“The Guardian is going large in the States, says Rusbridger“:
Guardian News & Media is about to appoint a US editor, based in New York, as part of the paper’s revamped Stateside expansion.
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Guardian editor-in-chief Alan Rusbridger told Yahoo! News blogger Joe Pompeo: “We will be announcing an American editor shortly.”
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It is believed to mark a tipping point in the paper’s US digital operation with Rusbridger saying that the venture “will be significantly larger than anything we’ve done in the States before.”…
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And what of the NY Times’s decision to charge readers for access to some of its online content?
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Rusbridger said: “I can’t see anywhere in world that’s tried charging [online] for general news that has made a go of it in the sense that you get enough people and enough money to make up for the loss of influence.”
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But, as always when he speaks about the subject, he added: “I’m not a Taliban of the free. If the New York Times ended up with hundreds of thousands of subscribers who were all going to pay decent sums of money, of course you’d be idiotic not to respect that and learn from it.”
I’ll admit the Guardian has become my first-resort website for international news. If they can fill that same niche for news over here, well… it’ll make it that much harder to justify paying for the NYTimes.
Emma
I would be willing to put down money for a digital edition of the Guardian. I used to have (when I could afford it, and maybe will again) an online subscription to the Financial Times. Good stuff.
NYT? Meh. If I could get a subscription to the Sunday paper alone, I would consider it.
Maude
I like the Guardian. It is a tabloid and their understanding of US politics is skimpy. I read BBC online, Reuters, AP and other foreign new online. I have the NYT via email and haven’t read it since the paywall went up.
jrg
I love the BBC and The Economist, because they are reality-based. Since they are not American media companies, they don’t have to kowtow to wingnut outrage when they report something the “conservatives” don’t like to hear (like the fact that CO2 is, in fact, a greenhouse gas… or the fact that Moses didn’t ride a dinosaur… or the fact that if you lower taxes to 0%, the government will not have an infinite amount of money).
If American media outlets are forced to compete with international outlets that don’t feel compelled to give “conservative” fucktards column space, that would be a step forward.
I predict that if this paradigm catches on, we’ll see some fresh faces on Fox news that have British accents… Because just as teatards cannot tell the difference between a black former president of the Harvard Law review and a witch doctor, I doubt they can tell the difference between a brit reporting reality and one who’s lying his pants off.
Cat Lady
In another free market assault on the US FAIL media, the People’s Republic on the Charles is now objectively pro-terrorist.
Hey, FAIL media – people don’t trust you.
The Political Nihilist Formerly Known As Kryptik
In other news:
North Carolina House decides Municipal Broadband is too Soshulist, makes Time Warner Broadband very happy.
I love how it requires the municipalities to not sell anything below cost. Because obviously, profit should be mandated, and nothing should be considered a public good enough to be sold at a cost. Oh, and I love the Orwellian “Level Playing Field/Local Gov’t Competition” name of the bill….especially considering the biggest whiner is the company with a virtual monopoly there in the first place.
Suffern ACE
@Maude: It won’t be hard for them to gain an understanding of how political coverage goes even if they don’t understand it well. Most of our coverage of any event ends with “Will this help the Democrats or the Republicans in 2012” just like most of our economic coverage ends with a reference to the Dow Jones or S&P to get the market reaction to any given news item. Once they have those conventions down, people will forget that they are a foreign newspaper.
arguingwithsignposts
@The Political Nihilist Formerly Known As Kryptik:
it would be nice if there were some way to shove a co-op up time-warner’s asses, and just take the muni out of the equation.
I know. The sky in my world is green.
Superluminar
@ The Political Nihilist formerly known as Kryptik
Whilst I agree that municipal-run broadband at a decent price would be great, I can see why there might be substantial legal issues in undercutting market competition in the way envisaged (shorter me: this issue is not clear-cut).
@jrg
The Economist has pretty good coverage of a lot of things, but their American section sucks balls, and is completely full of both-sides-do-it faux evenhandedness. Avoid.
Alexander
@Maude:
The Guardian isn’t a tabloid.
salacious crumb
@jrg: i used to love the BBC, especially during the Iraq war coverage..But i think that because of their fear of losing public funding and angering the govt, they have lurched rightwards.
When it comes to critical coverage of the US, their reporters and editors have balls of steel. But they do become very jingoistic and to emphasize/give benefit of the doubt to the British/Western govt whenever British/European interests are in trouble…ie not balanced coverage..If you go back and look how they covered Iran’s capture of their sailors a couple years back it was fairly clear they were going with the British Military sources and reporting their versions as facts
arguingwithsignposts
@Superluminar:
If you could make a showing that there is any significant market competition, your point might be valid.
arguingwithsignposts
This is not the duplicate post you are looking for.
