The Guardian
The Guardian is a British
newspaper owned by the
Guardian Media Group. It is published Monday to Saturday in the
Berliner format. Until 1959 it was called
The Manchester Guardian, reflecting its provincial origins; the paper is still occasionally referred to by this name, especially in
North America (to distinguish it from
other newspapers with similar names), although it has been based in
London since 1964 (with printing facilities in both
Manchester and
London).
Editorial articles in
The Guardian are generally in sympathy with the liberal to left-wing ends of the political spectrum. This is reflected in the paper's readership: a MORI Poll taken between April-June 2000 showed that 80% of
Guardian readers were Labour Party voters, (cited in
International Socialism Spring 2003, ISBN:1-898876-97-5); according to another
MORI poll taken in 2004, 44% of
Guardian readers vote
Labour and 37% vote
Liberal Democrat[MORI, 2005-03-09. "Voting Intention by Newspaper Readership"].
Today
The Guardian is the only British national newspaper to publish in full colour (although the edition for
Northern Ireland still has a lot of black-and-white
["More black and white than colour for Ireland" Village , 12 January 2006]); it was also the first newspaper in the UK to be printed on the
Berliner size. In November 2005
The Guardian had a certified average
daily circulation of 378,618 copies (November 2005), as compared to sales of 904,955 for the
Daily Telegraph, 692,581 for
The Times, and 261,193 for
The Independent[Audit Bureau of Circulations Ltd]. The paper is sometimes known as
"The Grauniad" (coined by
Private Eye), as a result of frequent typographical errors for which it became infamous in the era before computer typesetting (including, on one occasion, the misspelling of its own name).
It has been awarded the
National Newspaper of the Year in 1999 and 2006 by the
British Press Awards.The
Guardian Unlimited web site won the Best Newspaper category two years running in the 2005 and 2006
Webby Awards, beating (in 2005) the
New York Times, the
Washington Post, the
Wall Street Journal and
Variety[The Webby Awards, 2005. "9th Annual Webby Awards nominations and winners."]. It has been the winner for six years in a row of the
British Newspaper Awards for Best Electronic Daily Newspaper.
The site won an
Eppy award from the US-based magazine
Editor & Publisher in 2000 for the best-designed newspaper online service
[Eppy Awards, 2000. "Winners."]. The website is well-known and recognised for its commentary on sporting events, particularly its over-by-over cricket commentary.
The Guardian is part of the
Guardian Media Group of newspapers, radio stations, and new media including
The Observer Sunday newspaper, the
Manchester Evening News, and
Guardian Unlimited, one of the most popular online news resources on the Internet. All the aforementioned are owned by
The Scott Trust, a charitable foundation which aims to ensure the newspaper's editorial independence in perpetuity, maintaining its financial health to ensure it does not become vulnerable to take over by for-profit media groups, and the serious compromise of editorial independence that this often brings.
The Guardian has been consistently loss-making. The National Newspaper division of GMG, which also includes
The Observer, reported operating losses of £49.9m in 2006, up from £18.6m in 2005
[Guardian Media Group plc 2006. "Guardian Media Group 2005/6 results."]. The paper is therefore heavily dependent on cross-subsidisation from profitable companies within the group, including
Auto Trader and the
Manchester Evening News.
The Guardian's ownership by the Scott Trust is likely a factor in it being the only British national daily to conduct (since 2003) an annual social, ethical and environmental
audit in which it examines, under the scrutiny of an independent external auditor, its own behaviour as a company
[Guardian Newspapers Ltd & Scott Trust, 2005. "Social, ethical and environmental audit, 2005."].
The
Guardian and its parent groups participate in
Project Syndicate, established by
George Soros, and intervened in 1995 to save the
Mail & Guardian in
South Africa, but Guardian Media Group sold the majority of its shares in the
Mail & Guardian in 2002.
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The Guardian's Newsroom visitor centre and archive (No 60), with an old sign with the name The Manchester Guardian |
The
Manchester Guardian was founded in Manchester in 1821 by a group of
non-conformist businessmen headed by
John Edward Taylor. The prospectus which announced the new publication proclaimed that "it will zealously enforce the principles of civil and religious Liberty … it will warmly advocate the cause of Reform; it will endeavour to assist in the diffusion of just principles of Political Economy; and to support, without reference to the party from which they emanate, all serviceable measures."
