Is the Guardian worse than it used to be?

Hey Guardian, thanks for the 2-page spread on Andy Murray in the news section, really happy to know that James Corden and Michael McIntyre went to a tennis match!

god the BBC kept showing that tit McIntyre last night, way to show your covering a serious sport dickheads

is he the severely unfunny comedian who they interviewed before the Kvitova/Azarenka SF?

i wanted to punch him in the face and assumed it was a cunning strategy to make the relentlessly unlikeable banshee Azarenka welcome in comparison

luckily Kvitova WON IT ALL, in your face both Azarenka and Sgarapova and McIntyre

*Sharapova

yeah he is an odious little man

http://i471.photobucket.com/albums/rr75/fancylau/maracas.jpg

trebles all round at Grauniad Towers tonight!

http://www.economist.com/blogs/newsbook/2011/07/newspapers?fsrc=scn/tw/te/bl/theendoftheworldasweknowit

Printers’ ink runs in the veins of Rupert Murdoch, the boss of News Corporation. But from a pure business perspective (and James Murdoch tends to take that perspective on things) the loss of the News of the World is not at all painful. In a good year, News International’s four papers—the Sun, the News of the World, the Times and the Sunday Times—are marginally profitable. BSkyB, which News Corporation wants to buy, is likely to make more than £1 billion in profit this year.

The shenanigans at the News of the World have already slowed the attempt to purchase BSkyB, and may yet stymie it altogether. This is not just the tail wagging the dog. It is the tail threatening to strangle the dog. It needed to be cut off.

gah wrong thread

Do humans have a role in the robot wars of the future?

Wonderful CiF post title, reading would only disappoint.

Good start though:

For a book about the all-too-human "passions of war", my 1997 work Blood Rites...

lost philip k dick novel

See my book Watermelons

I was thinking of reviving this thread to say that despite my having started this thread just over 10 years ago, and the Guardian having given much evidence to it, it still seems cherishable that the Guardian exists and does what it does in what what McCartney nearly called the desperate world in which we're living in.

I think it was Paul Mason's statement that the Guardian will go bust in 3 years that focused my thinking here.

I heard recently that the Guardian employs over 600 journalists, compared to the Independent's 150. Is this right?

depends how you define "journalist" imo

There is no way the Indy employs 150 journalists unless you count every freelancer who's filed a column for them in the past year. I think it's more like 10.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/help/insideguardian/2011/jul/11/kindle-ipad-android
can't wait to see the iPad app; Times app is p. good, but is the Times.

> Do humans have a role in the robot wars of the future?

as the victims?

Excellent post about the future of the Guardian and investigative journalism:

hack-gate and the danger of 'free'

This is that elite business and political interests operate via conglomeration, hierarchy and force of money, using cash to convert power in one sphere into power in another. The notion that these machinations can be held to account by a public sphere occupied by bloggers, social networking, amateur commentators and rapid-turnover online-only news sites must rank as one of the flimsiest ideologies ever proffered.

otfm, big problem with the paul mason pov

http://www.guardian.co.uk/info/2011/jul/22/six-way-support

?

more and more (i know fuck all about this kind of thing, in spite of the phrase 'business models' later in this sentence) i feel like a lot of business models are going to have to rely on people just pledging their support, to survive, from now on - going out of your way to kick something a bit of money because you believe in it. i bought a guardian last saturday just to be all YEAH GUYS after the phone hacking thing. like i think buying your books through them or w/e is cool?, (certainly as opposed to via amazon/rather than your fledgling, moribund local independent book retailer, &c ...)

it's on the front page, is desperation a good look, idk

don't think i'll be throwing any money at a rag that supported Clegg last year

Exemplary Carmodism from Marina Hyde from para 7 in her showbiz column today: http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/lostinshowbiz/2011/aug/18/celebrity-simoncowell

Honestly my life is too fucking short to read Marina Hyde writing about the riots and Celebrity Big Brother.

How can you be sure how short is too short when it comes to these things? Medical advances, perhaps an unexpected divine intervention, may make you recant your former hurry.

stevie helpfully gave a paragraph reference, saving precious seconds

When you have an assistant editor who thinks that prison rape is a laugh, it's time to realise that life is too short to read the Guardian, full stop.

The day is full of tough decisions: choose to read Hyde but forgo discovering what Brostep is.

As though either matters, really.

I kind of liked Hyde calling Simon Cowell "the Karaoke Sauron" tbh

(1st sentence, 4th paragraph)

(Nicholas Ridley presented my a-level certificates...)

i don't read marina hyde cos i don't want to feel irritated by something i didn't want to read in the first place.

don't think the graun should be pimping this guy

http://www.guardian.co.uk/artanddesign/2011/aug/22/carlos-latuff-cartoon-arab-spring

Since visiting the West Bank in 1999, Latuff has become known for his support of the Palestinian cause; some campaigners claim his work is antisemitic. "Part of the supposed 'evidence' for my antisemitism is the fact that I've used the Star of David, which is a symbol of Judaism," he says wearily. "But check all my artworks – you'll find that the Star of David is never drawn alone. It's always part of the Israeli flag."

and occasionally, it's replaced with a swastika:

http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_kAYZT4UUxIQ/SV7lXc7Ep1I/AAAAAAAAG98/IxwjWrhEBMw/s400/Israeli+raid+in+Gaza+2.jpg

article omits the fact that latuff was the runner up in iran's 2006 cartoon holocaust mockery competition

http://artintifada.files.wordpress.com/2009/02/holocaust_remembrance_day_by_latuff21.jpg

Nice.

His cartoons are as crass as the ones we rightly lampoon on Batshit Rightwing Cartoons 2011

the disparity between ilx opinion of marina hyde and...basically everywhere else i frequent, is really astonishing. i think i fundamentally don't trust anyone who dislikes what she does, i'd unhesitatingly call her my favourite newspaper writer around at the moment.

She's so unfunny.

aren't you a london media person, though

she's one of the few people anywhere that i would describe as legit funny

ilx is like an anti litmus test for humour though

xxp far too arch as well, it's like she writes with permanently raised eyebrow, which is NAGL.

"i've found the difference in opinions people express about kobe bryant between people whose salaries are paid by the los angeles lakers and .. everywhere else is striking"

I think she's great when she gets indignant and really skewers a deserving target. Less so when it's just generic sarcasm about Katie Price, but her non-LIS comment writing has been excellent.

by "everywhere else" i did not just mean "the london media"

is she normally this bad a writer?

Of course, while Friedman's seasteads might be in vogue with Valley types or those dreaming of the Tea Party Venice, among the good burghers of what convention already demands we style as riot-scarred England, I fear his laissez-faire ideals would garner short shrift or sarcastic invitations along the lines of: if people wish to live in places unconstrained by the rule of law, perhaps they'd care to try Tottenham.