Omnes Omnibus
@arguingwithsignposts:
@Superluminar:
FWIW I think cable and broadband providers are utilities and should be regulated as such.
beltane
I started reading the Guardian last summer on account of their coverage of the World Cup and it has since replaced the NYT as my #1 source of news. Their coverage of Wikileaks and the uprisings in the Middle East has been so superior to the NYT’s that it should put the Grey Lady to shame if she still was capable of feeling shame. Plus, the Guardian often features US bloggers such as Amanda Marcotte and they have a commentariat that is funny and intelligent. Great, easy to read format, too; like HuffPo without the sleaze.
Maude
Anne Laurie:
I want to tell you I have great respect and admiration for you and SO taking in and keeping difficult rescue pets. I have kept forgetting to do that and so I am late in doing so.
I grew up with a fair amount of wildlife that would become a part of the household, usually for short periods of time. They were rescues. Of course, if one of them got loose in the house, we would wait outside for our rescuer to come home and get it.
beltane
@Suffern ACE: I actually have found that their coverage of US politics is somewhat better than that of most US media outlets. At least they demonstrate some curiosity as to the forces shaping our politics which is more than you will get from the Sunday morning bobbleheads.
Roger Moore
@Superluminar:
QFT. My impression is that The Economist doesn’t do most of its coverage itself. Instead, it reads and digests other people’s coverage. Unfortunately, that means its coverage of the USA is already colored by our failed media experiment.
Maude
@Alexander:
Have to be picky. It is called a tabloid in Britain. That’s where I learned that. It isn’t a broadsheet.
The Political Nihilist Formerly Known As Kryptik
@arguingwithsignposts:
@Omnes Omnibus:
Indeed, the municipal option might not have been necessary if not for the fact that Time Warner seems to have a virtual monopoly on functional broadband service to begin with.
arguingwithsignposts
@Omnes Omnibus:
I second this comment, at least wrt broadband. You could make an argument that cable is not a utility, as it’s more an entertainment medium. But there still should be regulation that allows competition on an even playing field there.
Maude
@arguingwithsignposts:
I have really enjoyed your comments here. They are superb. Please keep it up to help me from losing my every loving mind.
Amir_Khalid
I hope the Guardian covers American politics the way it covers British politics — with a liberal but not partisan outlook, and keeping a sharp eye out for bullshit. If The Grauniad can hire a strong American reporting staff, this should be eminently achievable. It might even compel the native competitors to up their game, which would be an even bigger plus.
Michael Tomasky would make a fine US editor, but if he takes that job I hope he doesn’t give up his blog.
salacious crumb
I like the Guardian, and I read it everyday. but it really bothered me with the way they treated Julian Assange, or at least the way they connived with the New York Times to delve into his weakness and give the US govt a helping hand in portraying him negatively to the public.
Gin & Tonic
@Maude: The Guardian is a “midi” or “Berliner”. That, as well as broadsheet and tabloid, refer to the paper sizes.
jrg
@Superluminar:
Maybe, but to their credit, they supported Kerry in ’04, and IIRC, they supported Obama in ’08.
beltane
@Amir_Khalid: Maybe they’ll hire someone like Greg Sargent for the job as the Washington Post isn’t really putting his talents to good use.
Maude
@Gin & Tonic:
Thank you so much. I will keep that in mind.
And I will clobber my British friends over the head with that fact. Get out a shovel to scrape me up.
Alexander
@Maude: Have to be pickier. The Guardian was a broadsheet until 2005 when it changed to the Berliner format, which is bigger than tabloid format. Along with The Times and The Independent (two other ex-broadsheets) it’s still referred to as a broadsheet by most people. (And actually, even those other two, despite being the same size as the tabloids, are technically called compacts, to reflect the fact that they aren’t unbelievably shit.)
EDIT: I see Gin & Tonic beat me to it. Though as I indicated, following the resizing of several broadsheets in the 00s, the terms ‘broadsheet’ and ‘tabloid’ are no longer used solely to refer to a paper’s size.
J.W. Hamner
Apparently I suck at Shogun 2.
If there was anybody harboring delusions that I might be competent at the game then today is your sad day.
Uesugi: Why do you have to hurt me when I love you so much?
arguingwithsignposts
@Gin & Tonic: @Maude:
Actually, tabloid often refers (screaming headlines, juicy gossip, half-nude models) as much to an ethos of publishing as the actual paper size. The NY Post would be a tabloid if it were published on high-end glossy paper.
In terms of paper size, Berliners, which look like shrunk down broadsheets, still fall closer to the tabloid size. They are just more vertical in design.