The first edition was published on
May 5,
1821[Schoolnet n.d. "Manchester Guardian."], at which time the
Guardian was a weekly, published on Saturdays and costing 7
d.; the
stamp duty on newspapers (4
d. per sheet) forced the price up so high that it was uneconomic to publish more frequently. When the stamp duty was cut in 1836 the
Guardian added a Wednesday edition; with the abolition of the tax in 1855 it became a daily paper costing 2 d.
Its most famous editor,
C. P. Scott, made the
Manchester Guardian into a nationally famous newspaper. He was editor for 57 years from 1872, and became its owner when he bought the paper from the estate of Taylor's son in 1907. Under Scott the paper's moderate editorial line became more radical, supporting Gladstone when the Liberals split in 1886, and opposing the
Second Boer War against popular opinion.
Scott's friendship with
Chaim Weizmann played a role in the
Balfour Declaration, and in 1948 the
Guardian was a supporter of the State of
Israel. The story of the relationship between the
Guardian and the
zionist movement and Israel is told in Daphna Baram's book "Disenchantment: The
Guardian and Israel".
In June 1936 ownership of the paper was transferred to the
Scott Trust (named after the last owner, John Russell Scott, who was the first chairman of the Trust). This move ensured the paper's independence, and it was then noted for its eccentric style, its moralising and its detached attitude to its finances.
Traditionally affiliated with the centrist
Liberal Party, and with a northern circulation base, the paper earned a national reputation and the respect of the left during the
Spanish Civil War, when along with the Liberal
News Chronicle, the Labour
Daily Herald, the Communist
Daily Worker and several Sunday and weekly papers it supported the republicans against the insurgent
nationalists led by General
Francisco Franco.
In 1952 the paper took the step of printing news on the front page, replacing the adverts that had hitherto filled that space. The editor
A.P. Wadsworth wrote, "it is not a thing I like myself, but it seems to be accepted by all the newspaper pundits that it is preferable to be in fashion".
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The Guardian's offices in London |
In 1959 the paper dropped "Manchester" from its title, becoming simply
The Guardian, and in 1964 it moved to
London, losing some of its regional agenda but continuing to be heavily subsidised by sales of the less intellectual but much more profitable
Manchester Evening News. The financial position remained extremely poor into the 1970s; at one time it was in merger talks with
The Times. The paper consolidated its
left-wing stance during the 1970s and 1980s but was both shocked and revitalised by the launch of
The Independent in 1986 which competed for a similar readership and provoked the entire broadsheet industry into a fight for circulation.
In 1988
The Guardian had a significant redesign; as well as improving the quality of its printers ink, it also changed its masthead to its soon-familiar (but no-longer used as of 2005) juxtaposition of an
italic Garamond "The", with a bold
Helvetica "Guardian".
In 1992 it relaunched its features section as G2, a tabloid-format supplement. This innovation was widely copied by the other "quality" broadsheets, and ultimately led to the rise of "compact" papers and
The Guardians move to the Berliner format. In 1993 the paper declined to participate in the broadsheet 'price war' started by Rupert Murdoch's The Times
. In June 1993, The Guardian
bought The Observer from Lonrho, thus gaining a serious Sunday newspaper partner with similar political views.
In 1995, both the Granada Television programme World In Action and The Guardian
were sued for libel by the then cabinet minister Jonathan Aitken, for their allegation that the Saudi Prince Mohammed bin Fahd had paid for Aitken and his wife to stay at the Hôtel Ritz in Paris, which would have amounted to accepting a bribe on Aitken's part. Aitken publicly stated he would fight with "the simple sword of truth and the trusty shield of British fair play"[Jonathan Aitken, 1995. "The simple sword of truth." ]The Guardian
.. The court case proceeded, and in 1997 The Guardian
produced evidence that Aitken's claim of his wife paying for the hotel stay was untrue[Luke Harding and David Pallister, 1997 "He lied and lied and lied" ]The Guardian
.. In 1999, Aitken was jailed for perjury and perverting the course of justice[BBC News, 1999. "Aitken pleads guilty to perjury."].
During the Afghanistan and Iraq wars The Guardian
attracted a significant proportion of anti-war readers as one of the mass-media media outlets most critical of UK and USA military initiatives.
