A review of the new “Berliner” sized Guardian newspaper as purchased from my local newsagent shop this morning for 60p:
- It’s very small. In fact when folded and stacked it now has the smallest cover on the market.
- G2 used to feel like a magazine that was having a big stretch. Now it feels like a magazine.
- No Doonesbury? When did that happen?
- Handy throw-away sports section.
- Nice interview with Ooona King.
- Masthead didn’t bother me at all. Seems more intrusive when viewed online. Looking at it again, it cleverly divides the area above the fold in two. Very neat.
- I’d forgotten how many wanky, glib opinion pieces the paper has – so easy to avoid them online (this is true of all papers though).
- So very small…
One thing I was really hoping they’d do was make some serious attempt to link the print version to the website. There were hints of this in the hype but nothing decent seems to be there. How hard would it be to have a short, TinyURL style address at the foot of every article? Something like guardian.co.uk/050912/34, say, which would redirect to the normal crufty address. Obviously this would be useful for bloggers but surely ordinary people too?
So many sections – feels like a Sunday paper.
And yeah, I can’t see Doonesbury either. Time to leave a comment on the Guardians site, methinks.
A very small Sunday paper
I was impressed with the “preview” thing that came with the paper on Saturday and Im not dissapointed today. New typeface is fab, as is the masthead. Also like the strapline at the top featuring pictures and the barcode. Feels more like a magazine in some parts and genrally very modern. But yep it is very small. Oh and the photography looks excellent – have you seen the centre spread?
I think the small is good. I especially like how it’s still folded broadsheet style. It reminds me of certain ziney publications that were printed on A3 newsprint then folded for the shelf so the cover was A4. Easy to pick up and carry but had an imposing feel when read.
I think there was a bit too much hype about the colour printing. It just looked like shit newsprint reproduction to me. Nice photos, shame about the repro. And one of the pages in my copy was set off a bit giving the reporter very googly eyes.
Rather than litter the newspaper with URLs, why not have a page on the website that lists and links to the articles from the paper??
Perhaps the most interesting thing about the redesign is the amount of interest about the redesign.
Was there this much written/publicity about The Independant and Times relaunch? or was that just because they were basically shrunk rather than redesigned?
Gordon – I think it could be done well – a discrete slug of small type in grey at the foot would not really be litter. Think of the way artciles are sometimes credited it italics at the end when the byline is not available. That kind of thing.
Gareth – I think the Guardian has always had a stronger following from the arty/design community and the old design was pretty radical in itself with all that Helvetica about the place. That said, the Times and Indy tabloids were very poorly implemented. This one seems to work which is interesting.
Email back from the G (within two hours) – Doonesbury has indeed been dropped. But they are running the Perry Bible Fellowship weekly. No news on Biff.
I think a Doonesbury campaign is in order.
I think you’re right – drop a note to Tom Spurgeon? What reasons did they give?
No reasons. Just confirmed it and pushed PBF. I think I will drop a quick line to the Spurge.
Full transcript of email: “We are no longer publishing Doonesbury. Steve Bell’s If now appears on the back of G2 and we will be publishing the brilliant Perry Bible Fellowship strip weekly. Doonesbury is available from http://www.doonesbury.com”
Odd thing is, I read Doonesbury online anyway (at least when the unofficial RSS feed is working) so this doesn’t affect me but the principle seems worth fighting for, at least for an explanation. It’s not like it was getting irrelevant or stale – if anything he’s on a roll right now. Very odd.
Just noticed, the email started “Dear Mr Ashont”. Some things never change!
Grauniad indeed!
Spurgeon has been notified.
A few “where’s Doonesbury” comments are gathering on this Guardian blog should you want to add your own.
Yeah – that’s where I left my comment earlier.
It’s a bit strange – there are very few strips that continually generate their own news stories, and Doonesbury is one of them. And, looking at the back page of G2 its obviously purely a space constraint.
Disappointed.
Actually, this post might be better since they actually acknowledge the issue:
http://blogs.guardian.co.uk/editors/archives/2005/09/12/your_first_reaction.html
And now : http://blogs.guardian.co.uk/editors/archives/2005/09/12/should_doonesbury_be_saved.html
Ok. Hat on.
Gordon, there website Does have a page where you can find all the headlines from the paper in one place, it’s here:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/guardian/todays_stories
And as for the reason the section front urls are given at the end of stories, rather than a tiny url, it’s partly because they land you in a place where you can easily find not only the story from the paper you’re looking for, but also any updates on the story that have been added during the day, interactive guides, audio reports, that kind of thing. There are dozens upon dozens of special report fronts that get updated every night, so that when a story on China ends with a url simply pointing you to /china, the story you want will be right at the top of that front, plus other useful stuff.
Um.
I only know about website things.
Can’t help with Doonesbury.
they’d better bring back doonesbury. if we have to read the big D online, why not read the whole big G online?
And it’s over. Doonesbury returns next week with a catch-up on Friday. I’ve posted the statement in the comments here.
Anna – sorry I got all distracted.
I read the paper ass-backwards so didn’t really register the links on the news pages until later. I was thinking more of the articles, comment pieces and features that appear in G2 and the opinion pages, especially the slightly more ephemeral ones such as the Amy Jenkins piece which I was quite tempted to tear to shreds.
I can see how this is probably tricky to implement and not necessarily worth it though.