Mako
This is good news for those who complain about “liberal media”. Finally they can be correct.
Superluminar
@thread re:The Guardian
this newspaper has always been regarded as a broadsheet. A few years ago (2005?), they changed the format to the “Berliner” one, but it is still a broadsheet. In the UK, “tabloid” is not just about format, but also style (basically refers to trashy, celebrity-driven coverage). Both The Times and The Independent are published in a tabloid format nowadays, but still called broadsheets, as they cover serious news stories and not garbage.
@aws, O^2
Personally, I think all utilities, including broadband, should be provided at cost price by the state. I was trying to make the point that present-day legal interpretations might not be on board with my/our desires, is all.
Maude
@Alexander:
I learn something new every day. I could have looked at it on the news stand around the corner and seen that. I am so glad you told me this. I love little facts. I wasn’t trying to be fighty with you. I am having a groggy morning.
EDIT: Dear Maude, plz try to make clear that you were not in any way shape of form insulting the Guardian.
Maude
@arguingwithsignposts:
The WSJ looks like a screaming pile of garbage now. Tabloid?
Superluminar
Posted before I saw Alexander’s comment, but what he said is 100% right.
Parallel 5ths (Jewish Steel)
My tech friends tell me that the NYT paywall is less a wall and more a knee-high picket fence. With numerous work-arounds including a greasemonkey script, it sounds like the NYT is collecting less ad revenue to have their content stolen. An interesting plan.
arguingwithsignposts
@Maude: Given the amount of financial news and some – not on the op-ed page obviously – quality reporting, that’s a no.
For instance, NewsDay, which has a tabloid format, isn’t considered a tabloid in the way the NYPost is. “Tabloid” is a fuzzy category for that reason.
geg6
When I discovered The Guardian, I completely quit reading the NYT. Their opinionators are vastly superior and the coverage of world events blows any US media outlet out of the water. And they are obviously more reality based when it comes to the business model. I read it all the time and their jumping into the pond here is the best news I’ve heard in regard to our media, perhaps in my lifetime. This gave me a happy.
The Political Nihilist Formerly Known As Kryptik
The issue with the term ‘tabloid’ is that the original definition, referring solely to size, has been superceded by the association with trashy gossip fountains that used the size format. Thus, what we consider the current definition, and why serious outlets that use the ‘tabloid’ size buck the term to avoid such implications.
Stillwater
@Parallel 5ths (Jewish Steel): it sounds like the NYT is collecting less ad revenue to have their content stolen. An interesting plan.
American Style capitalism in action. How long before the NYT lobbies Congress for bailout funds to protect it from the mean cruel world?
Stillwater
Btw, interesting timing for this decision by the Guardian: shortly after the NYT came out publicly with a new and improved, super-secure pay-wall. They see a profitable market for free content plus ad revenue where the NYT sees only free-loading poor people exploiting their capitalisma.
MikeJ
@Parallel 5ths (Jewish Steel):
If they send the entire text of an article to your browser you can hardly call it “stealing” when you read it.
corkbouy
Hi,
just one or 2 comments on the above.
1)
@Amir_Khalid: I wonder how many people will get the Grauniad nickname :-)
2)
The Guardian had a USA edition starting back I think around 2008-2009, with Michael Thomsky editing… I believe they eventually stopped this because of financial concerns.. It’s interesting that they now feel with all the changes that have occurred, that it will be of benefit for them to enter this market again.
3)
The economist is rather good but it’s USA news is dreadful. I suppose this can be explained by the fact that the people that they hire to write the USA stories are part of the “village”. For example, Dougj’s girlfriend, Megan used to write for the Economist !
Amir_Khalid
@corkbouy:
I did explain, the first time I called them that, that it’s an actual nickname (derived, if anyone out there is curious, from an old reputation for less-than-careful copy-editing).
@Stillwater:
If anything, the New York Time’s current feeble excuse for a paywall seems less secure and more easily gotten around than Times Select. As I recall, Times Select didn’t send your browser the story until you cleared the paywall. This time out, all you have to do is apply that NYT Clean greasemonkey script, and the story is there for you to read.
NYT knows it’s not doing this paywall right. There must still be a deep ambivalence at its HQ about having a paywall at all. Why else would this one be so half-arsed?
Gin & Tonic
@arguingwithsignposts: Call me old-fashioned, but I like to use the terms as they were originally intended. So put the NYPost on the NYTimes’s paper stock and, to me, it’s no longer a tabloid.
I like the terms “quarto” and “octavo”, too.
El Cid
Other than Krugman and Herbert, the main reasons I ever read the NYT directly (i.e., not via links in blogs etc) are for the Tuesday science section, and that other news media’s stories are based upon their work.
