Is the Guardian worse than it used to be?

The age of the newspaper is dead.
― mark s, Tuesday, 3 July 2001

Something has clearly gone wrong with G2: the other week they ran a page-long feature on the phenomenon of "Jumping the shark" (referring to that moment when a long-running tv fave finally loses the plot completely, apparently derived from a late episode of Happy Days where Fonzie, yes, jumped a shark). This was all well and good (except it was inane and ripped off from a website [this is a whole other can of worms]), but they ran an almost IDENTICAL story in the Guide not two weeks previously. Do they not read their own paper, or did they simply think the readers wouldn't notice?

What the paper still has going for it: George Monbiot's column, the Diary, Steve Bell, giving review space to Ians Sansom and Penman, and the tv columns of Nancy Banks-Smith. (When N B-S finally pops her clogs I will have to think very hard about buying the paper.)

What is leading the paper ever closer to the abyss: consistently terrible pop coverage (honorable exceptions: Maddy Costa, Betty Clarke); the fatuous new Saturday mag (Zoe Ball on dressing? match the celebrity with the pet? that awful woman talking about words that should be banned??); Charlotte bloody Raven.

― stevie t, Tuesday, 3 July 2001

such different times.

True that, no-one's bigged up Monbiot on here for some time

charlotte raven is like dorothy parker's more talented sister compared with the current shower imho.

The TV section really died a death didn't it? Nancy Banks Smith and that other dude whose name escapes me were always thoughtful and interesting, now it's the insufferably dull drudgery of Sam "I'm a bloke me" Wollaston.

reporters behind exposing mandelson's home loans, neil hamilton's brown envelopes and jonathan aitken's rusty sword of truth are taking redundancy, so i think in answer to the thread's question we can say, yes, objectively worse.

Fuck, what? First I've heard of this ... can you tell us more? Link?

http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2009/jun/19/duncan-campell-david-hencke-guardian

Well, shit. Wonder what their plans are? A couple of the names on that list will be old enough to treat VR as early retirement, but ... sad times, really.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/jun/21/kevin-mckenna-michael-martin-comment

not sure if this is a joke...

Hahaha. KMcK is an old and dear friend and former boss of mine. Without having read the piece, I'm going to say "yes, he'll be taking the piss" ...

... hmm. Having read it, I think that whatever he's doing there hasn't really worked, has it? There's some lovely writing in there but it's wasted because, er, the whole premise of the piece is fucked.

One of the papers I work for went and did extensive vox-pops in Springburn a few weeks ago, just as the shit was hitting the fan, and not one of Martin's constituents had a good word to say about him as a politician. (A surprising number of fellow MPs -- even the ones putting the boot in -- said they thought he was a lovely bloke, just a shit Speaker.)

Was there an element of snobbery in the treatment of Martin by some hacks and some fellow MPs? Undoubtedly. Did this cross over into crass Scottish stereotyping? At times, yes. Is this something to get upset by? Not unless you're fantastically thin-skinned and have nothing better to do with your time (neither of which is true of Kevin McKenna). Sure, there's always a place in a Sunday paper for an amusing devil's-advocate comment-piece ... but this doesn't work at all, basically because Martin is fundamentally indefensible.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/video/2009/jun/23/bartons-britain-liverpool-tanning

i am enjoying my 16 page pro-biotic pullout today. but then i'm a big fan of bifudus actiregularis...

"Jamie T is a storyteller, a raconteur, the heir apparent to Billy Bragg, blessed with a talent for making the mundane extraordinary. His songs carry all the clutter and dust, the rattle and roll and restlessness of real life; they arrive with a twinkle in their eye, news to tell and dirt beneath their fingernails."

Dear God, Laura has outdone herself today.

You could at least stick up for your brother.

i never understood the joke where you guys call it the Grauniad. Can you explain for a yankee/dumbass

I believe it is because at one time their sub-editing/proofing was legendarily poor, but correct me if I'm wrong...

It's from Private Eye magazine

can you explain it?

Ears are wounds already did

Yeah, it had a reputation (not sure how deserved really) for being worse than other papers at printing typos.

What ears said. Joke is: copy editing was so bad they could have mis-spelled the masthead.

ah, thanks guys :)

Not the greatest joke ever, admittedly, but it got the point across.

I'm not actually sure whether it was the copy editors (usually called subeditors, or subs over here) that were held responsible, or typesetters back in the pre-DTP age.

It's a typical Private Eye joke - was funny, kept doing it until it wasn't funny, becomes part of the furniture. I almost cannot say Guardian without pronouncing it Gruniad.

Grauniad redirects to Guardian on wiki.

And grauniad.co.uk redirects to GU.

I think I need a productive way to spend my free time.

Maybe I'm imagining this but didn't they actually misspell it that way themselves once, in 1981 or something (not on the masthead though)? And then Private Eye picked up and ran with it forever.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2009/jun/27/internet-dating

Barton:

His lyrics pin down a time, a precise moment that records the shifting of language, trends, generations. And so we have Smirnoff Ice rhyming with "head lice", we have "oh-my-goody-gosh darnit" tucked in among the gin-and-tonics and Capri car bonnets. And there's "a bang bang Anglo Saxons at the disco/ A tish you all fall down/ Hound dogs round on the prowl" - three short lines that draw together this nation's fifth-century beginnings, the nursery rhymes of the 1880s, the disco of the 1970s, the rock'n'roll of the 1950s.

yes, she did say "His lyrics pin down a time, a precise moment" ... "this nation's fifth-century beginnings, the nursery rhymes of the 1880s, the disco of the 1970s, the rock'n'roll of the 1950s."

"oh-my-goody-gosh darnit" is up to the minute slang for the kids at the back of the bus I'm led to believe.

wow, talk about dead air:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/video/2009/jun/27/how-to-dress-short-suits

PF did you read the piece about Springsteen yesterday? I couldn't make it past the second paragraph.

by the geezer they always get to write the same uninteresting article about himself and the Boss? if so then my reaction was the same as yours.

Sarfraz Manzoor isn't it? "Growing up in suburban Luton, the Boss was my route of escape, I imagined I was driving down route 66 with a girl at my side rather than sitting in my bedroom blah blah blah etc..."

witnessed the biggest festival hissyfit, g2 columnist tanya gold not being allowed into guardian VIP bit, screaming 'Im on the front cover'

i await her 2000 word article on the subject, taking in many past bfs and attacking society's perceived love for something something disgrace oh god

i think a couple ppl in my family have read sarfraz manzoor's book

well, they read 'greetings from bury park', which i am assuming is the same guy, unless there are two people who write about suburban luton and bruce springstreen, mostly

luton crew represent

Actual Guardian writer picks up on the trend that seems to make Guardian readers here hate the Guardian...

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/jul/01/confessional-journalism-women-plastic-surgery

(maybe?)

i was just looking at that in the paper vers. it's pretty good; last couple sentences v good. i think the trend decried in this thread is more epitomised by a G2 cover earlier this week with tanya gold as 'tanya the festival fairy'. (i was surprised to see no hate for that on here, actually.)

also noticed today featured a "20-year-old girl", which is an advance on the "18-year-old girl" someone on here was complaining about.

scrolling up i just noticed that hadley freeman's 'ask hadley' column about band t shirts is what first got this "7-year-old thread" revived

http://www.guardian.co.uk/travel/video/2009/jul/06/bartons-britain-m1-motorway

'Frail red poppies dance by the roadside ... and the wind comes charging at your legs'

'The M1 [...] is a very, very good road'

I read the Festival Fairy article in the print edition. They're giving her enough rope.

Aarrrgghhh...don't anyone show that M1 thing to Patrick Keiller.