Wednesday, September 21, 2005

The Guardian or theguardian?


Well Liza and the rest of the Cabaret team are having a rest today so here’s my promised bitch-list about the new Guardian. The main problems:

1 – Lucy Mangan is still there. 2 - "this week x has been watching/reading" at the bottom of each one-page G2 column: perhaps my least favourite newspaper innovation ever. 3 – Lucy Mangan is still there. 4 – the comment pages now feature simon jenkins and max hastings, and are about as left-wing as Mussolini (after 1922, history fans). 5 – alan rusbridger has admitted that the paper is moving to the centre ground and abandoning its radical, muckraking roots. 6 – I’ve lost the evidence like a big idiot, but I’m sure I’ve already spotted at least two more examples of big league product placement (one of them Sky Sports) within editorial content. This follows up the ignominious sop they made to Nike earlier this year (depicted right). 7 – however much they (and The Independent, and The Times) pretend otherwise, the fact of the matter is: smaller newspaper = less space = inferior coverage. 8 – I like music and film as much as the next shallow twentysomething, but to rebrand Friday Review as Music & Film and therefore drop theatre, dance, architecture, art and other less populist forms seems a leetle bit like, um, dumbing down. 9 – Lucy Mangan is still there.

What I like about the new Guardian – the daily sports supplement, the Doonesbury debacle, and the masthead.

6 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

Also - the Marina Hyde photo byline page is excrutiatingly bad, and the new Diary isnt funny.

I agree with all other comments, EXCEPT, I hate the new masthead it looks like a trade magazine masthead. 'Biscuit Weekly' perhaps, or 'Building materials quarterly'. Joe C

9:53 AM  
Blogger Alex Bok Bok said...

ive heard hate on the new Guardian typeface already. I think it works great for subtitles, but WHY oh WHY did they use it for the masthead?? It looked like they tried to make it look like a printed website but it ended up just looking a bit wishy-washy.
Serifs aren't to be trusted.

-al

9:34 PM  
Blogger dan hancox said...

why does no-one like Marina Hyde? they're always bitching about her in Private Eye. I suspect a certain amount of what's-this-WOMAN-doing-writing-on-the-sports-and-politics-pages? is at work. having said that I never read her column, but it was good when she used to write the Diary.

'serifs can't be trusted' - there speaks a true graphic designer!

12:20 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

I like Marina Hyde. Damn right when she wrote the diary it was good, she was nearly as funny as Matthew Norman. At least they retained Martin Kelner.

4:20 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

You are right about Lucy Mangan.

She's still there. And she's still the most pointless, talentless, smug so-called 'journalist' living.

10:35 AM  
Blogger dan hancox said...

who are you mr/ms anonymous, posting a full four months after the item was blogged? i'm intrigued

5:51 PM  

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