Is the Guardian worse than it used to be?

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.

steve bell is going

I think that's fundamentally right. It has never been a 'left-wing newspaper' and a lot of the complaints are from people expecting it to be one. At best, it's lower-case liberal with a handful of left-leaning voices mixed in, but resolutely hostile to socialism.

xp

Their coverage of Corbyn is absolutely at least as big a factor in their success in estranging segments of their readership (esp under 40) as their TERF shite

Guardian doesn't seem particularly interested in tomorrows readers, who they'll be and where they'll come from. Maybe thats a problem across the board but seems more so in this case

But the TERF stuff is a lot more damaging, particularly among the under 30s where support for trans rights is overwhelming, something like 70% at least. The proportion of young people who would specifically identify as pro-Corbyn, or let their media choices be driven by it, is a lot lower (although most voted Labour some of them did so more relucantly than in 2017, Brexit was an effective wedge issue between the two elections). And young people view the treatment of politicians differently to anything that affects the right of minority groups to exist in public places.

Young people are overwhelmingly Labour, especially in the Corbyn years?

Guardian doesn't seem particularly interested in tomorrows readers, who they'll be and where they'll come from. Maybe thats a problem across the board but seems more so in this case

― anvil, Friday, 17 July 2020 bookmarkflaglink

Well the Guardian is a lib paper but a lot of left leaning ppl read it. It definitely courts that audience in its opinion pages. But then it will alienate it, hence some of the reaction to the job cuts.

The Mail is only interested in one audience, by contrast. I doubt it has ever run a pro-trans rights piece ever.

suspect a lot of left leaning ppl only read it because it's the only game in town that's not paywalled and has half decent web design

Their coverage of Corbyn is absolutely at least as big a factor in their success in estranging segments of their readership (esp under 40) as their TERF shite

Only game in town, that's it.

I didn’t forget this 🙃

BREAKING. The Observer tactical voting guide for the top 50 seats that could decide the election, recommends Labour voters in Kensington vote ⁦@LibDems⁩ to stop the hard Brexit Tory. #SamForKen #GE2019 https://t.co/AuqUbzp6sD

— Sam Gyimah (@SamGyimah) December 8, 2019

📊🧐

Emma Dent Coad lost that seat by 150 votes. Gyimah was over 7k behind.


https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kensington_(UK_Parliament_constituency)

I'm not sure when I last read a guardian article. I've had an aversion for a while and I think it's been a good decade since I actually bought a paper but I was still occasionally getting linked to pieces (although less than to the FT or foreign papers) but even that seems to have dried up now. It's just v clearly written by and for a different class of people and the whole enterprise feels like a bitter echo from a v different age

Also I suppose what I'm saying is that Corbynism one way or another is in the past, the scars will take a long time to heal but the next generation of readers won't care about it, but if they keep publishing TERF articles under the guise of debate it's going to poison the relationship with those readers for years to come.

Will they survive long enough to get a next generation of readers? They've alienated a portion of the current one.

Also as things get worse they might need to give a strong voice to economically left material they might be uncomfortable with tbh.

the next generation of newspaper readers

and other fictions.

Up and coming blacksmiths

Time for The Guardian FM

That's the whole point, even this generation of young people don't buy physical newspapers but they still engage with the news and read articles (even if they hate them). The same will be true of the next generation as well in some way and the Guardian knows full well that they are never going to turn up at a newsagents and pay money for a physical paper but they might still read it online and presumably they want them to keep doing so.

It's doubtful whether that will ever be an economically viable proposition given the amount of content that newspapers put out on a daily basis but it does explain why they are going out of their way to keep older readers onside.

Even before the pandemic I would not have been shocked at Guardian print edition ending this year or next.

I'm pretty sure I haven't bought a physical newspaper in five years at the very least, maybe eight or nine, and I used to do habitually.

V interesting insights on hate reading model.

the hate-reading works so many, many ways

— Owen Hatherley (@owenhatherley) July 17, 2020

in here Left Twitter and Appalling Old Twats have a sort of mutual abusive relationship, and it's miserable (esp as it's only the Appalling Old Twats who really benefit from it)

— Owen Hatherley (@owenhatherley) July 17, 2020

otm don't give them the oxygen - delete your twitter and close these tabs

Amen to that.

I will never log off

Good points on how the model has moved on.

I think that actually the moment has passed. (A take! A veritable take, sir! I thought old England had lost the art!). Clickbait doesn't work anymore, no do hate-reads or even social shares. Advertising rates are simply too low, Facebook takes too much of the pot and agencies...

— Dan Davies (@dsquareddigest) July 17, 2020

I think Alphie and I must follow like 95% of the same people on Twitter because he’s always posting stuff I’m also reading and about to link. That’s an interesting thread, I had never heard of Nathan Tankus!

Who I follow breakdown:

95%: same as ilx poster gyac
4%: tankies
0.5%: ilx people(not gyac tho')
O.2%: ilx people that don't post anymore #onhere
0.3%: committed shitposters/book Twitter ppl

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/D5CRW2CWAAAfnkt.jpg

long live the O.2%

but they still engage with the news and read articles

...is this true?