If you read that morning’s NYT early in the morning, and look at the front page, you know what articles you’ll here on NPR’s “Morning Edition.”
Amir_Khalid
The Malaysian newspaper I used to work for — The Star — is a tabloid-size daily that considers itself a quality newspaper; i.e. not a gossip rag, but having all the serious-newspaper parts like national, international, sports, arts, lifestyle, technology etc.
When I met people from American IT companies and told them I wrote for a tabloid called The Star, I would sometimes get funny looks.
Ned Ludd
@Gin & Tonic: Words change in meaning. For example, the word “computer” was originally a job title held by women who performed ballistics research and calculated weapons trajectories for the U.S. military.
Yutsano
@Amir_Khalid:
Please tell me someone eventually explained the reasoning for the askance looks.
Amir_Khalid
@Yutsano:
Actually, the major American gossip rags are on sale at Malaysian newsstands, and have been for many many years. So I wasn’t surprised to get those funny looks, especially when I showed them my calling card with its logo: the words “the Star” in a big red box, uncannily similar to that other publication.
Elizabelle
Will give the Guardian a try. Thanks.
Yutsano
@Amir_Khalid: In that case I apologize unreservedly for our blatant cultural imperialism.
fraught
For some reason The Times gives me 20 free articles every day even though I don’t pay for it. Any extra I can get to with the NYT Clean greasemonkey. I don’t know why they clean my slate every day. I’ve been going to the Guardian several times a day and find their shelter, food, style, movie, theater coverage is just as good as any at the Times. I’ve lost interest in what the Times “Mean girls” (Dowd, Stanley, Kakutani) have to say about anything.
Stillwater
@Amir_Khalid: Why else would this one be so half-arsed?
Why would they spend $40 million on it if they weren’t taking it seriously?
Brachiator
The Guardian editor gets it. It is not that pay walls are bad or that news must be free, but that it is suicidal to give up the influence that the net provides.
You see a variation of this in Fox telling Times Warner to pull some of its channels, or the music industries ongoing stupidity in having a hissy fit over Amazon’s cloud service.
Michael57
Well, I pay for the Times, even though I agree with all the critiques-of-the-Times-from-the-Left.
I think the Onion has the best take on this issue.
mclaren
Two words:
Judith Miller.
I don’t the New York Times will ever recover from Miller. Every time I read something in the Times, I have to ask myself, “Yeah…but is the reporter another Judith Miller?”
Mike M
I get my news from many sources, but I pay for the NY Times and WSJ. I haven’t found acceptable subsitutes for either. As much as people love to complain about them, there are few news organizations with their reach and depth.
The Guardian or FT are both excellent, especially when I need a British/European perspective. I scan them a few times a week, But I live here and prefer an American voice most of the time.
I know there is plenty of drivel out there for free, and when I’m interested in the latest celebrity scandal I take full advantage of it.
Amir_Khalid
@Stillwater:
The NYT has not confirmed that reported $40million figure. But whatever they actually did spend, they know what an effective paywall is supposed to do, and this one doesn’t do that.
I think the NYT management already understands Alan Rusbridger’s point quite well. they’d have to be purblind fools not to. But I also think they look at the millions of people reading their product for free, and see desperately needed money being left on the table. So I suspect the NYT is caught between two stools on this.
I don’t pretend I know how to resolve this dilemma. I’m not sure if anyone has figured out a resolution.
Tony J
Good look with that. Far too often I glance through a copy of the Guardian at work and conclude that their take on everything Stateside is less based on reporting than it is on repeating whatever their US-based correspondents hear at Village cocktail parties.
If they can up their game in that regard, though, I think they could make a killing exploiting the gap in the US market for a quality left-of-centre news source. It’s not like they don’t already have substantial readership across The Pond, sometimes it seems like 70% of their online commentariat are wingnut trolls.
R-Jud
@Tony J:
COMPLETELY agree with this. An increasingly large percentage of their online audience comes from the US. As that continues growing, their US reporting gets more and more villagey. The rot’s been slowly setting in for about three years now. Maybe more: remember their letter-writing stunt in 2004?
As to the RW trolls, they seem to have increased in number right around the time that Rupert put up the paywall at The Times of London.
Arundel
I used to think the Grauniad nickname came from right wing sorts mocking it for its liberal tone, or complaining- as in “groan”. Those liberals, always whining! But I see now it was the typo things..
The Guardian’s Observer does excellent arts and culture reporting and opinion too. Very lively comments section, albeit with a lot of knee-jerk Yank bashing. Which I understand, it just gets tiresome. Still, a good read.
Hawes
This is excellent news for
John McCaineveryone.