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Dear Mike. Please could you ask The Guardian NOT to...

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  • #1

    Dear Mike. Please could you ask The Guardian NOT to...

    ...turn into 'Metro', which is what has apparently happened.

    I don't wish to appear a reactionary Luddite, but 'colour on every page' is NOT essential to a daily intake of news and commentary, nor does a somehow prurient 'Centrefold' pull-out colour poster of a topical disaster have me panting. I have never found a font or page layout 'forbidding' in my life. I don't generally perceive fonts as 'intelligent'.

    I liked having twenty-plus articles on a spread. I can cope with that much information.

    I do not like being patronised by Alan Rusbridger.

    Apart from that, I s'pose it was OK.
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  • #2
    Re: Dear Mike. Please could you ask The Guardian NOT to...

    Originally posted by Perdix
    I don't wish to appear a reactionary Luddite, but 'colour on every page' is NOT essential to a daily intake of news and commentary...
    Haven't seen the new look Guardian yet (except for an online version that doesn't really give a decent impression of the Berliner format imo) but I wonder if 'colour on every paper' translates as 'no more black and white photgraphy' or 'hey here's another advert in full colour that we've charged a premium for'. :)

    Originally posted by Alan Rusbridger
    We believe the format combines the convenience of a tabloid with the sensibility of a broadsheet.
    Do what?! 8O
    _"For an eternity Allard was alone in an icy limbo where all the colours were bright and sharp and comfortless.
    _For another eternity Allard swam through seas without end, all green and cool and deep, where distorted creatures drifted, sometimes attacking him.
    _And then, at last, he had reached the real world – the world he had created, where he was God and could create or destroy whatever he wished.
    _He was supremely powerful. He told planets to destroy themselves, and they did. He created suns. Beautiful women flocked to be his. Of all men, he was the mightiest. Of all gods, he was the greatest."

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    • #3
      Well, exactly.

      I don't wish to make a big thing about this. Ok, I have made a big thing about it. But as far as I can tell, the entire exercise has been undertaken to (a) make use of their new colour printers' capacity, and (b) grab a larger share of the chav 'I only look at the pictures' tabloid market (and it is tabloid - G2 is like a pamphlet).
      A daily paper is quite a personal thing: one of the reasons that we made PX the way it was, rather than an 'online' publication, or with cheaper production values, was that the aesthetic, feel, 'weight' (in all senses) and layout details were those that we felt corresponded to the high expectations of our 'market'. We could doubtless have appealed to a wider market by adopting lower standards. This is what The Guardian has done. 'Course, they have their overall profits to think of, naturally.
      I just think they will lose many readers. Already, as perusing today's issue will show, the new layout means a simplistic array of articles is presented to the eye, many of which are 'compressed' from their normal, more pithy length and depth. In fact, 'compression' sums it up.
      Ah, another bastion of intellectualism cowers and shrinks like a hapless coelenterate washed up on a sun-drenched beach...

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      • #4
        I've been off The Grauniad since the last time it shrank and got the tabloidy middle bit (how many years ago was that?).
        \"...an ape reft of his tail, and grown rusty at climbing, who yet feels himself to be a symbol and the frail representative of Omnipotence in a place that is not home.\" James Branch Cabell

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        • #5
          I've haven't yet seen the new format Guardian. I was hoping when they were talking about making it the size of a tabloid newspaper that they were going to keep the content the same, only change the page size to make the paper easier to hold (I only have little hands). Is the new format really that bad?

          I suppose I could don a burberry hat and tracksuit when I go to pick up a copy tomorrow. :)

          Comment

          • #6
            Originally posted by Mikey_C
            I've been off The Grauniad since the last time it shrank and got the tabloidy middle bit (how many years ago was that?).
            The last time the Guardian was any good was on Tuesday May 20 1948. :D

            (Now some people round here *must* get that reference, surely?)
            _"For an eternity Allard was alone in an icy limbo where all the colours were bright and sharp and comfortless.
            _For another eternity Allard swam through seas without end, all green and cool and deep, where distorted creatures drifted, sometimes attacking him.
            _And then, at last, he had reached the real world – the world he had created, where he was God and could create or destroy whatever he wished.
            _He was supremely powerful. He told planets to destroy themselves, and they did. He created suns. Beautiful women flocked to be his. Of all men, he was the mightiest. Of all gods, he was the greatest."

