Is the Guardian worse than it used to be?

xpost Wasn't asking for sympathy. Just telling you what happened.

xpost Well, I know what you mean about the brand, But if bashing out some pieces on Morrissey also earns me the freedom and goodwill from bosses to do 7500 word oral histories of the Paisley Underground or 5000 words on Big Star's Third or gains me the trust that I can commission a piece on rural Mississippi hip-hop, then I can live with it. Cos they're certainly not going to let me do that stuff unless I'm also responsible for some ratings grabbers.

It's true that real-time knowledge of readership - and we know exactly how many people per minute are reading a given story - has changed the nature of commissioning. And, yes, as someone whose first 18 years in journalism were spent worrying exclusively about print, that saddens me. It's harder to commission things now just because you think they're good stories; in the past you threw them out and never knew how many – or, more accurately, how few – people read them. So no one could pull you up for publishing it. Now they can. But that battle is over. Once you know how exactly many readers you're getting, you can't pretend it doesn't matter.

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/oct/19/bigmouth-morrissey-strikes-again

Though the above article contains some worthwhile information (eg. "Friday's news that rents rose nationwide by 9.2% last year was as nothing compared to Thursday's news that British Gas prices are set to rise by exactly the same amount. You probably didn't even hear about it because, while 36% of the population rents, almost no one in public life, in government, in the media does."), it seems a bit harsh/troll-y to blame Morrissey or even a supposed "Morrissey-generation" for current political ills.

i definitely blame morrissey

can i blame that woman from that baking show? the front page picture story this afternoon was about whether it's ok that everyone is mean to her.

If she's responsible for growing fuel poverty, then I think it's ok to be mean to her.

Rents didn't actually rise by 9.2% in a year - they rose by 2.1%. That was a mistake that will probably be corrected. They did jump by 1.8% last month, but it remains to be seen whether that rate of increase will continue (probably not).

The Guardian gets more like the Mail every day. If that's what it needs to do to survive then it can get fucked, frankly.

But listening to Oasis songs, it doesn't take long before you stumble upon a truly beautiful lyric ("Wake up the dawn and ask her why/ A dreamer dreams she never dies")

It's hardly IMMIMGRANTS GO HOME tho.

them too.

The Guardian gets more like the Mail every day. If that's what it needs to do to survive then it can get fucked, frankly.

All publications become more like each other, at the moment, in the great chase for clicks. It's intensely grim. They haven't found a way to measure whether anyone who clicks on something actually likes it yet, I guess there's no need.

a poem: https://twitter.com/saharailyas/status/392586676150611968/photo/1

everything about that makes me glad that i have so far escaped becoming a guardian commenter

even in my darkest moments i've never thought i'd get that low

The culture section is generally fine for comments. CIF is obviously not.

They haven't found a way to measure whether anyone who clicks on something actually likes it yet, I guess there's no need.

it's interesting how now it is possible to tell whether a reader peaces out after one paragraph, or after two-thirds, or keeps going to the end - that it's information that's interesting to publishers and writers but doesn't necessarily make a difference for advertisers. I wonder how much it's collected/used? (iirc, unsurprisingly, buzzfeed are v interested in this kind of stuff)

I do sometimes wonder if it's advertising that's driven the increased use of video content. Because the ads come at the beginning of the video, it doesn't matter if the viewer gets bored and clicks away within five seconds, they'll still have sat through 20 seconds of advert to get there.

i've not used analytic tools that go that deep. that is interesting.

i think the video ads are prob more lucrative. tho users aren't wild about video ime. i'd imagine a site like the guardian has problems with video, basing this solely on the anecdotal personal evidence that i've only ever watched about two videos there and i look at the site on a daily basis. it's just not a habitual thing for me or why i go there.

doesn't help that the player feels kind of clunky or not worth it, with the ad and the big sting etc.

they could probably get themselves comfortably into the black if they started putting videos of dogs riding bikes or men falling over on the front page.

btw my assumptions about video ads entirely stem from the fact that i hate video content and feel super cheated when faced with it!

burn video content

surely no non-awful person enjoys video content, i think as I hit the backspace key with unwarranted violence, surely it is only here for the most cynical of reasons

"Why do the specialist well when you can do the ubiquitous badly?" is unlikely to work in the longer term though. The Morrissey autobiography is, at a guess, an event of interest to a sizeable proportion of Guardian readers in the first place, regardless of its newsworthiness, I think it's fair game.