The Guardian is currently highly critical of Israeli defence policy. In December 2003 journalist Julie Burchill left the paper for The Times, citing this as one of the reasons for her move[Julie Burchill, 29 November 2003. "Good bad and ugly." ]The Guardian
.. |
The Guardians offices in London |
Its international weekly edition is now titled The Guardian Weekly, though it retained the title Manchester Guardian Weekly for some years after the home edition had moved to London. It includes sections from a number of other internationally significant newspapers of a somewhat left-of-centre inclination, including Le Monde. In 2004, The Guardian introduced an online digital version of its print edition, allowing readers to download pages from the last 14 issues as PDF files.
In August 2004, for the US presidential election, the daily G2 supplement, edited by Ian Katz, launched an experimental letter-writing campaign in Clark County, Ohio, a small county in a swing state. Katz bought a voter list from the county for $25 and asked people to write to those on the list undecided in the election. The point of this venture was for the writers to give Clark County voters a taste of international opinion, without endorsing any candidates. This caused something of a backlash, and on 21 October, 2004, the paper retired the campaign.
In October 2004 The Guardian published a humour column by Charlie Brooker in its entertainment guide, which appeared to call for the assassination of US President George W. Bush[CNS News, 25 October 2004."Left-Wing UK Paper Pulls Bush Assassination Column.",]. This caused some controversy and the paper was forced to issue an apology and remove the article from its website[Charlie Brooker, 24 October 2004."Screen Burn, The Guide." The Guardian.].
Following the 7 July 2005 London bombings, The Guardian published an article on its comment pages by Dilpazier Aslam, a 27-year-old British Muslim journalism trainee from Yorkshire[Dilpazier Aslam, 2005-07-13. "We rock the boat." The Guardian.]. Aslam was a member of Hizb ut-Tahrir, an Islamist group, and had published a number of articles on their website. According to the paper, it did not know that Aslam was a member of Hizb ut-Tahrir when he applied to become a trainee, though several staff members were informed of this once he started at the paper[Media Guardian, 2005-07-22. "Background: the Guardian and Dilpazier Aslam." The Guardian.]. The Home Office has claimed the group's "ultimate aim is the establishment of an Islamic state (Caliphate), according to Hizb ut-Tahrir via non-violent means". The Guardian asked Aslam to resign his membership of the group, and – when he did not do so – terminated his employment[Steve Busfield, 2005-07-22. "Dilpazier Aslam leaves Guardian." The Guardian.].
In September 2005 The Guardian moved to the Berliner paper format and changed the design of its masthead.In 2004, The Guardian announced plans to change to a "Berliner" or "midi" format similar to that used by Le Monde in France and some other European papers; at 470×315 mm, this is slightly larger than a traditional tabloid. Planned for the autumn of 2005, this change was either a response to, or has the same cause as, the moves by The Times and The Independent to start publishing in tabloid (or compact) format. On Thursday 1 September 2005 The Guardian announced that it would launch the new format on Monday 12 September[Claire Cozens, 2005-09-01. "New-look Guardian launches on September 12." The Guardian.]. Sister Sunday newspaper The Observer went over to the same format on 8 January 2006.
The advantage that The Guardian saw in the Berliner format was that though it is only a little wider than a tabloid, and is thus equally easy to read on public transport, its greater height gives more flexibility in page design. The new presses mean that printing can go right across the 'gutter', the strip down the middle of the centre page, allowing the paper to print striking double page pictures. The new presses also made the paper the first UK national able to print in full colour on every page.
The format switch was accompanied by a comprehensive redesign of the paper's look. On Friday 9 September 2005 the newspaper unveiled its new look front page, which débuted on Monday 12 September 2005. Designed by Mark Porter, the new look includes a new masthead for the newspaper, its first since 1988. A typeface family called Guardian Egyptian, designed by Paul Barnes (designer) and Christian Schwartz, was created for the new design. No other typeface is used anywhere in the paper - all stylistic variations are based on various forms of Guardian Egyptian.
The switch cost Guardian Newspapers £80 million and involved setting up new printing presses in east London and Manchester. This was because prior to the Guardian's move, no printing presses in the UK could produce newspapers in the Berliner format. There were additional complications as one of the Guardian's presses was part-owned by groups responsible for The Daily Telegraph and The Daily Express, and it was contracted to use the plant until 2009. Another press was shared with the Guardian Media Group's north western local tabloid papers, which did not wish to switch to the Berliner format.
