It is earnestly to be hoped - we love the Guardian!

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Cyril Haearn
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It is earnestly to be hoped - we love the Guardian!

Post by Cyril Haearn »

I do love the Guardian, been reading it for decades, it even published a couple of my cycling articles

Bob Holman was one of the best Guardian writers, or Harford Thomas, Mark Bourne.. Ian Jack is still writing

The paper has a North of England Correspondent who reports from Wales, she writes about cycling too, +2

But I have not seen a South of England Correspondent :wink: :?:

Someone who wrote leaders for the Guardian got a bit fed up of *earnestly hoping*, I think we should earnestly hope and believe things can change and get better

Why do you love the Guardian (or the Telegraph, Mail, NWWN..)?
Last edited by Cyril Haearn on 7 May 2021, 11:16am, edited 4 times in total.
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Mick F
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Re: It is earnestly to be hoped - we love the Guardian!

Post by Mick F »

Not bought a national newspaper for years ........... maybe decades.
No interest in them at all.
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georgew
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Re: It is earnestly to be hoped - we love the Guardian!

Post by georgew »

I began reading the Guardian when it was still in Manchester... and at that time many readers feared that its move to London would mean that it would eventually be sucked into London's great maw and lose its identity as a bastion of liberal thought. Over the years that is exactly what happened and it's now a poor shadow of itself...just another part of the establishment with editors and columnists still in love with Blair and the tenets of neoliberalism. The paper has lost the respect of its readers and now the best content is found in its readers' comments.....so sad.
softlips
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Re: It is earnestly to be hoped - we love the Guardian!

Post by softlips »

georgew wrote:I began reading the Guardian when it was still in Manchester... and at that time many readers feared that its move to London would mean that it would eventually be sucked into London's great maw and lose its identity as a bastion of liberal thought. Over the years that is exactly what happened and it's now a poor shadow of itself...just another part of the establishment with editors and columnists still in love with Blair and the tenets of neoliberalism. The paper has lost the respect of its readers and now the best content is found in its readers' comments.....so sad.



Have to agree.
thirdcrank
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Re: It is earnestly to be hoped - we love the Guardian!

Post by thirdcrank »

Does anybody really believe there's a future for daily newspapers in their present form? News - information about what's happened - is now available often as it's happening. One niche of news - sports news - illustrates this very well. If you can see your favourite sport live on the telly, you hardly need a written report the following day so the papers resort to things like managers' tiffs, and scandal. Tittle tattle.

I believe that the Guardian is a bit different to the other national dailies in that it is backed by the Scott Trust, rather than a media baron, but it seems to be in a bad way. The former editor, Rubbisher (thus betraying the source of my info :wink: ) squandered a lot of money on grandiose projects and belts are being tightened. A campaigning left wing newspaper with hacks who have no permanent contract etc.

A paper like the Telegraph might do a tad better in the very short term because its readership profile - oldies - is a little less likely to desert it for social media, but is that bit nearer extinction.
JimL
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Re: It is earnestly to be hoped - we love the Guardian!

Post by JimL »

georgew wrote:I began reading the Guardian when it was still in Manchester... and at that time many readers feared that its move to London would mean that it would eventually be sucked into London's great maw and lose its identity as a bastion of liberal thought. Over the years that is exactly what happened and it's now a poor shadow of itself...just another part of the establishment with editors and columnists still in love with Blair and the tenets of neoliberalism. The paper has lost the respect of its readers and now the best content is found in its readers' comments.....so sad.


Agreed (though not sure about the Blair bit..).

Gave it up decades ago.
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Mick F
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Re: It is earnestly to be hoped - we love the Guardian!

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thirdcrank wrote:Does anybody really believe there's a future for daily newspapers in their present form? News - information about what's happened - is now available often as it's happening. One niche of news - sports news - illustrates this very well. If you can see your favourite sport live on the telly, you hardly need a written report the following day so the papers resort to things like managers' tiffs, and scandal. Tittle tattle.

I believe that the Guardian is a bit different to the other national dailies in that it is backed by the Scott Trust, rather than a media baron, but it seems to be in a bad way. The former editor, Rubbisher (thus betraying the source of my info :wink: ) squandered a lot of money on grandiose projects and belts are being tightened. A campaigning left wing newspaper with hacks who have no permanent contract etc.

A paper like the Telegraph might do a tad better in the very short term because its readership profile - oldies - is a little less likely to desert it for social media, but is that bit nearer extinction.
All very true.
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Mick F
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Re: It is earnestly to be hoped - we love the Guardian!

Post by Mick F »

This evening, our parrot showed what she thinks about newspaper.
I must say, I agree with her.
IMG_0167.JPG
Mick F. Cornwall
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Re: It is earnestly to be hoped - we love the Guardian!

Post by Psamathe »

Cyril Haearn wrote:.....
Why do you love the Guardian (or the Telegraph, Mail, NWWN..)?