It's the other stuff that provides the differentiation and the Guardian's global footprint/impact is way higher than any of the other UK broadsheets - and I'd guess even the Mail's digital audience is mostly UK-based.

Titles like the Economist have developed non-clickbait digital strategies and done well out of it, although I'm not sure whether that would work for a mass market newspaper with massive overheads.

btw my assumptions about video ads entirely stem from the fact that i hate video content and feel super cheated when faced with it!

yeah everyone hates it. tho weirdly it's one of those things, ime, where people say they hate it but it also does quite well, like there's obv some undercurrent of fuckers who click on it.

I'd guess even the Mail's digital audience is mostly UK-based.

Isn't the Mail the most popular news site in the world now (with some allegations of cooking the books from second place?) I guess that could all be UK but seems unlikely.

the Mail very deliberately targets a global (well, US) audience, wd be shocked if that hasn't worked to some extent

there's also mail online for india http://www.dailymail.co.uk/indiahome/index.html

from the new yorker's recent thing about the guardian - 'With eighty-four million monthly visitors, according to the Audit Bureau of Circulations, the Guardian Web site is now the third most popular English-language newspaper Web site in the world, behind London’s Daily Mail, with its celebrity gossip and abundant cleavage, and the New York Times.'

thankfully apple are updating their ipads today so that should be their front page stories sorted for the next fortnight.

The assumption that the Mail and the Guardian grow increasingly alike is based solely on the (actually comparatively small) amount of showbiz in the Guardian. People seem to see a Bake-Off story, a Rihanna story and a Morrissey story on the front and assume that's all the Guardian has done that day. And it's not. There is an absolute shitload of serious stuff on the website every day, far more than ever got in the old, notionally "better" paper – but you're not seeing it because you're not looking for it. So the Guardian is not seeking to survive at any cost, it's seeking to survive to continue the serious journalism, especially in social policy, that very few people actually read even in its golden age.

xpost re Economist. The more specialist the knowledge you sell, the easier it is to target your digital offering.

xxpost re Video coverage. The ad revenues are higher on videos. That's why video gets pushed.

I used to always say what ithappens says, and it's true that there is just more fluffy stuff, not less serious stuff.

But I've come to realise that the "it's like the Mail now" comments of people often aren't really about them feeling like they're being deprived of serious news or whatever. It's not that they care what's not in the Guardian – they care what is in it. For a section of long-standing readers, I think it's all about identity. They want the Guardian to stand for a certain type of thing that they feel happy identifying with. It doesn't matter if it's still got the Nick Davies investigations or whatever: if it's published alongside with what they see as trash it's a personal affront.

Not a fully thought through argument but I think I have a vague feeling that I see the Guardian as representing some kind of quality. So, when I go to the website and click on a Morrissey story (continuing the example from above), I have an idea that it's going to be a *good* Morrissey story. I think there comes a point where I think "This is cack, if I wanted to read a Morrissey story by someone who has no interest in music, I'd go to nme.com". (For the record, I'm certain ithappens cares intensely about music).

Incidentally, my Guardian website reading is basically going there to read the news ... but frequently being side-tracked by other stuff.

The problem is that people who visit the Guardian through the front page of the website see only what's there, which does tend to include a big load of fluffy stuff. Whereas picking up the paper gives you a completely different conception of what's in there.

I don't dispute anyone's right to think the Guardian's a pile of crap. I just want to point out that the soul of the paper is still in there, and a lot of what gets viewed as crap is done precisely to support the stuff that makes up the soul of the paper. Honestly.

Perhaps there could be a link on the home page marked 'soul of the paper' that you could click to avoid the fluff?

I think it's all about identity. They want the Guardian to stand for a certain type of thing that they feel happy identifying with. It doesn't matter if it's still got the Nick Davies investigations or whatever: if it's published alongside with what they see as trash it's a personal affront

^^^ This, basically. Also, in the past it was easy to avoid the fluff if you wanted to, because you would just discard that section of the paper. It's a lot more in your face when it's all there together on the front page of the website.

