Internet

Today’s is on the online Guardian’s hideous, dumbed down redesign; it comes from one of the paper’s own commenters and gives an idea of the depth of feeling people have towards the paper:

I implore the powers that be, the Editor … whoever is really in charge of this website, the Board of trustees and governors and cabinet consider the following:

1 – Your previous website had an utterly distinctive original identity. Whose idea was it to change it? What was their thinking? Please write a piece about this, if only to prove the likes of me wrong – I am fascinated why on earth you needed to change the previous website. Did you do market research? Were you losing viewers? Let’s have a major feature in Media Guardian of what really went on behind the scenes. Emily Bell is such a good writer normally that I think she was forced to write the above piece l by some editorial jihad types. Was there some change of Head of Dept who needed to assert their identity…. an incredible power battle and the re-designers won at the expense of the old guard.

In the end really the change makes no sense at all.

2 – May I as an all license’d Fool give some advice from the pub here where I am sitting with my wireless iBook spluttering into my ale – your redesign is Nu Lab nonsense apparently giving people a greater “choice” about what to read near the top the page. You fill hallowed news hierarchy space with bright colour photographs like the advertising pages of a glossy fashion magazine. It so totally dumbs down the authority of the The Guardian it makes me nauseous to look at and dizzy.. I must break off here a moment .. [“what? yes I will drink up and leave soon”]

…. to finish my bleat about this mosaic nonsense of a new website: your real strength Guardian is the clarity of statement and news judgement made by those experienced editors, saying to each other … ” OK, these are in our judgements, the TOP stories, here is the hierarchy of news information” That is the creative soul and the BRAND soul of The Guardian, the gold dust of journalism. When these editors and senior journalists are given the right space It makes for fascinating dramatic reading – the eye hits the page, scrolls down undistracted by glossy tripe and gets to the guts of what is going on in the town, the country and the world.

Your new website no longer does these great editors and journalists justice, it waters down their precious news judgement and clear story telling, it favours superficial colour photo self indulgence at the expense of the cold beautiful truth of print…

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Please consider bringing back the essential features of the previous site

Whoever ordered that redesign wants shooting. The placement of items in the old design mirrored that of the actual newspaper, so it was very easy to see which items were thought to have more news value or editorial priority – and it’s the editorial voice that differentiates one newspaper from another.

Now it just looks and reads like a mashup of google news and handbag.com. The editorial voice now appears to be that of a daytime tv producer.

Still, I bet all the resulting confusion will push up the page views mightily, and whichever marketing droid who’s idea this was can point to advertising sales and go “see, I was right”. Tossers.

The Guardian, despite it’s Blairite slavishness still had enough of the old left about it, and a reputation for good reporting to ensure that it was the first paper many leftists and progressives around the world turned to every day. When all the US’ newspapers were drooling over Bush’s virility, cheering the war and ignoring the war crimes, you could still get the real news from the Guardian.

That they’ve taken this massive step in redesign, reducing the news and the moral heart of the paper, it’s comment and leader section, to just another tab to be clicked on an all-singing, all-dancing multimedia extravaganza, is an editorial decision in itself. It’s an editorial decision that says fluff is most important. It says that we are no longer a purveyor of serious news, with progressive views, but just another corporation in it for the money.

That the the new, shiny improved Guardian Unlimited is launched on the day that Blair finally,absolutely, says he’s going makes me also think there’s a bit of bending with the political wind going on here too: the redesign is not only convenient in terms of clickthrough and ad sales, it also disassociates the Guardian from its Blairite past. Bye bye Mr.Tony Blair, good fucking riddance, see you at Den Haag. Onwards and upwards with multimedia Gordon, or something like that.

The future’s grim, the future’s Brown, and I’m switching to the Independent.

UPDATE:

That new edirorial voice in action: odd, how the headline ‘German police claim G8 terror attack foiled’ morphed into ‘German police foil G8 terror attack’ on the Guardian Unlimited’s new front page.