Is the Guardian worse than it used to be?

Funnily enough, I quite like the Guide, partly because Joe Queenan and Byron Coley sometimes write for it, partly because it means I no longer have to buy that useless piece of toss Time Out anymore.

1. The simplification of the accusation may just echo what it asserts about the target (just as 'Dumbing Down' is a dumb, dull phrase);

2. If I don't like Triviality, why don't I read nothing but 10-page reports from the former Yugoslavia? It would be hypocritical of me to say that I simply wanted them to be SERIOUS and SOLEMN and RESPONSIBLE all the time. No, that's not it.

What I mean, I suppose, is that too many features, esp. in G2, now look dashed-off - half-hearted, half-baked, unconvincing, just cliché pies really. Today's Lara Croft piece was just the latest of a million examples. It feels (the terms are problematic here, I know) JOURNALISTIC in a bad way - trite, unconsidered, full of crowd- pleasing Received Ideas - rather than JOURNALISTIC in a good way (that is: dogged, resourceful, brave, mentally agile, snappy and what have you).

It's the world of second-hand Lifestyle phrases that bugs me. The way that adults can still write a phrase like "*that* dress" and not hang their heads in shame.

A rider to all my bile, though, is that my previous, more impressed impressions of the Guardian may just reflect youthful impressionability. (Sentence!) Maybe the same kind of crap used to impress me that now feels rubbishy, faux-zeitgeisty and embarrassing? Maybe, but I suspect it's a bit of both.

I agree about Queenan too. But most of all, I agree about Thomson. There's almost no point having a thread about Thomson, because people who know what they think about him already know it all and would just send in superlatives.

What the paper still has going for it: George Monbiot's column, the Diary, Steve Bell, giving review space to Ians Sansom and Penman, and the tv columns of Nancy Banks-Smith. (When N B-S finally pops her clogs I will have to think very hard about buying the paper.)

What is leading the paper ever closer to the abyss: consistently terrible pop coverage (honorable exceptions: Maddy Costa, Betty Clarke); the fatuous new Saturday mag (Zoe Ball on dressing? match the celebrity with the pet? that awful woman talking about words that should be banned??); Charlotte bloody Raven.

I agree with you there. They sucker you in with the G2 front cover (and the masthead of the main paper), but when you get to read the cover story it often appears cobbled together and lightweight. I imagine it must be difficult to fill that space with high quality stories day in day out though.

I actually like Peter Preston's awkward, staccato opinion pieces, come to think of it. But not the pompous ones of Hugo Young. Freedland is sometimes good at summing political issues up, but usually he 'sums up' too much - there's too much glibness in the way he marshals it all. (I admit again, though, that it's easy - even glib - to call someone glib.)

Penman strikes me as a red herring. I can see that he doesn't do that to you, cos you have some kind of investment in his career. I agree about Sansom (great left-back, mean penalty, blah blah) - in fact I think that the whole Saturday book reviews section is quite possibly the best feature of the paper. EXCEPT of course the footy. Heroes? How could I forget David Lacey?

BUT I think that you are wrong about N B-S. It doesn't surprise me that older folk make that judgement about her; it does rather surprise me coming from you. She has skills, I guess, but she's terribly repetitive; uses the same lines on the same topics year in year out. It's all too - yes - glib and easy, while dressed up to look aged and thus wise.

I only read it for the Guide and the job listings. Not that either has been particularly helpful lately... ;-)

There's a lot of irritating stuff, yes. My favourite columnist is George Monbiot, by a mile. Something I like about the Independent when I do get it is that its liberalism is less metropolitan and more about the common good. Needless to say, though, the Guardian's series of articles on public service under that very title were awesome.

Today's G2 seems designed to add fuel to my (f)ire: one page of 'Style' after another, including a column on Why We're So Disappointed That Madonna Employs A Stylist.

Also good in Guardian: John Patterson re. cinema.

oh god, ask hadley today is just... tooth-grinding.

"today"

"At what age is a man too old to wear band T-shirts?"