The new format was generally well received by Guardian readers, who were asked to feedback on the changes. The only controversial issue was the dropping of the Doonesbury cartoon strip. The Guardian reported thousands of calls and emails complaining about its loss and within 24 hours, the decision was reversed and the strip was reinstated the following week. Section editor Ian Katz, who was responsible for dropping it, apologised in the editors' blog saying, "I'm sorry, once again, that I made you - and the hundreds of fellow fans who have called our helpline or mailed our comments' address - so cross" Guardian Unlimited - Guardian Reborn. Some readers are however dissatisfied as the earlier deadline needed for the all-colour sports section has meant that coverage of late-finishing evening football matches is less satisfactory than before the redesign in the editions supplied to some parts of the country.
The investment was rewarded with a circulation rise. In December 2005, the average daily sale stood at 380,693, nearly 6% higher than the figure for December 2004.[Claire Cozens, 2006-01-13. "Telegraph sales hit all-time low." The Guardian.] In 2006 the US-based Society for News Design voted the Guardian and Polish daily Rzeczpospolita as the best-designed newspapers in the world, choosing them from 389 entries from 44 countries.[Emily Bell, 2005-10-08. "Editor's Week." The Guardian.]. The website also offers PDF editions of the newspaper for a monthly subscription fee. Free, unrestricted access has been cited as one of factors in the site's popularity.
The Guardian also has a number of talkboards that are noted for their mix of political disussion and whimsy. They are spoofed in the Guardian's own regular humorous Chatroom column in G2. The spoof column purports to be excerpts from a chatroom on permachat.co.uk, a real URL which points to The Guardian's talkboards.
The Guardian has also launched a dating website, Soulmates, and is experimenting with new media, offering a free twelve part weekly Podcast series by Ricky Gervais[Jason Deans, 2005-12-08. "Gervais to host Radio 2 Christmas show." The Guardian.]. In January 2006 Gervais' show topped the iTunes podcast chart having been downloaded by two million listeners worldwide[Media Guardian "Comedy stars and radio DJs top the download charts." The Guardian.], and is scheduled to be listed in the 2007 Guinness Book of Records as the most downloaded Podcast[John Plunkett, 2006-02-06. "[1]." The Guardian.].The name the Grauniad for the paper originated with the satirical magazine
Private Eye; it came about because of a reputation for text mangling, technical typesetting failures and typographical errors, including once misspelling its own name on the page one masthead as
"The Gaurdian" in the 1970s. Although such errors are now less frequent than they used to be, the 'Corrections and clarifications' column can still often provide some amusement. There were even a number of errors in the first issue, perhaps the most notable being a notification that there would soon be some goods sold at
atction instead of
auction.
Until the foundation of the
Independent, the
Guardian was the only serious national daily newspaper in Britain that was not clearly conservative in its political affiliation. The term
"Guardian reader" is therefore often used pejoratively by those who do not agree with the paper or self-deprecatingly by those who do. The stereotype of a
Guardian reader is a person with leftist or liberal politics rooted in the 1960s, working in the public sector, regularly eating
lentils and
muesli, living in north
London wearing
sandals and believing in
alternative medicine and
natural medicine as evidenced by
Labour MP Kevin Hughes' largely
rhetorical question in the
House of Commons on
November 19,
2001:
"Does my right hon. Friend find it bizarre â€" as I do â€" that the yoghurt- and muesli-eating, Guardian-reading fraternity are only too happy to protect the human rights of people engaged in terrorist acts, but never once do they talk about the human rights of those who are affected by them?"[Hansard 374:54 2001-11-19.]
The
Guardian's
science coverage is now extensive and although its
Weekend supplement features a column by
Emma Mitchell, a natural health therapist, and G2 was until the relaunch home to
Edzard Ernst's weekly column on complementary medicine (Ernst is professor of complementary medicine at the
Peninsula medical school,
[Sarah Boseley, 2003-09-26 "The alternative professor." The Guardian.]), the paper now carries the
Bad Science column by
Ben Goldacre and a quizzical column in G2 called
The Sceptic [
2], which looks at the evidence for popular treatments and remedies. Also, as alternative and complementary medicine has become more widely accepted most of the quality dailies now feature at least one column or writer devoted to the subject.
The stereotype, however, is a persistent feature of British political discourse. Even
doctors have perpetuated it by using the acronym
GROLIES (Guardian Reader Of Low Intelligence in Ethnic Skirt) on patient notes
[BBC News, 2003-08-18. "Doctor slang is a dying art."].
