Is the Guardian worse than it used to be?

pls to make 'guardfather' photoshop

― pee-wee and the power men (bizarro gazzara), Friday, January 12, 2018 12:57 PM (twenty minutes ago) Bookmark

Or Guardfellas.

It's making my eye do funny things between the T and the H, possibly because of the sloping tops of the U underneath.

I don't like this new Guardian typeface.

I intend to buy the paper today, for the last time before it changes.

that'll show 'em.

I found two old Guardians in a storage box recently. One from when it looked like Clinton might get impeached and another 10 yr old Saturday edition with my uncle interviewed about abuse he suffered at an Irish industrial school in the 50's. It got me checking if Francis Wheen is still alive, haven't heard much from him for years, although his Marx book appears to be on my bookshelf and I can't remember reading it or where it came from.

new layout will add an exciting retro feel to my anonymous death threats

I found an old G2 from 2001, last year, and was amazed at how much more content it contained than G2 today. It was almost like, say, a TLS.

I briefly got addicted to Kakuro in the Berliner era, but G2 has sucked shit for years.

"We have thought carefully about how our use of typography, colour and images can support and enhance Guardian journalism. We have introduced a font called Guardian Headline that is simple, confident and impactful. This was a collaboration with the design experts Commercial Type, who created the original Guardian Egyptian, and is easier to read. We’re using a range of energetic colours, and the much-loved Guardian visual wit and style remain at the heart of the look. The masthead has a renewed strength and confidence to represent the Guardian’s place and mission in these challenging times."

https://www.theguardian.com/media/2018/jan/15/guardian-new-look-online-katharine-viner

Is it really easier to read? The previous version was easy enough to read.

What, in this context, is 'visual wit'?

"The masthead has a renewed strength and confidence to represent the Guardian’s place and mission in these challenging times."

This seems like cant, to an embarrassing degree.

I think I should try wearing energetic colours, see if they rub off

newspaper colours always rub off, it's why i never read them

(tbf the non-colours are worse)

(lol hullo there to a surprise visit from my joke-no-joke answer why i stopped reading dailies in c.1990 when it was actually a bit relevant to the experience of same)

Katharine Viner was on TODAY this morning in an interview with John Humphrys who had the temerity to ask her about a gender pay gap at the Guardian.

Now I think about this, it seems particularly bizarre - a) because JH has disgraced himself over the issue and possibly shouldn't be allowed to report on it; b) because it isn't what today's specific Guardian story (ie: the relaunch) is about.

JH interviewed very badly but I heard KV say that the Guardian had gone from losing £38m to losing £25m to breaking even next year.

Viner commits the Guardian to follow five principles:

• Develop ideas that help to improve the world, not just critique it.

• Collaborate with readers and others to have greater impact.

• Diversify, to have richer reporting from a representative newsroom.

• Be meaningful in all our work.

• Report fairly on people as well as power and find things out. This underpins all of the above.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/jan/15/five-principles-guardian-editor-readers-open-door

Somebody who can say that one of their 5 principles is 'Be meaningful in all our work' does not inspire confidence.

And this: 'Report fairly on people as well as power and find things out' - seems to roll 2 or 3 things together.

It doesn't give the impression that she is very good at thinking clearly.

have they said anything about how much they spent on the redesign?

• Develop ideas that help to improve the world, not just critique it.

be craven centrists at every opportunity

• Collaborate with readers and others to have greater impact.

source free content from any mug willing to offer it

• Diversify, to have richer reporting from a representative newsroom.

while at the same time cutting down the number of people we employ as often as we can

• Be meaningful in all our work.

not a great start since this is meaningless

• Report fairly on people as well as power and find things out. This underpins all of the above.

see point one

shdn't really go into detail but I have a friend who is probably not gonna bother freelance writing for the Graun any more because the pay is nowhere near enough to justify the amount of work put in

‘find things out’ is both cracking me up and making me angry

pretty sure "report fairly on people" means "John Harris continues to offer a platform to racist provincials"

reprot fairly on people unless they're jeremy corbyn

"report fairly on the Lib Dems no matter how funny they are"