Martin McCall, by email

"About 15 - that young enough for you, Martin? And to follow one rhetorical question with several more, what in God's name is the point of band T-shirts anyway? To show your allegiance to a band? Do you think anyone else cares? To impress onlookers with your esoteric musical knowledge? See previous reply. To make people stare at your bony chest? Again, I refer you to the first answer. To show that you once attended a live gig? Wow, like, a pair of golden headsets to the guy in the Nirvana '91 T-shirt. In case you happen to bump into the lead singer on the street, he sees that the two of you are kindred souls and therefore invites you to join his band and you then go on the road and have all the manly bonding sessions followed by groupies that your heart could desire? OK, I'll give you that one, although this does suggest that you still harbour the fantasy that you might bump into Joey Ramone in Waterstone's.

"As for ladies in band T-shirts, give me a fricking break. First, gals, a badly cut, poorly made, oversized T-shirt is good for nothing other than wearing to bed and the gym. Second, too often women who wear band T-shirts appear to be going for what we shall call Groupie Chic. It is a style amply modelled by Kate Moss in recent years, and can pretty much be summed up as skinny faded black jeans, ankle boots, a ripped band T-shirt and a cropped fur jacket. In other words, a girlified version of Marc Bolan's or Keith Richards' wardrobe, as though the woman has been so busy, um, sleeping on the band bus she hasn't had time to clean her clothes, so she's now wearing ones belonging to her musical companion. This column has no time for such nonsense."

Yeah, because women have *no* interest in music whatsoever except for sleeping with musicians. What CENTURY is this cretin from?

I think I stopped wearing band T-shirts by the time I was 23. It wasn't necessarily a conscious move tho. I doubt I will ever wear one again tho - I guess it seems lame unless it's an old obscure or overlooked thus hip act (even this I dunno about). I don't notice many people over 20 wearing them. Does Matt DC still have that Save Ferris T?

I only want to sleep with musicians if they are hot as they are (their musical ability is pretty irrelevant in fact).

dear teh grauniad - a long time ago/we used to be friends...

It went downhill after I left.

or were you PUSHED?

http://homepage.mac.com/alexinnyc/.Pictures/Photo%20Album%20Pictures/2007-09-02%2015.37.57%20-0700/Image-D15E03FF59A011DC.jpg

heh. (sorry alex, no harm intended)

http://www.abc.net.au/sport/thesportsdesk/images/200607/20060707henrydive_derblog.jpg

xp

i was being harsh really. i don't care what's on other people's t-shirts that much. just trying to work out why i stopped wearing/wouldn't wear band t-shirts myself.

Any t-shirt which isn't plain white clearly sucks that's why.

i couldn't agree less

I still wear band t-shirts if I like the band. Why not? I don't *define* myself or my personality by my music tastes any more, I haven't done that since I was about 18. But that's not the same thing as wearing a band t-shirt.

I suppose the fashion journalist in discussion cannot fathom the idea that clothes are just something you put on, rather than a definition of or statement about your personality.

This is definitely something that happens as you age - or rather, has happened to me as I aged. There's a subtle difference between Statement Clothes and just things you put on.

Guardian editorial worldview circa 2007:

http://www.astucia.co.uk/images/sce/galibier%20tunnel%20_three.jpg

why else would you buy a band t-shirt if not as a statement or definition of personality?

I didn't know it was a band t-shirt okay?

because you're cold xp

In the past I've usually just bought them as a keepsake of a gig I've enjoyed. The piece tracer quotes is idiotic fluff, obv. I'd be embarrased to admit I'd written that.

Because you like the design? Because you like the music? Because it was given to you (this is where most of mine come from)? Because it was a souvenier?

x-post

you wouldn't actually buy a band t-shirt because you liked the design but not necessarily the band tho...would you?

because you like the music = statement/definition of you/your taste

given to you = not you buying

you wouldn't actually buy a band t-shirt because you liked the design but not necessarily the band tho...would you?