The Guardian has a tradition of
spoof articles on
April Fool's Day, sometimes contributed by regular advertisers such as
BMW. The most elaborate of these was a travel supplement on
San Serriffe, whilst an article in the
Guardian dated
April 1 2006 written by one Olaf Priol suggested that
Chris Martin of
Coldplay would be supporting the
Conservatives at the next
General Election and had already written a campaign song for them. Olaf Priol is an anagram of April Fool.
References in fiction
*In the play
Hobson's Choice Henry Horatio Hobson worries that his reputation will be in tatters after '
trespassing'. He comments that if the news were to be intercepted by the
Manchester Guardian then everyone would know.
*The 1984 Christmas special of
Yes, Minister shows a number of newspapers tipping Jim Hacker as the next Prime Minister.
The Guardian is among them, but its name is spelt
The Gaurdian. In Episode 6 a group of pro-Badger protesters tell
Jim Hacker that the Guardian told them the area they are fighting to save has been inhabitated by Badgers for centuries. In fact Hacker points out jokingly the "bodgers" have lived there for centuries, satirising the Guardian's reputation for spelling errors.
*In Episode 4 of the second series of
Yes, Prime Minister, Jim Hacker says::"I know exactly who reads the papers:
The Daily Mirror is read by people who think they run the country;
The Guardian is read by people who think they ought to run the country;
The Times is read by people who actually do run the country;
The Daily Mail is read by the wives of the people who run the country;
The Financial Times is read by people who own the country;
The Morning Star is read by people who think the country ought to be run by another country; and
The Daily Telegraph is read by people who think it is.":
Sir Humphrey: "Prime Minister, what about the people who read
The Sun?":
Bernard Woolley:
"Sun readers don't care who runs the country, as long as she's got big tits."
*In the
Young Ones episode "Boring," Rick eagerly notes that
The Guardian has an article on how to get an increased student grant. Unfortunately the paper has totally mangled the spelling of a key part of it, leaving Rick with no idea how to get the increased grant. Worse still, the misspelling happens to sound the same as a Satanic chant, so that when Neil repeats what Rick read out loud he accidentally summons a demon who tries to kill everyone there.
*In the
Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy, an entire planet goes into hibernation to wait out a galactic recession, only reviving themselves when the stock market reaches a satisfactorily high level for their needs. "Arthur [Dent], a regular Guardian reader, was deeply shocked by this."
The Guardian is the sponsor of two major literary awards: The
Guardian First Book Award, established in 1999 as a successor to the
Guardian Fiction Award which had run since 1965, and the
Guardian Children's Fiction Prize, founded in 1967. In recent years it has also sponsored the
Hay Festival in
Hay-on-Wye.
*
John Edward Taylor (1821–1844)
*
Jeremiah Garnett (1844–1861) (jointly with
Russell Scott Taylor in 1847–1848)
*
Edward Taylor (1861–1872)
*
Charles Prestwich Scott (1872–1929)
*
Ted Scott (1929–1932)
*
William Percival Crozier (1932–1944)
*
Alfred Powell Wadsworth (1944–1956)
*
Alastair Hetherington (1956–1975)
*
Peter Preston (1975–1995)
*
Alan Rusbridger (1995–)
The Guardian and its sister newspaper
The Observer also provide
The Newsroom, a visitor centre in
London. It contains their
archives, including bound copies of old editions, a
photographic library and other items such as
diaries,
letters and
notebooks. This material may be consulted by members of the public. The Newsroom also mounts temporary exhibitions and runs an educational programme for schools. There is also an extensive
Manchester Guardian archive at the
University of Manchester's
John Rylands Library and there is a collaboration programme between the two archives. The
British Library also has a large archive of the
Manchester Guardian, available in online, hard copy, microform, and CD-ROM in their
British Library Newspapers collection.
Annually, The Guardian organises the
Guardian Student Media Awards competition for student journalists across the UK.
*
Guardian Unlimited*
The Guardian Front Page RSS feed (in
XML; use a
news aggregator)
*
Digital Guardian*
Founding of the Manchester Guardian*
Information about The Newsroom Archive and Visitor Centre*
Information about The Guardian Archive at John Rylands Library in Manchester*
Media Guardian: How the broadsheets brightened up*
The Guardian Unlimited Talk Board*
Independent on Sunday article on problems with the
Berliner format change (subscription service)
