Is the Guardian worse than it used to be?

Alex Kapranos’ real surname is Huntley but after Soham the whole family decided to change to his mum’s maiden name.

Suzanne Moore has left the Guardian and apparently cannot say more than that (yeahright, give it two hours and a bottle of red).

she can't even slope off to Amsterdam for some mushrooms right now poor bairn

Gutted!

— Jess Phillips MP (@jessphillips) November 16, 2020

Was coming here to post that, truly tragic, am sure she’ll have plenty of space on the Spectator/unmissable cow site/The Critic.

If I was a well known columnist, and I had accepted a windfall payout as part of company-wide costcutting, I too would probably like to pretend that I quit on principle.

— Elvis Buñuelo (@Mr_Considerate) November 16, 2020

you'd have to establish a track record of principles tho

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Em9jDVlW4AEmJ4l?format=png&name=large Owen Jones should sue

lol, of course Jess Phillips is gutted.

Suzanne will be fine.

This thing that the right wing press does of content policing the Guardian is very odd, just very odd indeed https://t.co/VvaKI6OV7F

— Simon (@simonk_133) November 16, 2020

Get her next!

As a reader, I'm devastated that Suzanne is leaving. As a journalist, I'm shocked that others in my profession believe that differing opinions don't belong in a newspaper. Don't agree with something? Write a column, don't personally abuse the writer or try to shut her down https://t.co/Lb03Q5yECb

— Hadley Freeman (@HadleyFreeman) November 16, 2020

John Harris also kicked off. Ofc the problem is deep.

the idea that being terfy would harm your career at the graun and be a factor in getting paid off seems... fanciful

Well yes

If she has gone because of budget cuts/contract buyout or flounced and is allowing people to say she was hounded out by OJ and/or the ‘trans lobby’ then that’s an extra FRO from me.

Been a Guardian reader for 25 years-ish, and even worked there for about six years (albeit in admin) but I have no idea what a Suzanne Moore column is actually like

Can just about guess from comments though

Hadley F is awful, but they seem to value her for fuck knows what reason.

i think she's from a super wealthy family which seems a big help getting a column gig at the graun cf toynbee, hyde etc.

it's fun to reflect on the fact that Toynbee's dad unbeknowingly used to often get pukingly drunk (I'm talking 6 bottles of gin here!) and trash rooms with a Soviet agent who was arguably one of most productive of the Cambridge 5 (agent Don Cleanteeth)

plz find other kinds of bees:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arnold_Toynbee#Toynbee_genealogy

🤮🤮🤮

Sad to say indulgence of TERFism runs deep at the Guardian, and with a fully predictable cast list pic.twitter.com/PHwnidkL1a

— Simon (@simonk_133) November 16, 2020

it's what you'd expect and more likely about cronyism and centrist wagon-circling than simple antitrans solidarity. but it's a terrible look for the Graun when so many of its "star" writers consistently behave like this.

but also this

I can't remember this solidarity for Dawn Foster when she got let go for writing an article critical of Tom Watson

— Fred Durst Apologist (@DurstApologist) November 16, 2020

sack them all and hire 👇

I’m sorry for the three trans employees who quit The Guardian in the last eighteen months because of the rhetoric being promoted by the paper. To be made to feel unwelcome at work not because of what you believe but because of who you fundamentally are, that’s the real travesty.

— shon faye. (@shonfaye) November 16, 2020

Is (Fleet Street) journalism the last profession where you can walk out of a job one day and get another job the next? And how does that work when no-one reads newspapers anymore?

Other professions where your talents and cv are no impediment from skipping from job to job are politics, football management and company directorships

Yes, but some football managers have to wait for the next job and some never find the next job, these fuckers are never out of work.

id love a browser extension that filters comment and opinion pieces out. the reporting in the graun is bad enough but its the way the site constantly redirects you to think pieces by people who have never exhibited a capacity to do so that really pushes me over the edge.

"If Keir Starmer sticks to his principles, Labour will vote against a Brexit deal"

The app is very good for creating your own guardian bubble. I never see any opinion and mostly read news, food and Blind Date (I can’t tear myself away from that I’m afraid).

For me, the Guardian is better than it used to be!

yeah actually i’ve thought this for a while and never done anything about it. your post has prompted me to go and remove a load of sections and also add world news categories for countries and continents.

xp I also read Blind Date purely so I can then read the Guyliner writeup.

I have a content blocker on Safari for ads etc and it works very well on those Guardian begging messages.

lol i enjoy the begging messages! i'm like keep begging terfs lol

Blind Date is good, largely due to the Guyliner (xp gyac OTM!)

Crosswords, Letters and Country Diary here.

I stopped buying the graun about a decade ago, but if I had a portable device with a kakuro app on it back then I'd have fucked them off much sooner.

xp - I often just go straight to the Guyliner.

I was going to complain about "Harry Styles wore a dress on the cover of Vogue – and US rightwingers lost it" inanity, but then they've slightly redeemed themselves by covering a very valuable topic (to me as a downstairs resident)
"Quiet please! How to exercise in an upstairs flat – without annoying your neighbours"

ilx faves weigh in:

The demonisation of @suzanne_moore by 300 fellow @guardian journalists causing her to leave her job is disturbing. Identity politics is the curse of the modern left. Gifting the right with each 'woke' witch hunt. Difference of opinion is crucial for adult 'political' discourse.

— Primal Scream (@ScreamOfficial) November 17, 2020

can't believe Bobby's politics are stuck in an imaginary 1980s

just needed "snowflakes" for a bingo

also i'm pretty sure the 300+ employees who complained about Moore's work making them feel harassed and unwelcome weren't mostly journalists but y'know, drugs

Methinks Bobby and his band have a few skeletons waiting to come out of their collective cupboard.

Boab's a bit like trevor phillips in a way - a right-wing reactionary blue labour bigot who thinks because they went through a radical lefty spell in the 80's it excuses all sorts of reactionary tory bullshit attitudes they have. And he's probably getting the same fear Nick Cave was getting a few months back, because he probably knows he's done enough to get me-tooed or even put on the sex-offenders register!

https://guardian.gyford.com/ is handy if you just want to read today’s paper. The opinion section is in there but it’s all siloed off in one section.

siloed is le mot juste

xp excellent link thank u

far less hideous to look at as well

*Such* an great piece. Superb in so many ways. Not the main point, perhaps, but I don't think anyone can drop an immaculately crafted gag (and there are several) into otherwise serious journalism quite like @helenlewis https://t.co/d9K2ty12zg

— Tom Peck (@tompeck) November 16, 2020

HL retweets high praise of her article about why women should be allowed more access to aristocratic titles.

It has taken me a while to come to understand what a terrible person HL really is.