Is the Guardian worse than it used to be?

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?

i wonder if relentlessly attacking their readership was really such a good business strategy for the guardian.

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DbilrhLW4AE7JCI?format=jpg&name=small

aunt wedgdie was sometimes otm and was here on the Graun in 2008.

One of the interesting things is that the Guardian is one of the few British papers which is required to be profitable. Vast swathes of our press are just vanity projects for the most reactionary billionaires in the world.

— Phil McDuff (@Mc_Heckin_Duff) July 16, 2020

i bet loads of Graun staff back then and especially now did use and still do use the NHS, but that is aunt honey wedgie nebb for you!

Benn was a good person but glaringly b/w in his political analysis, but also basically correct as well.

The Guardian absolutely could have been a relatively neutral but left aligned clearing house during the Corbyn years, and would have garnered a more loyal following. Offering critique, a platform for marginalised voices, a media counterweight and ofc investigative pieces. Alas.

— Jack Witek (@jack_witek) July 16, 2020

whatever happened to Rusbridger's 10 ideas for Open Journalism lol!

Somebody start a Guardian 2

from a speck of Toynbee dna, found on a posh cup in a pret...

don't know much about The Guardian, but always liked the film reviews and think Meera Sodha's recipes are great

yeah I have done a few Meera Sodha recipes and she is excellent, and I hope she has a stable future beyond this sinking carbuncle of shite. The film reviews have been unreadable garbage for decades, especially the film reviews of Peter Bradshaw. He is fucking awful and I'm not ashamed to admit I'm vindictive enough to say I would bake a cake if I heard that useless cunt lost his job!

I have liked their Cannes coverage but I guess that's a thing of the past

I agree with Dan S

It's honestly not so bad when you read the paper version and the comment is just a couple pages you skip, problem is the model of clickbaiting with hate reads doesn't make a readership particularly endeared.

I doubt the metrics for online stuff are very good for indicating the things people buy the paper version for and imagine that Saturday edition sales will take a further hit as 'supplements' is what people want to read when detached from the content swirl

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

― Li'l Brexit (Tracer Hand), Thursday, 16 July 2020 bookmarkflaglink

Actually wonder if the data showed them that ppl were reading more of the arts coverage than Jonathan Freeland, say, whether they would let him go. Their liberal-gone-to-shit politics is what they do.

As it is maybe they can get John Harris to review an album or two. Get him back in the game.

I suspect there will still be a supplement (it's too big a driver of print sales for there not to be) but it'll be three sections amalgamated into one and probably on cheaper paper etc.

I don't really believe that its stance towards Corbyn (which was messy, conflicted, contradictory rather than uniformly hostile) is much of a factor here. They were quite happy to keep publishing the likes of Owen Jones and Aditya Chakrabortty alongside Rafael Behr and Gaby Hinsliff, there was plenty of pro-Corbyn opinion in there. More to the point they were hitting target on the voluntary contribution thing, which shows that enough people valued it as an entity. The Guardian is in trouble because the pandemic has accelerated longer term decline. (Fwiw I think the Suzanne Moore thing and the TERFy stuff more has damaged its brand a lot more, particularly among younger readers, which is why so many of its own staff put their name to a letter protesting it).

At the heart of this is a conflict between what people buy a paper for, especially a weekend paper (leisurely Saturday reading, crosswords, lifestyle, sport) and what flies online (polarising and shareable commentary, also sport probably). Very few people buy a paper for the opinion pieces - with one or two exceptions - but I bet you more people are reading, say, Jonathan Freedland now than did 15 years ago.

the model of clickbaiting with hate reads doesn't make a readership particularly endeared

This is definitely true though.

Also the number of times you'd find a copy of the Weekend or the Guide just sitting at your pub table from a previous occupant, I wonder how many sales they've lost because people aren't spending a leisurely Saturday afternoon in the pub (not to mention setting foot in shops at all if they can help it).

"Owen Jones and Aditya Chakrabortty alongside Rafael Behr and Gaby Hinsliff"

Maybe it feels balanced in the opinion pages (you can add more names in each column) but it did feel like the reporting itself was anti-Corbyn, and this is before you get to the Observer and it's shit stirring. The coverage of the issues raised by its left voices wasn't also dealt with v well (John Harris again).

(They also got rid of Dawn Forster too, after writing some stuff criticising Tom Watson.)

Whatever it feels like, the criticism on twitter is in regards to it's journalists asking for contributions more than anything. But they want it to be a Labour paper, which it absolutely never was.