Is the Guardian worse than it used to be?

re the author of the bad diary column: she is paid to be a creative writer by the University of Kent, so it is not great (eg for her colleagues) for her to publish a whimsical article in national media talking about how she's not writing.

It's a bit like a plumber writing an article saying he's not plumbing - not because contracts have dried up during the crisis, but just because he doesn't feel like it.

The University of Kent has just been announced as one of the 10 UK universities in most financial danger of closure.

180 people to leave Guardian -- how many work for it in the first place ?? I mean that must be 25% of its payroll or something?

It's a bit like a plumber writing an article saying he's not plumbing - not because contracts have dried up during the crisis, but just because he doesn't feel like it.

Would still prefer reading this than what they published now tbh

pinefox & lbi otm

plumbers invariably have very amusing anecdotes about getting sprayed with human shit, some guardian writers figuratively spray shit at their dwindling audience!

the guardian financial plan in full:

i: sack yet more subs and fact-checkers
ii: crowdsource corrections factual grammatical and lol stylistic to twitter
iii: scream non-stop abt "cancel culture" when said corrections roll in

iv: get more writers in to write about how they're not writing
v: add nude pictures to said articles
vi: profit

vii: go tits up anyway

graunlyfans

Close the Observer pay spell checkers you cowards!

You could have John Harris ambushing your nan in the high street, or you could have this. It’s not even a choice. pic.twitter.com/5GvoCCL6Se

— Elvis Buñuelo (@Mr_Considerate) July 15, 2020

i don’t know alan partridge, how do snails get up to the fourth floor

come on ppl, they use the ESCARGOLATOR

give me this man's bad column

You are not dating the editor.

Oh right is that with it is lol

can't wait to read more copied-and-pasted press releases in the news pages of the slimmed-down grauniad

Before tweeting "learn to code" at a journalist worrying about losing their job you should learn basic fucking human decency.

— James Ball (@jamesrbuk) July 15, 2020

NEW: The Guardian is to cut 180 jobs, including 70 in editorial. Equates to 12pc of roles across the company. Revenues are expected to be down by "well over £25m" compared with pre-Covid budgets as advertising, recruitment, events and print circulation come under pressure.

— Chris Williams (@cg_williams) July 15, 2020

The Guardian’s challenge: 2015 total staff costs were £123.9m. Last year after turnaround plan, hundreds of voluntary redundancies and tens of millions of pounds of restructuring costs: £124.1m. 🤷‍♂️

— Chris Williams (@cg_williams) July 15, 2020

Ah, basic fucking human decency, the hallmark of the journalist's trade

How does Chiles get to 'date' people? It's grotesque.

Would the Guardian cuts not include coders?

I wish James Ball would do literally anything other than journalism

oof

Update: Saturday edition to bear brunt of Guardian editorial cuts. The Guide, Weekend, Review and Travel print sections all to be closed, replacement TBA. Elsewhere parts of sport and lifestyle depts to be reduced. Plans to introduce “truly digital-first” editorial processes.

— Chris Williams (@cg_williams) July 15, 2020

So less reasons to read it. Not that I like it's arts coverage but at least it isn't it's political coverage (which it mirrors but still..)

Lifestyle section only reduced?

Oof indeed.

It strikes me that one of the problems faced by left-leaning media not faced by the right is that a lot of the potential readers see it as a betrayal when publications run pieces they disagree with.

— Jonn Elledge (@JonnElledge) July 15, 2020

Lol, if only that were true rather than treating left/-leaning people with contempt

Not sure what left-leaning media he's talking about

maybe that one that runs bullshit stories on behalf of GCHQ and ran something like 1600 smear pieces on a centre-left LOTO.

the Lib Dem newspaper of record? nah it can't be them

It's quite the challop to claim that the right doesn't cry betrayal whenever it sees something it doesn't like in one of its own papers.

This is terrible news and this tweet underlines that they could retain these features, which people actually like and want, by instead letting go of their absolutely awful full time opinion creatures who have mostly been addressing each other for years. pic.twitter.com/D6YnQ64hue

— Flying_Rodent (@flying_rodent) July 16, 2020

How does the tweet (as Flying Rodent claims) underline that?

It looks like it's saying the opposite: that the closure of these sections is also bringing closure to dreadful Freeman.

Or maybe Freeman's not leaving, I don't know. It seems too much to hope for.

Interview Woody Allen, as long as it's not Freeman doing it lol

She won’t be leaving. Weekend is not her only slot at the paper.

It underlines it because she’ll presumably still be shiting on elsewhere in the paper while the parts people actually care about go.

i think partly it was "high profile nudnik reacts to hundreds of less well paid colleagues losing their jobs by boohooing about her cosplaying a journalist gig" too

She has family money too, so even if she did go...

Bet all this mirrors cuts elsewhere at the NT, BBC where ppl who are most established stay on, or more likely have tighter contracts to do so.

Real desire to cut the ppl who are bigots and we don't like but however they shuffle the cards the issue is post-covid and and revenue collapse (and for public sector orgs an inadequate rescue package) and not the bigotry that comes out of its columnists.

I see.

So the sections close and she stays on.

Dire.

They're not killing off lifestyle content itself, but newspapers are just overbuilt for what people actually want from them right now. People might like the Weekend or Travel or Review sections but is anyone actually buying the paper for them right now at a point when hardly anyone is leaving the house? What does a Travel section even look like right now, particularly one that anyone would want to advertise in? How do you justify having multiple, expensive, sections in a paper that the vast majority are reading online?

They will have enough data to know what people do and don't want to read (and hopefully still enough editorial judgement to know what has value even if it isn't driving mad numbers). Unfortunately that's likely to benefit some of the more - ahem - divisive columnists but they might still see an opportunity to quietly shuffle Suzanne Moore or whoever away.

This is really shit for the production people and admin staff and less heralded journalists who will bear the brunt of it, it's also shit for anyone who still does like those sections and buys the physical paper for them. The problem is that the pandemic has massively accelerated trends that were happening anyway.

I can see killing Travel section but surely people are watching lots of films and TV and perhaps reading too. I'd be amazed if the data showed no one was reading their arts coverage and instead were clicking to check in to Catherine Bennett's TERFery and Rafa beating the Brexit drum.

It's the physical sections themselves that are going, it's unlikely they're going to stop doing arts coverage altogether (although what there is may suffer).

had to google that to see what Benitez has been up to

Yeah they will do arts coverage but I'm guessing with the job cuts it will be massively scaled down when actually it shouldn't be? We'll see..

well not a lot of theatre, dance, comedy to review...

True...and Brexit is still happening...

The well of exclusive Labour antisemitism scoops on the other hand appears completely inexhaustible

A question that I come across on my timeline is people asking: where would you go for writing on books and music? The newspaper and music press were formations for myself but what was decisive was encountering all sorts writing (and shitposting) on the web too.

It's a bit odd seeing younger people than me asking this. Like if newspaper culture sections go under there is a ton of stuff online. And surely younger people (lol) read newspapers online in this broken form of a page here or there, as a small part of a pretty varied world?