Is the Guardian worse than it used to be?

self-righteousness doesn't work when your first instinct was to throw out personal insults.

pls direct me to the personal insults because i'm pretty sure i didn't drop any

i just dislike cult of personality for people who haven't actually done v much to deserve it.

riiiiiight

are you normally this aggressive when someone holds a different opinion?

I'm with you on this one, LG, not a 100% though.

i'm not being aggressive at all.

has anyone ever labelled you a misogynist because you criticised an article that happened to be written by a woman?

i suppose it'd be okay because you'd know that word only applies to other men.

The lifestyle features in the Guardian generally irk me because they assume (probably accurately) that the readership enjoys/shares a certain level of income and has access to every new metropolitan fad and fancy - these features almost never question consumerism, middle class privilege or Londoncentrism.

I can see why Zoe Williams gets a lot of work from the Guardian - she can turn out something decentish on pretty much any subject - but there's something a bit gruesome about her using her kids as another source of 'good copy' (again, this applies to plenty of male Guardian hacks, too).

The lifestyle features in the Guardian generally irk me because they assume (probably accurately) that the readership enjoys/shares a certain level of income and has access to every new metropolitan fad and fancy - these features almost never question consumerism, middle class privilege or Londoncentrism.

and a certain lifestyle. the list of people who don't have kids is significantly longer and more diverse than irish dickheads in their 30s - and getting longer.

has anyone ever labelled you a misogynist because you criticised an article that happened to be written by a woman?

i suppose it'd be okay because you'd know that word only applies to other men.

― Junior Dictionary (LocalGarda), Thursday, March 19, 2015 10:34 AM (11 seconds ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

hmm

1) i am not labelling you a misogynist
2) i am not saying you hated the piece because it is written by a woman
3) you don't seem to think a woman writing about something she did with her family has a valid place within a newspaper like the guardian, but it does, so suck it up

but yeah this is about women and kitchens and domestic life and therefore not important or deserving of coverage in the guardian, do i have that right?

the list of people who don't have kids is significantly longer and more diverse than irish dickheads in their 30s - and getting longer.

and so the guardian shouldn't do lifestyle pieces about/for people who have kids then? i would have read this piece and enjoyed it last year when i didn't have a kid, you know, people can have interests in people whose lives and lifestyles aren't exactly like theirs?

what exactly is your argument against this piece then? why do you think the guardian is worse off for its presence within its virtual pages?

i just personally find an article about someone making creme eggs with their kids to on the bemusing side of tedious and vapid.

what makes the subject vapid?

what do you think the guardian should be covering instead of a piece on how its readers can bake with their kids, and the writer's amusing account of attempting said endeavour with her kids?

like, i am not trying to be aggressive here, but what is the complaint beyond, "this does not apply to my exact personal experience"? should the entire website only be aimed at you?

i read the guardian food pages all the time - i like plenty of what's there and plenty of it is written by women, fuchsia dunlop is prob my favourite food writer.

i just think this type of "make and do" piece with a journalist and their kids at the centre of it reads more like daily mail.

i'm not sure that my view qualifies as thinking this article has no place in the guardian though - i'm not policing a content trough like the guardian - i just think it was strangely prominent.

i generally find it weird when i'm meant to feel affinity with a columnist. i don't think these articles ever look good.

xpost the complaint is not a great deal more than "i find this piece boring - does anyone else agree this is a step too far into covering a really everyday thing - and that we don't need to read a named journalist's take on something many many people do and are probably doing right now"

you're the one who is tending to try and make my citing the intro more than it actually is.

Isn't this just part and parcel of commissioning for a newspaper? Very little is going to be of interest to the whole readership because it's by necessity very broad, otherwise you run the risk of looking like the middle-aged Stones fan shaking your fist because they've covered an R&B singer again.

The lifestyle features in the Guardian generally irk me because they assume (probably accurately) that the readership enjoys/shares a certain level of income and has access to every new metropolitan fad and fancy - these features almost never question consumerism, middle class privilege or Londoncentrism.

I don't think it's an assumption, newspapers hold a vast amount of information about who's actually reading now, probably more than ever, and I bet you any money they know full well that features like this play well with a sizeable enough chunk of their readership. I agree they could write them in a way that seems less Londoncentric or, well, smug, a lot of the time, and I don't care about Zoe Williams' family.

FWIW "make your own Creme Eggs" (rather than giving money to Cadburys) is almost self-parodic in its appeal to a certain kind of ostentatiously anti-consumerist Guardian parent.

well, fair enough, and apologies if i seemed aggressive earlier.

(Many xposts there - that was to Ward Fowler)

there's been a family supplement in the guardian for at least a decade, probably more

just because an online format means you can now see the saturday supplements you'd have instinctively chucked away in 2005 doesn't mean there isn't an audience for them

as i've probably said before, there's a lot that deserves to be put into this thread, but the harmless stuff the most regular posters choose is...revealing

i mean, certainly no one writing about food in the guardian should be mentioned here before tony naylor

accepted - i prob was overly touchy but i honestly wasn't trying to lambast it as little women or something.

