, if it was just "make your own creme eggs" i'd be p much fine with it. i just dislike cult of personality for people who haven't actually done v much to deserve it.

and when i say "nor should people have to live to some stupid standard of family existence" i include people with families in that as well, fwiw.

self-righteousness doesn't work when your first instinct was to throw out personal insults.

pls direct me to the personal insults because i'm pretty sure i didn't drop any

i just dislike cult of personality for people who haven't actually done v much to deserve it.

riiiiiight

are you normally this aggressive when someone holds a different opinion?

I'm with you on this one, LG, not a 100% though.

i'm not being aggressive at all.

has anyone ever labelled you a misogynist because you criticised an article that happened to be written by a woman?

i suppose it'd be okay because you'd know that word only applies to other men.

The lifestyle features in the Guardian generally irk me because they assume (probably accurately) that the readership enjoys/shares a certain level of income and has access to every new metropolitan fad and fancy - these features almost never question consumerism, middle class privilege or Londoncentrism.

I can see why Zoe Williams gets a lot of work from the Guardian - she can turn out something decentish on pretty much any subject - but there's something a bit gruesome about her using her kids as another source of 'good copy' (again, this applies to plenty of male Guardian hacks, too).

The lifestyle features in the Guardian generally irk me because they assume (probably accurately) that the readership enjoys/shares a certain level of income and has access to every new metropolitan fad and fancy - these features almost never question consumerism, middle class privilege or Londoncentrism.

and a certain lifestyle. the list of people who don't have kids is significantly longer and more diverse than irish dickheads in their 30s - and getting longer.

has anyone ever labelled you a misogynist because you criticised an article that happened to be written by a woman?

i suppose it'd be okay because you'd know that word only applies to other men.

― Junior Dictionary (LocalGarda), Thursday, March 19, 2015 10:34 AM (11 seconds ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

hmm

1) i am not labelling you a misogynist
2) i am not saying you hated the piece because it is written by a woman
3) you don't seem to think a woman writing about something she did with her family has a valid place within a newspaper like the guardian, but it does, so suck it up

but yeah this is about women and kitchens and domestic life and therefore not important or deserving of coverage in the guardian, do i have that right?

the list of people who don't have kids is significantly longer and more diverse than irish dickheads in their 30s - and getting longer.

and so the guardian shouldn't do lifestyle pieces about/for people who have kids then? i would have read this piece and enjoyed it last year when i didn't have a kid, you know, people can have interests in people whose lives and lifestyles aren't exactly like theirs?

what exactly is your argument against this piece then? why do you think the guardian is worse off for its presence within its virtual pages?

i just personally find an article about someone making creme eggs with their kids to on the bemusing side of tedious and vapid.

what makes the subject vapid?

what do you think the guardian should be covering instead of a piece on how its readers can bake with their kids, and the writer's amusing account of attempting said endeavour with her kids?

like, i am not trying to be aggressive here, but what is the complaint beyond, "this does not apply to my exact personal experience"? should the entire website only be aimed at you?

i read the guardian food pages all the time - i like plenty of what's there and plenty of it is written by women, fuchsia dunlop is prob my favourite food writer.

i just think this type of "make and do" piece with a journalist and their kids at the centre of it reads more like daily mail.

i'm not sure that my view qualifies as thinking this article has no place in the guardian though - i'm not policing a content trough like the guardian - i just think it was strangely prominent.

i generally find it weird when i'm meant to feel affinity with a columnist. i don't think these articles ever look good.

xpost the complaint is not a great deal more than "i find this piece boring - does anyone else agree this is a step too far into covering a really everyday thing - and that we don't need to read a named journalist's take on something many many people do and are probably doing right now"

you're the one who is tending to try and make my citing the intro more than it actually is.

Isn't this just part and parcel of commissioning for a newspaper? Very little is going to be of interest to the whole readership because it's by necessity very broad, otherwise you run the risk of looking like the middle-aged Stones fan shaking your fist because they've covered an R&B singer again.

The lifestyle features in the Guardian generally irk me because they assume (probably accurately) that the readership enjoys/shares a certain level of income and has access to every new metropolitan fad and fancy - these features almost never question consumerism, middle class privilege or Londoncentrism.

I don't think it's an assumption, newspapers hold a vast amount of information about who's actually reading now, probably more than ever, and I bet you any money they know full well that features like this play well with a sizeable enough chunk of their readership. I agree they could write them in a way that seems less Londoncentric or, well, smug, a lot of the time, and I don't care about Zoe Williams' family.

FWIW "make your own Creme Eggs" (rather than giving money to Cadburys) is almost self-parodic in its appeal to a certain kind of ostentatiously anti-consumerist Guardian parent.

well, fair enough, and apologies if i seemed aggressive earlier.

(Many xposts there - that was to Ward Fowler)

there's been a family supplement in the guardian for at least a decade, probably more

just because an online format means you can now see the saturday supplements you'd have instinctively chucked away in 2005 doesn't mean there isn't an audience for them

as i've probably said before, there's a lot that deserves to be put into this thread, but the harmless stuff the most regular posters choose is...revealing

i mean, certainly no one writing about food in the guardian should be mentioned here before tony naylor

accepted - i prob was overly touchy but i honestly wasn't trying to lambast it as little women or something.

Isn't this just part and parcel of commissioning for a newspaper? Very little is going to be of interest to the whole readership because it's by necessity very broad, otherwise you run the risk of looking like the middle-aged Stones fan shaking your fist because they've covered an R&B singer again.

OF COURSE! but come on, this is ilx. if we took this pragmatic approach then why would we even be here? i mean stevie writes about music!

And even within the framework of "not everything in this paper is for me", sometimes a thing leaps out at you and you just think "who cares about your life, zoe williams, why is it held up as something we should read about in a paper as opposed to anyone else's life?"

It feels like the worst kind of media - like what if I do have kids and don't give a shit about baking? Also generally the cult of baking is a pretty suffocating presence in Britain these days.

xpost a revelation shows little to the blind

my accepted was to stevie, xposts

tbrr a lot of the time I probably have a more generous reaction to these kind of features than they deserve because they wind up the atrocious pig people who comment underneath them so much

the Creme Egg one I took to be at least partly inspired by that 'pimp my snack' thing which, and I'm not gonna spend time seeing if my stereotypes are accurate right now, seems likely to be the domain of probably-childless 30something males

don't have any kind of issue with Tony Naylor's writing either fwiw

re the Kanye news piece that Matt highlights earlier. That was me. That was written, literally, in 10 minutes, while simultaneously cooking my kids' tea, so we could get it out at the time of the announcement - that was all the notice we had. Not only was it written by me in those 10 minutes, it was also put on to a web page by me, had its furniture done by me, had its tags done by me, had its picture added by me. So I apologise for the fact that in those 10 minutes I wasn't able to reach the heights of great writing, as well as doing all the production work. It is what it is.

Also generally the cult of baking is a pretty suffocating presence in Britain these days.

get with the cult, baking is AWESOME

being baked for is the most awesome :)