Is the Guardian worse than it used to be?

Garry Kelly took the Harry Ramsden’s Challenge and ate a fish about a yard long and a mountain of chips and anything else they challenged him with. He thought there’s be a certificate but he got a free desert instead

not lolled so hard in weeks!

One of the worst Guardian arts articles in a long time.

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2020/jul/14/writer-lockdown-diary-amy-sackville-creative-writing

I'm sure I've read worse, my eyes just sort of glazed over really, I feel like I've read fifty variants on that since lockdown started.

There should be a nationwide ban on the phrase 'sourdough starter' by now, as well as columnists telling people they aren't reading Proust. The overwhelming majority of humanity isn't reading Proust right now.

It's harmless, not actively bad or evil, but we've seen way too many of these flimsy diary-type stories, that's for sure.

pretty sure the broadsheets live for flimsy diary-type stories even when there isn't a pandemic

The 'article' summarized: "I can't write because I'm not reading, but this isn't about writers block, because I'm not even trying to write. But - and here's the kicker you DID NOT see coming - I wrote this, natch!"

oh so 'sourdough starter' isn't a euphemism for going for a dump, well you live and you learn.

gyac - thanks for that bit of info.

I wonder what a diary of someone who doesn't know whether they'll have a job or be able to make rent looks like.

Don't be daft, who'd want to to read that?

I'm going to do a fictional diary of the internal life I imagine my cleaner lives in, if they were a sentient human being. And include how grateful for my money they are and how much colour I bring into their monochrome joyless life.

At 10:35 on an early summer's morning, John Lanchester sat down at his study desk, switched on his new Dell computer, opened up the word processing programme that the computer had come with and began

The illustration for that article certainly seems a little...gratuitous?

The Guardian announces it’ll be laying off 180 people - 70 from editorial - after coronavirus smacks £25m from bottom line. We’re all starting to move on from the furlough, sandbag-period of the crisis. https://t.co/4ooydn7z6Z

— Mark Di Stefano (@MarkDiStef) July 15, 2020

Just sack Chiles

Saddly it won't be him or the Suzanne Moore types that are going to fuck off.

Fetter: precisely. Ludicrous illustration really.

re the author of the bad diary column: she is paid to be a creative writer by the University of Kent, so it is not great (eg for her colleagues) for her to publish a whimsical article in national media talking about how she's not writing.

It's a bit like a plumber writing an article saying he's not plumbing - not because contracts have dried up during the crisis, but just because he doesn't feel like it.

The University of Kent has just been announced as one of the 10 UK universities in most financial danger of closure.

180 people to leave Guardian -- how many work for it in the first place ?? I mean that must be 25% of its payroll or something?

It's a bit like a plumber writing an article saying he's not plumbing - not because contracts have dried up during the crisis, but just because he doesn't feel like it.

Would still prefer reading this than what they published now tbh

pinefox & lbi otm

plumbers invariably have very amusing anecdotes about getting sprayed with human shit, some guardian writers figuratively spray shit at their dwindling audience!

the guardian financial plan in full:

i: sack yet more subs and fact-checkers
ii: crowdsource corrections factual grammatical and lol stylistic to twitter
iii: scream non-stop abt "cancel culture" when said corrections roll in

iv: get more writers in to write about how they're not writing
v: add nude pictures to said articles
vi: profit

vii: go tits up anyway

graunlyfans

Close the Observer pay spell checkers you cowards!

You could have John Harris ambushing your nan in the high street, or you could have this. It’s not even a choice. pic.twitter.com/5GvoCCL6Se

— Elvis Buñuelo (@Mr_Considerate) July 15, 2020

i don’t know alan partridge, how do snails get up to the fourth floor

come on ppl, they use the ESCARGOLATOR

give me this man's bad column

You are not dating the editor.

Oh right is that with it is lol

can't wait to read more copied-and-pasted press releases in the news pages of the slimmed-down grauniad

Before tweeting "learn to code" at a journalist worrying about losing their job you should learn basic fucking human decency.

— James Ball (@jamesrbuk) July 15, 2020

NEW: The Guardian is to cut 180 jobs, including 70 in editorial. Equates to 12pc of roles across the company. Revenues are expected to be down by "well over £25m" compared with pre-Covid budgets as advertising, recruitment, events and print circulation come under pressure.

— Chris Williams (@cg_williams) July 15, 2020

The Guardian’s challenge: 2015 total staff costs were £123.9m. Last year after turnaround plan, hundreds of voluntary redundancies and tens of millions of pounds of restructuring costs: £124.1m. 🤷‍♂️

— Chris Williams (@cg_williams) July 15, 2020

Ah, basic fucking human decency, the hallmark of the journalist's trade

How does Chiles get to 'date' people? It's grotesque.

Would the Guardian cuts not include coders?

I wish James Ball would do literally anything other than journalism

oof

Update: Saturday edition to bear brunt of Guardian editorial cuts. The Guide, Weekend, Review and Travel print sections all to be closed, replacement TBA. Elsewhere parts of sport and lifestyle depts to be reduced. Plans to introduce “truly digital-first” editorial processes.

— Chris Williams (@cg_williams) July 15, 2020

So less reasons to read it. Not that I like it's arts coverage but at least it isn't it's political coverage (which it mirrors but still..)

Lifestyle section only reduced?

Oof indeed.

It strikes me that one of the problems faced by left-leaning media not faced by the right is that a lot of the potential readers see it as a betrayal when publications run pieces they disagree with.

— Jonn Elledge (@JonnElledge) July 15, 2020

Lol, if only that were true rather than treating left/-leaning people with contempt

Not sure what left-leaning media he's talking about

maybe that one that runs bullshit stories on behalf of GCHQ and ran something like 1600 smear pieces on a centre-left LOTO.

the Lib Dem newspaper of record? nah it can't be them

It's quite the challop to claim that the right doesn't cry betrayal whenever it sees something it doesn't like in one of its own papers.

This is terrible news and this tweet underlines that they could retain these features, which people actually like and want, by instead letting go of their absolutely awful full time opinion creatures who have mostly been addressing each other for years. pic.twitter.com/D6YnQ64hue

— Flying_Rodent (@flying_rodent) July 16, 2020

How does the tweet (as Flying Rodent claims) underline that?

It looks like it's saying the opposite: that the closure of these sections is also bringing closure to dreadful Freeman.

Or maybe Freeman's not leaving, I don't know. It seems too much to hope for.