Is the Guardian worse than it used to be?

Fiction in newspapers is always rub

let's not try to handwave this one away

It's seriously dire.

― Legitimate space tale (LocalGarda), Sunday, December 22, 2013 6:47 PM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

she is an awful writer, plotter and human surveyor.

can't help but imagine the woman looking like
http://img2-1.timeinc.net/ew/dynamic/imgs/050321/151820__mrs_l.jpg

Is Shriver's fiction all this bad? I've only ever read her Guardian columns (which hadn't really enthused me to try her books, but then AL Kennedy's Guardian columns were rubbish as well and I love her novels, probably true of numerous other novelists who write for newspapers?)

I've read only one book of hers (We Need To Talk About Kevin) and no, it was not like that.

We Need To Talk About Kevin is her only good book. There's something really tin-eared and flaccid about everything else she's written.

I assumed We Need To Talk About Kevin would be sort of like that, but I'm never going to read it anyway at this point.

That piece is like, if someone posted it here you'd feel embarrassed for them.

probably true of numerous other novelists who write for newspapers?

not a novelist but George Saunders' Guardian columns were staggeringly awful and his fiction is frequently magnificent.

Reminded me of the excerpts I read off Lanchester's Capital (in its own ilx thread). Incredibly flat prose, banal treatment of currently painful transformations that are taking place. You don't want to be offended, but a tiny part of you just is.

There's quite a few high-profile writers where I think their main qualities are a thick skin, impervious to criticism, and a staggering self-belief in their own abilities - which allows them to shamelessly peddle work that most of us would cringe in embarrassment over.

Everett True's Ten Australian Bands To Watch In 2014

you have got to be fucking kidding me

This is presumably part of the Australian edition of the website and I would say is fair game for that. However there seems to be no sensible demarcation between the different editions, with the result that readers are bombarded with trivial Australia coverage.

This had been annoying me for months, specifically that they seem incapable of repackaging stories for a non-Aus audience. So you click a headline about Sheffield and then realise you're reading about Tasmania. Or that time when the five most popular stories on the UK version of the app all started with the words Election 2013.

I mean, it is a bit better than it used to be but it's happened so often since they launched the Aus edition that any time I come across a story like that I start raging. I need to get a grip, really.

This is presumably part of the Australian edition of the website and I would say is fair game for that.

My major issue isn't that it's for the Australian edition of the website (being Australian and reading the Australian edition), the problem is that they got Everett fuckin' True to write it. The problem is that in 2014, someone is allowing Everett True to write *anything* about music because it is always shit. Sure enough, the bands selected and the article itself is shit. Actually, my problem is that every music writer for The Guardian is fucking awful.

However there seems to be no sensible demarcation between the different editions, with the result that readers are bombarded with trivial Australia coverage.

Coming from an AU edition perspective, I thought at the start that both UK and AU stories always get mixed up in a messy fashion (which was to be expected). Now you can usually get away with AU stories only (if that were my want, which isn't always that case) with only some EPL coverage and UK opinions4u seeping through.

it's a disgrace, i expect to be bombarded with trivial Britishes coverage

"You should care more about cats stuck in trees in Tamworth, Staffordshire and less about cats stuck in trees in Tamworth, New South Wales."

lol my kids hate Tamworth

But mate, it has The Big Golden Guitar and the Country Music Festiv...oh wait.

Tamworth, Staffs is not a bad little town but the only bit my kids have seen is the station, where we sometimes have to change trains. it's like something the East German government wd've rejected for being too soul-crushing and it's stuck out in the arse-end of an industrial estate/suburban desert

you can read my full article on post-war architecture in Tamworth and why no great indie bands have come from there in the Graun all next week

Cracking play area in the grounds of the castle iirc

haven't been there for 30+ years but it used to be, yeah

My abiding memory of Tamworth is of looking out of a window during a boring meeting and seeing a couple shagging in the gym across the street.

Didn't Julian Cope have some bizarre theory about how Tamworth was the mystical centre of England or something? Probably.

The slag heap on the cover of "Fried" is near Tamworth.

There's a whole chapter in Head On or Repossessed all about Tamworth being the mystical centre of England but I'm not about to dig it out to quote it...

http://www.theguardian.com/media/2014/jan/06/simon-hoggart-guardian-observer-journalist-dies-67

I think we can definitely say that the Guardian is now worse than it used to be

:(

ah man that's a bastard. think he was the paper's first quote-unquote personality writer that kept my attention when I read it as a pre-internet teen

yeah, him and another dude whose name i'm forgetting who did a heroically abstruse diary.. i want to say he was called "sotweed" but that's not quite it

Smallweed?

YES

RIP. like Mencap i go way back with Hoggart

i never liked the way that hoggart belittled john prescott, which bordered on bullying, but i suppose it was in a well-entrenched public school style of #bantz that i am simply allergic to in toto, but he was a very entertaining writer and it's was a service to be shown the stubborn, human fallibility of policitians

Oh no! I briefly worked as his temp secretary in Portcullis House. He was about the most miserable person I ever worked for, but enjoyable company. He spent most of his time on the phone yelling at people from the BBC.

jeez i never realised Richard Hoggart was his dad, another of my cultural household idols

I am currently sat in the Richard Hoggart Building so sending my respects fully.

have they got a hotline

Independent rather than Guardian but dislike this headline a lot:

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/crime/wife-of-pc-david-rathband-officer-shot-and-left-blind-by-gunman-raoul-moat-had-affair-with-77-survivor-lisa-french-9041633.html

also, that weblink: She did not have the affair...

When I saw this thread had been bumped, I assumed it was over this....

http://jimromenesko.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/guardian.jpg

http://www.theguardian.com/film/2014/jan/06/12-years-a-slave-john-patterson

"I found myself oppressed by McQueen's film-making...I learned no more about the dynamics of slavery, its tendency to deprave both slave and master"

why is this still on the front page with a picture of a turkey?

http://www.theguardian.com/film/2014/jan/10/noel-clarke-storage-24-lowest-grossing-us-film
• This article was amended on Friday 10 January 2014. The original piece failed to mention Storage 24's distribution pattern in the US, which plays into its box office take. This has been amended.

http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/jonathanjonesblog/2014/jan/21/racist-chair-bjarne-melgaard-dasha-zhukova#_

"Why there's nothing racist about the 'racist chair'"

Not sure who this Jonathan Jones is but I'm pretty sure he's a shithead.

That's a possibility but which bits of the article led you to that conclusion? The bit about the "common touch" was the only bit which really made me wince (although I'm not sure I agree with the thrust of the article either).

i was just gonna quote the hilarious "common touch" bit, but let's start there and look at the rest of the article's smug dismissiveness about the politics of race

tell you what was edifying, seeing a bunch of men pompously declare "I AGREE WITH JONATHAN JONES" on twitter yesterday

http://www.artsjournal.com/culturegrrl/JJones2.gif