In the "internet age" the Guardian suffers from serious technical shortcomings. I read the Guardian online (through RSS feeds, loading the articles of interest) and they are totally unable to identify which country a story relates to. So you see a headline about some scandal involving the Labour Party in their UK News RSS feed and have a read and don't recognise any names and after a bit you realise it's a story from Australia! and they have totally failed to identify the country beyond putting it in the UK News Feed!. Point it out to them and they eventually apologise and claim to have fixed it and it just keeps happening.

So I've removed most of the Guardian feeds and switched to the Independent (which at least tells you what country the story is from/about!).

What is so disappointing is that they could sort it so easily but can't be bothered and that speaks volumes about the state of the paper- can't be bothered.

Also, too often their articles are predictable click-bait. Predictable opinion pieces reflecting the PC opinions e.g. how they had loads of articles leaping to the defence of Connie St Louis (and attaching Tim Hunt) and as the truth began to emerge (from investigations by other papers) they started on how the truth does not matter ... and tried to divert the debate to defending Ms St Louis over the allegations she had significantly lied on her CV .... At one point they published an article from MsSt Louis herself that was worse than amazing (for a lecturer journalism, full of grammar errors, bad english, etc); then when people started pointing this out, overwrite the article with a revised article with "adjusted" content and no comments about updates or revision (e.g. corrected on <date> or revised <date/time>).

Without a significant readjustment they will sink.

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Re: It is earnestly to be hoped - we love the Guardian!

Post by Tangled Metal »

Used to get it as a student because there was a deal for it at the student's union. Year before it was the telegraph because they had a deal for students. Last year it was independent which had a deal. This was 20+ years ago. I have bought a newspaper very infrequently since then. You don't need it!

I read news from papers around the world often based on the outputs of search engine's news pages. I used to read a lot of good output from an English language Chinese newspaper's website. Actually less biased than the self important uk broadsheets from the UK believe it or not. Even Indian newspaper websites are better, even when reporting the Indian rape issues.

Other nations websites in like are a couple of Aussie sites, Canadian and a few US ones too. In fact it's often fun to see one in particular sticking it to trump!

So I'm afraid I'd rather read the Lancaster guardian than the national guardian newspaper.

BTW the comment is free section of the guardian's website is pure carp! It's supposed to allow critical thought to be published but anything that doesn't fit in with the guardian's editorial line get thinned out. They have token right of centre commentators but they're weak. The one good right of centre commentator got sacked for making comments not in.The guardian's editorial line. I can't remember the details it was a few years back. Caused a bit of a media uproar but everyone moved on and guardian carried on censoring right of centre commentary on the CiF strand. BTW comments section gets heavily censored too
thirdcrank
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Re: It is earnestly to be hoped - we love the Guardian!

Post by thirdcrank »

What we are losing and have probably lost is the traditional reporter on the ground, witnessing some of what's happening and using reliable sources for what they didn't see because they can't be everywhere. I particularly remember Claire Hollingworth's reporting of events in Algeria in the early 1960's.

What we have now is the importance of news being decided by how spectacular are the available pictures with an increasing number of people knowing how to manipulate the media, including social media.
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Re: It is earnestly to be hoped - we love the Guardian!

Post by 661-Pete »

Mick F wrote:This evening, our parrot showed what she thinks about newspaper.
It looks more like a comment on a specific politician.
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Re: It is earnestly to be hoped - we love the Guardian!

Post by Vorpal »

I like to read news from a variety of sources and across the political spectrum. In general, I like the Guardian's on-line content. I do think that recently it is more opinion pieces and light stories and less in-depth analysis compared to what it was, even a few years ago. I like the Guardian but *love* is a bit OTT.

FWIW, I also read two free articles per week from the Times, the Economist, and others. The place I read the most news is probably the Intercept. https://theintercept.com/ I think they do a very good job of investigative journalism, and they seem to be apolitical in their criticism. They are vey critical of Trump, but they were also very critical of Obama. They are US American based, but some of their news is international. The first headlines that pop up on the site for me are US news, but there area also pieces about Yemen, Saudi arabia and UAE. Last week there were some pieces that were UK oriented. I don't know if the headlines shown me are based upon what I have read previously.

The only news I subscribe to (on-line) is a Norwegian paper. I get a free paper subscription of a local paper through my work.
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Psamathe
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Re: It is earnestly to be hoped - we love the Guardian!

Post by Psamathe »

Vorpal wrote:I like to read news from a variety of sources and across the political spectrum.......

I think the multiple sources is important for more that political slant considerations. I have UK News RSS feeds from Guardian and Independent and it's surprising how often a story is reported in one bu not the other (and that would be just a non-political/non-ploitician story). Disappointingly it's far more often the case that the Independent reports something that the Guardian misses; Guardian seems to have far more "Opinion" pieces whilst Independent focuses more on news.

Ian
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Mick F
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Re: It is earnestly to be hoped - we love the Guardian!

Post by Mick F »

661-Pete wrote:
Mick F wrote:This evening, our parrot showed what she thinks about newspaper.
It looks more like a comment on a specific politician.
Yep. :lol:

Environment Secretary Andrea Leadsom Western Morning News Jan 11th 2017
Mick F. Cornwall
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