Comments on: Berliner - thoughts

By: Tom

Tom — Wed, 14 Sep 2005 10:10:07 +0000

The Spiked bunch are also grouped around the Institute of Ideas, who are sort of professional controversialists who are too fond of their own self-identified counter-cultural status to notice that most of their challenges to the status quo are actually formulations of the conventional wisdom with implicit exclamation marks and “look at me” flourishes. I’ve been to a few of their round-table discussions, which are quite interesting in an I-miss-university-seminars kind of way.

By: Antonia

Antonia — Wed, 14 Sep 2005 09:19:14 +0000

What odd bunch is he a member of? Used to be Marxism today, I think, now grouped around spiked magazine. Sort of elitist technocrats - always dismissing common concerns out-of-hand. I was wondering about how they move from the far left to the right with apparent ease, and Dan summed it up for me well: if you’re a member of an elite vanguard to provoke the revolution and think the working class doesn’t know what’s good for it, then it’s not such a great move to the right after all, is it?

Like you, I’m an occasional reader of Le Monde (mainly cos my favourite Oxford coffee shop gets it, and also because I’m snobbish about my advancing monolingualism), and would agree that theguardian is a thicker and better-quality version of that (and thank god today they seem to have remembered the importance of content in the G2).

By: Tim

Tim — Tue, 13 Sep 2005 22:21:48 +0000

I am delighted someone else thinks Frank Furedi is barking. I find this more reassuring than I can possibly express.

He used to have a column in my union’s occasional magazine (probably still does, I’ve changed union) which was full of the sort of “right-thinking” stuff that is obviously problematic, periodically even verging on the fatuous, if you reading it whilst in any sense awake.

As an occasional reader of Le Monde, when feeling earnest about self-improvement and overconfident about my French, I’ve always liked their layout, and the Guardian (or is it now theguardian?) looks as if it seeks to be a more stylish and better designed version of the same. I think it’s lovely.

By: Tom

Tom — Tue, 13 Sep 2005 08:10:37 +0000

I don’t like the front page. Every story is incomplete, continued inside. Since I generally read the front page while walking to the bus stop, and am restricted to the bits I can read fully without opening the paper, I now have a bunch of frustrating snippets until the bus arrives. So, in that sense, it doesn’t suit my lifestyle, although I feel extremely uncomfortable about discussing whether or not a newspaper “suits my lifestyle”.

By: Skuds

Skuds — Mon, 12 Sep 2005 22:32:58 +0000

Ah but… I work for a railway company. I have my choice of the Daily Mail, The Sun, The Sport and Metro if I want to look at tabloids.

There is actually an argument for sports sections becoming redundant when something like football365 exists on the Internet, but you could say the same about most of a newspaper. Sometimes I only buy a paper a couple of times a week and catch up on the internet. (With blogs helping to point the way to articles worth reading)

I think the new Guardian will suit my lifestyle the same way that the old one did. If I have little free time its easy enough to cherry-pick the most important parts, but if I have the luxury of more time there is enough to fill out whatever time I have - often I will mentally bookmark some piece to read the next morning at breakfast before leaving the house.

I’m still looking for the subtle humour in the sudoku though.

By: Antonia

Antonia — Mon, 12 Sep 2005 22:10:44 +0000

Hi Skuds, funny how we’re absolute opposites - I always bin Life and Review immediately, and i’m yet to be persuaded of the value of sports coverage - I mean, surely if you’re serious about sports, you buy one of the tabloids for it? My brother moaned when my parents switched from the Mail to the Independent (yeah, I know, radical) because although there was just as much sport, there’s no transfer speculation, just news.

James, you’re clearly completely right that the Guardian wanted a different way, and that it’s European rather than American just fits right in. I know I’ve a reader at the Guardian - they last looked at the page at about half four this afternoon, but I’m sure it’s just some former OxStu hack looking up old uni friends!

By: James Hamilton

James Hamilton — Mon, 12 Sep 2005 20:43:36 +0000

Mm, I wasn’t so enthusiastic on aesthetic grounds, but that might be influenced by my feeling that Simon Jenkins’ new incarnation as wide-eyed ranter just isn’t up to any broadsheet’s standard and by a suspicion that the Guardian chose the new size less because it was a good idea and more because it wasn’t the dreaded tabloid. There’s something ironic about such a rabidly anti-American paper being so obsessed by its size. Nonetheless, it’ll be interesting to see how their experience of the new size influences the content, and don’t be surprised if some of what you’ve mentioned here is mysteriously addressed in subsequent editions - I know you have more than one reader in the Graun’s newsroom.

By: Skuds

Skuds — Mon, 12 Sep 2005 20:20:00 +0000

Overall I liked it, although I preferred the TV on the back.

Like you I am not so sure about the special sections being larger instead of smaller - but I only really read the Life and Friday review ones in any great detail anyway.

The sport section showed a good use of colour, being able to show little yellow and red dots against player names in the team lists to indicate if they got carded. Being able to use some colour-coding in tables will let them do a lot more. (Its NOT a waste of space! Tomorrow’s edition with a match report on West Ham’s trouncing of Aston Villa will be a thing of beauty)

Interesting how one story had words underlined which were explained in a box at the bottom. Just like hyperlinks. I almost tried clicking on them.