Isn't this just part and parcel of commissioning for a newspaper? Very little is going to be of interest to the whole readership because it's by necessity very broad, otherwise you run the risk of looking like the middle-aged Stones fan shaking your fist because they've covered an R&B singer again.

OF COURSE! but come on, this is ilx. if we took this pragmatic approach then why would we even be here? i mean stevie writes about music!

And even within the framework of "not everything in this paper is for me", sometimes a thing leaps out at you and you just think "who cares about your life, zoe williams, why is it held up as something we should read about in a paper as opposed to anyone else's life?"

It feels like the worst kind of media - like what if I do have kids and don't give a shit about baking? Also generally the cult of baking is a pretty suffocating presence in Britain these days.

xpost a revelation shows little to the blind

my accepted was to stevie, xposts

tbrr a lot of the time I probably have a more generous reaction to these kind of features than they deserve because they wind up the atrocious pig people who comment underneath them so much

the Creme Egg one I took to be at least partly inspired by that 'pimp my snack' thing which, and I'm not gonna spend time seeing if my stereotypes are accurate right now, seems likely to be the domain of probably-childless 30something males

don't have any kind of issue with Tony Naylor's writing either fwiw

re the Kanye news piece that Matt highlights earlier. That was me. That was written, literally, in 10 minutes, while simultaneously cooking my kids' tea, so we could get it out at the time of the announcement - that was all the notice we had. Not only was it written by me in those 10 minutes, it was also put on to a web page by me, had its furniture done by me, had its tags done by me, had its picture added by me. So I apologise for the fact that in those 10 minutes I wasn't able to reach the heights of great writing, as well as doing all the production work. It is what it is.

Also generally the cult of baking is a pretty suffocating presence in Britain these days.

get with the cult, baking is AWESOME

being baked for is the most awesome :)

i love cooking - like i couldn't live without it - but my office last year had a baking rota and it was this horrible intense thing, it also meant eating lots of food i wouldn't normally eat and feeling like shit.

i'd been thinking this had gone too far for a while and then suddenly it's like you have to spend your free time outside the office baking a cake, due to duress. it does all feel kind of tory too.

being baked is the most awesome

baking your kids is a delight

How do you eat yours

seems more to do with the oppressive conditions of the modern workplace than baking

I dunno, I don't find my office too oppressive to be honest - it's mostly pretty positive. But when I have, baking and chocolate do seem to be tools of the oppressor.

being baked is the most awesome

^^^^

and yes, enforced baking and also the union jack bunting on the great british bake-off are both terrible. though i do love the actual show itself, as baking is actually a FASCINATING area of cooking (yeast and suchlike are the work of magick) and its vibe is so much more gentle and goodnatured than the awful rote repetition and painfully false narratives of say masterchef

chocolate the delicious, delicious tool of the oppressor

look do we even know if homemade creme eggs involve baking will someone read the article and report back please

you have to warm up the chocolate at least (i read the article! there were some gently funny bits in it!)

Sorry ithappens - occupational hazard round here of criticising something someone else reposted here with no context. I get that this sort of stuff is essential to running a website and never intended to be Pulitzer-worthy.

No worries. It's not the piece I'm proudest of.

could've integrated the cooking the kids' tea thing to make it into a surefire ilx hit

Perhaps they should replace it with an article in which Zoe Williams reads solemnly from Doktor Faustus, a child on each knee, pointing out the parallels to the rise of fascism.

realise this is sarcasm but i am prepared to own this point of view

otm

wtf is this

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/apr/03/lent-earthly-vice-40-days-sacrifice

they shd run that same piece every day with a different topic

"So you're off to Glastonbury? You realise there are people starving, right?"
"So you're watching the FA Cup final? You realise there are people starving, right?"
"So you bought your family Christmas presents? YOU BASTARD, I HOPE YOU HATE YOURSELF"

http://i.imgur.com/M56djPs.jpg

that dave bry piece is some scorched earth of journalism shit

xp are you complaining that the text differs from the graphic? if so read the article again.

or are you complaining about something subtler to do with the data. would be glad to hear what you have in mind, since i ... *cough*.

or are you complaining about the guardian writing about twitter, in which case fair enough.

the article btw http://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/womens-blog/2015/apr/03/why-do-fewer-women-tweet-political-party-hashtags

I posted this horror a few days ago: http://www.theguardian.com/music/musicblog/2015/mar/31/country-music-image-problem-bro-country-sexist

Featured comment

I like Stewart Lee's writing, but it's always the comments that provide the main interest. The section is always populated mainly by readers who have seemingly taken Lee at face value and assumed, for example, that he needs people to cook his steak, and by smug readers who celebrate their superiority over the other readers because they understand the joke.

So far so good, but then I wonder if the readers who were slagging Stewart off were in fact just joking so they could get a rise out of the earnest types. Then I worry that the earnest types are also just joking, and they understand full well that everyone gets the joke, and are just playing their part. Then I wonder if this is all obvious and I'm being the only idiot by even imagining that anyone is being serious with their comments.

Now I'm worried I'm spoiling the whole pantomime by just writing this comment.
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giantmoth
5 Apr 2015