The 2005 election saw the Guardian consider backing the Liberal Demoprats, but it seems this was no one off aberration. As the paper's circulation dwindles, it hit a new low in August's Audit Bureau of Circulation figures down 4.49% to 425,737, editor Alan Rushbridger actually wants to move the paper to the centre ground permanently.
Well it has to do something. The Indescribablyboring is quite practised at stealing the Guardian's left of centre clothes with its endless frontpage sermonising. Of course, the Independent can do nothing else but sermonise - it has no money for reporters and real news, which is what I personally want from my newspaper. But hey, what can I say, I'm funny that way.
From Private Eye:
"For all the acres of broadsheet and Berliner size newsprint the Grauniad - or as it is now appears to be called, grauniad, devoted to its slight shrinkage, editor Alan Rushbridger did not find room to share with his readers one aspect of his future plans they might find mildly more interesting then the shift from Helvetica Bold to Egyptian.
"If I had to choose between occupying a nice on the left or being nearer the centre, whether you display that through your news reporting or your comment or both, I'm more comfortable saying this is an upmarket, serious, mainstream newspaper. There's more potential for growth there than taking comfort in political positioning," Rushbridger said.
Since this is the sort of thing that Guardian readers tend to find very discomforting, one might have expected Rushbridger to have found space in the four pages the paper devoted to the forthcoming redesign to mention it. But while readers were regaled with everything they never wanted to know about the "slightly wider 9.5pt vertical spacing for the body font on news pages" there was not a word about the paper's politics anywhere to be seen.
1 comment:
If they'd introduced this amount of colour and redesign and left the paper the same size I suspect they'd have won more friends among readers, potential readers and news-stand owners.
The central sections are now tiny and insubstantial and will I suspect need to be re-thought.
G2 is now more G1.3 and a mockery of its former self - most illogical of all is the decison to put sections such as Media and Sport outside the 'tabloid' (now more a 'Small Issue' size - if you see my point).
Media in particular and the other daily 'special focus' sections led by recruitment advertising (Society, Education, etc) were the bits that everyone already liked reading in a trad tabloid format. This was also already true of Sport at the weekend (really the only time the Guardian made much of a fist of covering sport in any case).
These are now being produced in a sort of two-thirds sized broadsheet format which is more or less as difficult to read on any form of public transport as a standard broadsheet and feels like a step backwards for sections which were well-established and modern-looking leaders in their fields.
The recruitment led sections now look like they are heading off over the blue retro horizon chasing the tale of the Telegraph and Sunday Times Appointments sections which I suppose IS the last frontier for such a successful recruitment advertiser.
The Guardian's management seem to have rather missed the point of the Indy and Times move to tabloid. This was that it made them easier to read - especially for communters.
They seem to have understood the increased sales of their rivals after the move to tabloid as equating to 'change size and add sales', when the real story is make your paper smaller and easier to handle and you'll add sales -especially among people who might otherwise make do with reading Metro (the free transport tabloid).
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