I know that The Guardian divides opinions here, but there are some loyal readers (a description I would have used for myself until recently.) My question to them is: do you find the recent and on-going cuts in the paper as distressing as I do; and where should we turn now for our morning newspaper?
May I summarise the position. In recent weeks/months, the cuts have included:
1 Cutting the excellent daily supplements (Media, Education, etc) and incorporating them into the main paper (chopping them down to two pages + ads in the meantime) and discontinuing the Thursday Technical/Computer supplement completely.
2 Removing the Sport section on four days a week and putting it at the end of the main paper. (Sport section was so easy to discard if there is no interest in the subject.)
3 Reducing pages in the excellent G2 supplement; cutting many regular features (for example, reducing the space given to favourite columnists like Michele Hanson, while maintaining the full length given to tedious columns like the Mrs Cameron spoof, which became tired months ago.) At the same time, wasting space (yesterday's extensive celebration of Adrian Mole had two columns spread across each page and lots of empty space - three columns would have fitted!)
4 Removing many things we expect from a morning newspaper: share prices, weather forecasts for the next few days, detailed broadcasting schedules and so on.
5 Cutting obituaries by half.
And on it goes; each day brings new surprises.
Some interesting points:
The Guardian has been desperate to sign up people for a subscription scheme in recent months. Hook them in and then make cuts: is this moral?
The reduced Independent ("The I") sells for 20p, whereas the reduced Guardian is still at full price.
The Guardian editor, in a rather self-satisfied interview on R4 today, suggested that the paper is quite possibly going "internet only" in the not too distant future.
Until the last few weeks, emails to the Readers' Editor brought quick and supportive responses. Recently the replies have been shifty and evasive; I feel they are themselves embarrassed by the position.
So, where do I go for my morning's read? (Don't say the internet!!) I left The Times when it went tabloid and would never return. Does it have to be The Telegraph? Sounds like the only possible route. To adapt Polly Toynbee's election quote about voting Labour, do I have to read the Telegraph and use a nosepeg when reading the political bits?
Any views or suggestions would be much appreciated. As a reader who wants a full newspaper at 7.30 in the morning and gets it via my excellent newsagent's delivery service, it seems that I am not typical of the reader which The Guardian's editor wants to serve. He said in the broadcast today that readers now want to read a review of the news in the evening, not the morning! And I certainly don't want to gawp at a computer screen.
The final irony (surely deliberately intended by some mischievous member of the Guardian staff): the main leader yesterday, the first day of the drastically cut paper, had the following headline: Cut to the core!
May I summarise the position. In recent weeks/months, the cuts have included:
1 Cutting the excellent daily supplements (Media, Education, etc) and incorporating them into the main paper (chopping them down to two pages + ads in the meantime) and discontinuing the Thursday Technical/Computer supplement completely.
2 Removing the Sport section on four days a week and putting it at the end of the main paper. (Sport section was so easy to discard if there is no interest in the subject.)
3 Reducing pages in the excellent G2 supplement; cutting many regular features (for example, reducing the space given to favourite columnists like Michele Hanson, while maintaining the full length given to tedious columns like the Mrs Cameron spoof, which became tired months ago.) At the same time, wasting space (yesterday's extensive celebration of Adrian Mole had two columns spread across each page and lots of empty space - three columns would have fitted!)
4 Removing many things we expect from a morning newspaper: share prices, weather forecasts for the next few days, detailed broadcasting schedules and so on.
5 Cutting obituaries by half.
And on it goes; each day brings new surprises.
Some interesting points:
The Guardian has been desperate to sign up people for a subscription scheme in recent months. Hook them in and then make cuts: is this moral?
The reduced Independent ("The I") sells for 20p, whereas the reduced Guardian is still at full price.
The Guardian editor, in a rather self-satisfied interview on R4 today, suggested that the paper is quite possibly going "internet only" in the not too distant future.
Until the last few weeks, emails to the Readers' Editor brought quick and supportive responses. Recently the replies have been shifty and evasive; I feel they are themselves embarrassed by the position.
So, where do I go for my morning's read? (Don't say the internet!!) I left The Times when it went tabloid and would never return. Does it have to be The Telegraph? Sounds like the only possible route. To adapt Polly Toynbee's election quote about voting Labour, do I have to read the Telegraph and use a nosepeg when reading the political bits?
Any views or suggestions would be much appreciated. As a reader who wants a full newspaper at 7.30 in the morning and gets it via my excellent newsagent's delivery service, it seems that I am not typical of the reader which The Guardian's editor wants to serve. He said in the broadcast today that readers now want to read a review of the news in the evening, not the morning! And I certainly don't want to gawp at a computer screen.
The final irony (surely deliberately intended by some mischievous member of the Guardian staff): the main leader yesterday, the first day of the drastically cut paper, had the following headline: Cut to the core!
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