            Comment

            • #7
              Time to start publishing your own newspaper, Perdix.

              Something like International Times... :)

              Comment

              • #8
                'The Perdixian' - extract from No 1, Editorial by Magenta Butt-Plugge:

                "Ya, hi!
                Welcome to the first ish of our fab new pap-uh. We hope you dig the format and simply love our style, which is a new take on newspaperisation in the twenny-first century. Having juxtaposed ourselves in a quasi-journalistic stance within the contemporary milieu of....(etc, for four pages)....Daphnia's column "Cappuccinno Tears" is for those of you who are first-time-part-time-pre-divorced-post-affair parents, or, if you are a busy professional like me, believe you may have kids (at least I pay that Philipino enough, so I hope I bloody well have!!!!). Matt Wankshaft's hilarious (his words) 'quasi--cynico-dickhead' take on 'writing' will, I'm sure, have you all, like Joan River's face, in stitches, whilst we are delighted to welcome Charlie Manson with his hard bitten take on incarceration, 'A Life In Homicide'. In 'P2' we talk to all my loud-gobbed friends and take up all the seats with our fat backsides and treble-baby-buggies at Cafe Nero on Abbeville Road for seventeen colour pages, whilst 'The Guyde' lists all the best places where a post-divorce, post-affair, peripatetic, pre-alimony woman can go to find herself a solvent new chap, in London anyway, 'cos there ain't anywhere else is there? Where's my PA?

                Enjoy!
                Magenta

                >There you go. Back to normality!<

                Comment

                • #9
                  Originally posted by Perdix
                  >There you go. Back to normality!<
                  You are Dan Ashcroft, and I claim my five pounds.

                  Preach on, Preacher Man!

                  (No? Just me then...)
                  "That which does not kill us, makes us stranger." - Trevor Goodchild

                  Comment

                  • #10
                    Originally posted by DeeCrowSeer
                    You are Dan Ashcroft, and I claim my five pounds.

                    Preach on, Preacher Man!
                    Nathan Barley! :lol:

                    Comment

                    • #11
                      A fair few few people tell me I look like this Dan Ashcroft person. Tell me, is it a good thing?
                      Call me cockey, but if there\'s an alien I can\'t kill, I haven\'t met him and killed him yet!

                      Comment

                      • #12
                        Be afraid...

                        demos, are you referring to The Balfour Declaration, perchance?

                        Comment

                        • #13
                          Originally posted by Perdix
                          demos, are you referring to The Balfour Declaration, perchance?
                          No, I don't think so. :?

                          Would it help if I mention that the particular edition of The Guardian to which I refer leads with the news of General Sir Richard Crossman's attack on the Kremlin?

                          Or that among the reporters' names appearing on the front page is one James Colvin?

                          Perhaps not.

                          I feel sure that Mr Guy Lawley will know of which I speak. Or failing that, perhaps our illustrious host may be induced by the promise of sweet comestibles* to provide some small illumination?

                          :)

                          *I believe Swiss rolls are Mike's currency of choice, yes?
                          _"For an eternity Allard was alone in an icy limbo where all the colours were bright and sharp and comfortless.
                          _For another eternity Allard swam through seas without end, all green and cool and deep, where distorted creatures drifted, sometimes attacking him.
                          _And then, at last, he had reached the real world – the world he had created, where he was God and could create or destroy whatever he wished.
                          _He was supremely powerful. He told planets to destroy themselves, and they did. He created suns. Beautiful women flocked to be his. Of all men, he was the mightiest. Of all gods, he was the greatest."

                          Comment

                          • #14
                            Atleast all of you that live in England have a little bit better and accurate news coming from your newspaper. In the great USA we have such crap rolling into the news it's hard to find the truth because our journalists are so censored! :x

                            Comment

                            • #15
                              I'm sure it's just a matter of time... :|

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