"find things out" is a weird tell: it comes across as "we just remembered we're meant to be journalists!" but actually that's not really an area where people have been criticising them (think Dawn Foster): their weakness is in unclarity of ethos* and who they invite to be columnists.** The old school version was TELL THE STORY SOMEONE DOESN'T WANT TOLD (which is via some ghastly old rogue like derek jameson but it's still a handy thumbnail)

*I slightly fear "renewed strength and confidence" means "once more the boldly focused champions of the SDP and its inheritors
**There are FAR too many of these -- which is an industry-wide problem, partly bcz the hugely increased niche-ification and mannerist formalisation of sections sets up much more Space That Must Be Filled, partly bcz the back-end costs to punditry are WAAAAAY less than the back-end costs to investigative journalism

I quite like it when Mark S shows his roots in the inky HOT METAL days of the old Fleet Street.

I agree that 'find things out' is a funny, even embarrassing phrase. But insofar as it does mean something, it should be point 1, not an afterthought to point 5?

'Report the truth'; 'find out the facts'; whatever phrase is best - this should be their starting point.

'Develop ideas' is a bizarre candidate for the Guardian's primary role - if anything it belongs to a think tank or conceivably eg to the New Left Review. Surely newspapers have never thought of themselves as mainly 'developing ideas'. That the Guardian does, suggests 'Comment' is now seen as the heart of the paper. But as Mark says, this needn't be the case, as their actual reporting is still good.

but comment is free

the commentary is what makes it impossible to support or fund the guardian, the very idea of helping to perpetuate simon jenkins

About 13,300,000 results (0.99 seconds)

No results found for "tell the story someone doesn't want told".

journalism is dead

There I was thinking the retirement of rufus might signal the beginning of a vastly better era for the paper

I assume this is supposed to pull double-duty as a mission statement and staff wellbeing charter. Did they ever fix their problem with zero hour contracting?

the quote i had in mind is a little different: it's from this (very entetaining) essay in alex cockburn's corruptins of empire (sadly not all visible via googlebooks PSYCH! policy

jameson says something like "i don;t hold with all this high falutin stuff. i don't claim to be pure… i'm a newsapaperman, i tell stories" (which is obviously a bit different)

(the viner list is the very essenve of the kind of high falute he was having none of)

haha i'd sort of compressed jameson's cheerful directness with orwell's slightly fussier point:
"Journalism is printing what someone else does not want printed: everything else is public relations"

^^^nick cohen quotes this now and then which may be why i directed myself to forget its provenance (not least bcz it long ago shaded into the "ethics of journalism in gaming")

Have you read Perry Anderson's elegy for Cockburn? It is called COUNTERPUNCHER and bizarrely like all PA's elegies, it says things like "A fine chef, he was irresistible to the opposite sex".

I always get George Orwell and Derek Jameson mixed up too!

they are the same imo

"do they mean us? they surely 1984"

I still get Derek Malcolm mixed up with Derek Jameson, even though the latter isn't too active these days.

yes i have! you pointed me to it i think: my perryman

http://www.azquotes.com/picture-quotes/quote-utopia-would-seem-to-offer-the-spectacle-of-one-of-those-rare-phenomena-whose-concept-fredric-jameson-66-4-0412.jpg

lol what a twerp he is

That quotation does not seem very sensible to me.

he means "utopia's only reality is imaginary" (given what i know, i feel there's a but coming, which never arrives bcz it took him six lines to say something i said in one

In utopia, the map is the territory.

That is well said! :O

now we are here in xanadu

In Soviet Russia territory maps you

Paul Mason column ditched.

Congrats to @guardian on redesign. Upside: masthead logo v sharp. Downside: no room for my weekly column anymore. It's the best newspaper in the U.K. And I hope to go on writing for it... (1/2)

— Paul Mason (@paulmasonnews) January 15, 2018

He was one of the most radical writers to have a regular slot in the mainstream media.

Perhaps the Guardian think Owen Jones is enough to attract JC supporters.

I assume the Cameron-speechwriter columnists continue.

Deborah Orr ditched too. Idk if they’re clearing out some of the higher paid writers.

well that sucks, mason is/was great

i look forward to welcoming their new, more affordable, craven centrist columnists