No, plus I've only ever bought them @ gigs.

because you like the music = statement/definition of you/your taste

Probably yeah, but w/smaller bands there's also the knowledge that in buying it, yr helping to supposrt the tour.

i actually bought a comets on fire t-shirt solely because the design was so awesome. (it was at a gig, but they hadn't come on stage yet.) then i heard the music and i liked that too. i suppose if i hadn't liked their music, or thought it was boring, it would have posed a problem.

a friend of mine, who shall remain nameless so that alex in nyc doesn't stalk and kill him, bought a huge iron maiden patch when he was 14 and sewed it across the shoulders of his denim jacket. he had never heard a note of iron maiden, but he wound up becoming the biggest iron maiden fan i know, and even sung in a band later, where his vocal style was almost inseparable from bruce dickinson's.

my take on this: do not read hadley freeman.

this resolution made some time ago, stands as strong today as it ever did.

it's a crass and deliberately invidious piece of writing. such an attitude, if sincerely held, could be turned around on pretty much ANY choice of clothing. so forgeddaboudit

the last band t-shirt i bought - robyn!

alan i can't help myself, i know i'm sick and need help.

is there a thread for best band t-shirts? must see

Taste is something that I have. It does not define me. Clothes are something I wear. The statement I am making is "I don't really care about clothes any more."

If I'm going to make a statement about clothes, I'll wear a bright green paisley jacket to a dronerock festival where everyone else is in leather.

I suppose my Hawkwind t-shirt is a statement, it says "ha ha, I'm wearing a Hawkwind t-shirt, I care nothing for fashion, I am wearing the shirt of a band so deeply uncool you can suck my left one because I love them!" But it's certainly not a statement saying that I want to f*ck any of Hawkwind or that I have a musician boyfriend whose Hawkwind t-shirt I'm borrowing, which is the assumption of that article.

> I don't notice many people over 20 wearing them.

*SOBS*

> you wouldn't actually buy a band t-shirt because you liked the design but not necessarily the band tho...would you?

EAR t-shirt with the putney on the front = great. EAR live = terrible. (EAR on CD = ok, plus pram and stereolab were supporting)

i just read about the butler thing. are they going to explain the developments? if they were bullied by terfs they should say so but they won't

I’m pretty sure they will issue an explanation given the amount of heat they’re getting and their editorial team’s ongoing need for self-justification.

It's poor and it will be poor

Yes. At a guess, it will be something like ‘now that a criminal charge has resulted from the WiSpa incident, we felt it appropriate to completely redact the question and answer from the interview’, as a fig leaf.

the piece was commission by the Guardian US too which makes this intervention even stranger.

Lots of DMs:

Yes, they deleted a paragraph criticising gender critical feminism

Yes this is confusing, and (I'm told) unprecedented

Yes we asked for it reinstated (or as a last resort, republished)

Yes I offered a rewrite to bring it up-to-date

Yes I'm now going to bed

— Juliana☿ (@socialrepro) September 7, 2021

some details from the interviewer

I hadn't realised the British staff would have final veto power, tbh.

— Juliana☿ (@socialrepro) September 8, 2021

& confirmed that the uk guardian staff intervened which seems very unusual for a us guardian article? will be maddening if the uk branch starts intervening in the au guardian too which is somehow very good generally

Their processes are fucked.

the uk parent has also reportedly used this as a pretext to force the us guardian to scrap an entire (presumably trans-friendly seeing as it was the us guardian) series on trans issues of which this interview was intended to be the first part

hope there's some sort of pushback from the us staff or something

this really seems like unspoken toxic working culture / prejudice crossing over into explicit policy, not something that ever really ends well

The idea humans don't need sex categories, that we're above such mundanities, is the ultimate luxury belief.
And it unsurprisingly emerged from an elite university in a superpower state https://t.co/cZhcM2YKZc

— Susanna Rustin (@SusannaRustin) September 7, 2021

*Checks bio* ok

🚨 Facts are sacred 🚨

Pretty edifying watching soi disant feminists who'd rather tear down feminist and gender theory than give up hating all trans people

luxury belief

Oh so now religious fundamentalists are bad? Because swerfs and terfs usually have no problem aligning with the Christians ones.

now that it's established that the other branches don't actually have editorial independence i'm really looking forward to "are the guardian us & au worse than they used to be" slowly becoming increasingly common

in the decades since this thread started the guardian kowtowed to the MI5 in a fashion that made the Murdoch papers look like slackers. Aligned themselves with the transphobes and expended industrial amounts of energy attacking Corbynism. We need to stop helping keep them alive by giving them reluctant hate clicks and treat them as nothing different different from the spectator or the telegraph going forwards. They need to die.