I sometimes recommend people to to http://guardian.gyford.com/ if they just want the paper stories. Or http://www.theguardian.com/tone/news if they pull the "this isn't news" line.

without necessarily defending all of the fluff, i resent the assumption that anything to do with popular culture or celebrity or lifestyle is inherently unserious and unworthy and that the only legitimate journalism is about syria or whatever - only a small step from that position to being one of the angry dude commenters under lost in showbiz pieces. firmly believe that pop culture, and analysis thereof, is as ~important as anything else; dismissing it as "fluff" just means your classist and misogynistic biases are showing. having done work in both pop and politics i can tell you that it is much harder to take the latter seriously. of course, it still has to be done well, which isn't always the case.

only a small step from that position to being one of the angry dude commenters under lost in showbiz pieces

(well, i think that a couple of people on this thread are already there tbh)

Lex is absolutely correct. I think the real challenge is probably trying to maintain quality control when there's a constant requirement for large volumes of new content but that's true of all rolling news / culture sites and The Guardian is easily better than most at balancing the tossed-off with the more considered.

mm, that said, djh is contrasting "a morrissey story written be someone who has no interest in music" with "a good morrissey story" - opinions on whether morrissey pieces are ever worthwhile aside, i don't really think there's anyone on this thread who would in good faith argue that anything to do with popular culture is fluff.

it's sort of the opposite! we are used to the guardian doing popular culture well, so the bits on popular culture that are reworded PA or PR (pieces which are tiny and insignificant, but because they have separate pages may end up creeping up popularity algorithms and 'looking' important on the website) stand out more to us.

so the bits on popular culture that are reworded PA or PR (pieces which are tiny and insignificant, but because they have separate pages may end up creeping up popularity algorithms and 'looking' important on the website) stand out more to us.

oh this is totally otm! huge bugbear of mine. (it wasn't djh's criticism i was responding to...)

Lex totally OTM. I get similarly annoyed when the snoots forget the third part of Lord Reith's statement that the BBC should educate, inform and entertain.

And what Lord Reith didn't know about entertainment wasn't worth knowing

Translation?

What's interesting is that many of the Guardian's regular readers are most interested in, say, lifestyle features or pop music or whatever, but you never hear them shout "What's all this shit about the German federal elections? I come to the Guardian to read about lifestyle and pop, ME ME ME" all over threads.

or heaven forfend the idea of being interested in BOTH

Sure, but I'm saying there's a real difference in politeness between the people who aren't interested in one or the other.

also as a long-time hater of "funny" writing who thinks 95% of journalists who try the "light, humorous" tone should be eradicated - i absolutely think that light, witty writing done well (as per several examples brought up by grumps on this thread) is a tremendous thing

I totally take djh's point, btw. But I think the majority of the gripes I read about the Guardian betraying its values, becoming like the Mail etc, are about the subjects covered, not the quality of the writing.

I don't see how the SEO climate can do anything but make journalism worse overall, for any publication. But I suck it up, as both a reader and contributor to the Guardian, because the money has to come from somewhere. Obviously I'd rather we could all carry on as before, like the New Yorker still does for the most part, but shit ain't like that.

Alba OTM. The anti-pop snobs are unparallelled.

about the subjects covered, not the quality of the writing.

so are these people the next iteration of those folks who got up in arms when Rusbridger devoted a section of G2 to the death of Kurt Cobain? all coverage of popular culture is dumbing down and all dumbing down is the daily mail?

it's weird to me i guess because, even though the sidebar of shame exists, i don't really think of the mail as a "pop culture" paper -- i'd consider the trolling use of female columnists for pageviews more like a Daily Mail thing, something I've in the past suspected the Guardian of copying.

I read some comments for the first time in ages this week and 80% of them were a response to the subject matter, not the article. Write about Morrissey, whether it's clickbait fluff or a landmark essay, and you'll mostly get people saying they always thought Morrissey was overrated, yawn. Most commenters (not the same as most readers, I hope) don't discriminate between good and bad writing.

so are these people the next iteration of those folks who got up in arms when Rusbridger devoted a section of G2 to the death of Kurt Cobain?

Still think he erred there.