Can confirm

ShariVari's prediction was correct about their explanation but it makes no sense to me. https://www.huffpost.com/entry/guardian-judith-butler-interview-trans-terfs_n_6138d856e4b0f1b9706915be the criminal charge doesn't change the question or the answer, and even if they thought it was important to include they could just put an editor's note in brackets. it's just mindblowing how dishonest it is! btw i didn't even know the guardian had a separate u.s. or australian version.

The author had rewritten the question to remove reference to that incident.

the guardian au is solidly centre-left & genuinely one of the best news sources here. not inclined to centrist hand-wringing, left-bashing, transphobia, or anything like that, thankfully. it probably helps that australian labor isn't quite as terrible as uk labour (though they're still shit in plenty of ways) but also they're not as committed to defending the bad parts either

This is very true, though they do have one of the most annoying columnists in the world, Br1gid Del@ney

still not quite as inane as some of the uk's though

Day 3 of a series of articles where a bunch of writers project whatever the hell they want on Emma Raducanu.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/sep/14/emma-raducanu-famous-teenage-girls-young-women

I veer between gentle outrage and "sorry you'll have to get used to it, these morons will never change" every time I hear or see her name this week

There is a lot of bullshit in women's tennis and it's coverage but it is a space where women just win and can get on with whatever they want. As for Raducanu, she has just won! And you're telling me she hasn't? Ok..

Hadley Freeman appears to be leaving The Guardian after this weekend.

Suspect she’ll be taking the Woody Allen Innocent show on the road to The Times but we’ll see.

She’s got a few books to write, I guess? I think British Vogue stopped using her because she’s a transphobe (Edward the editor would not want someone like that writing for him).

This would be, genuinely, on balance, a reason to read the Guardian.

Hadley has deleted that tweet

No reasons to ever read this rag beyond sheer fucking boredom.

On balance, I think contributing in some peculiar way to the departure of HF must rank as one of Jez's finest achievements

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/sep/18/opinion-writing-has-changed-a-lot-since-i-started-out-its-time-for-something-new

how wonderful it would be to live in that cloud of sweet obliviousness

hah come back and talk about your legacy when you've managed to write a piece that still gets memed to death 20 years later like Milne's "They can’t see why they are hated" does.

well it turns out long Corbynism is good

It looks like she isn’t even leaving, it’s just the last column for Weekend, which is closing.

But column-writing was seen as something of a private members’ club: elitist, dusty and distant.

This was my best bit, she is v funny tbfttl

so it's only really "The End" for the 180 Weekend staff the Guardian have laid off

The Guardian: "why do we expect such a conformity of opinion?"

Also The Guardian: *deletes interviews that do not conform* pic.twitter.com/BD4CXtMksl

— Adam Smith (@adamndsmith) September 18, 2021

this is a very good point

I loved the way they closed the comments so that quite fortuitously this one remains on top (after the eulogising Guardian Picks):

Dear Hadley,

It has been marvellous to see your journalism evolve. You are a wonderful writer and I have treasured your fearlessness and independent-mindedness in confronting and examining questions others have fought shy of. I will be looking forward to reading more of your interviews and features on film, literature and culture, wherever they are published. Go well.

"Go well"? Is that a thing people say?

it sounds like Dungeons & Dragons speak.

ppl do say it yes, i have used it in obits (of ppl who actually died that i was fond of)

when do i get my guardian column

what do you say in obits when you're not fond of ppl?

Milne has a lot to answer for.

This is my favourite lol moment:

"None of this is why I’m stopping the column. It’s just time."

"RIP: they didn't know why they were hated"

when do i get my guardian column

― mark s, Saturday, 18 September 2021 bookmarkflaglink

If you want one I suggest you study the masters

https://www.theguardian.com/profile/adrian-chiles

(x-post)
Seems a bit harsh, especially if they saw themselves more as ".. wide circle of friends, colourful array of lovers, and lived an extraordinarily full life."

tbf that's why they were hated

would like to live in a country where a centre left paper might be fair minded enough to include the resignation of 2 members of staff over LGBT+ issues, her publicly identifying one of them, union reaction to this, trans members leaving party or even her comments this morning https://t.co/9AkeG0USUn

— a rare photo of sean connery signed by roger moore (@steamedhamms) September 20, 2021