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The Guardian
File:Frontpage.jpg
Typical Guardian front page.
TypeDaily newspaper
FormatBerliner
Owner(s)Guardian Media Group
EditorAlan Rusbridger
Founded1821
Political alignmentLeftist
LanguageEnglish
HeadquartersKings Place, 90 York Way, London N1 9GU
Circulation358,844[1]
Websiteguardian.co.uk

The Guardian (until 1959, The Manchester Guardian) is a British newspaper owned by the Guardian Media Group. It is published Monday to Saturday in the Berliner format from its London and Manchester headquarters.

The Guardian Weekly, which circulates worldwide, provides a compact digest of four newspapers. It contains articles from The Guardian and its Sunday, sister paper The Observer, as well as reports, features and book reviews from The Washington Post and articles translated from France's Le Monde.

The Guardian had a certified average daily circulation of 358,844 copies in January 2009– a drop of 5.17% on January 2008, as compared to sales of 842,912 for The Daily Telegraph, 617,483 for The Times, and 215,504 for The Independent.[2]

The Guardian Media Group also runs a website, guardian.co.uk.

Stance and editorial opinion

The Guardian's former offices at Farringdon Road in London

Editorial articles in The Guardian are generally to the left of the political spectrum. This is reflected in the paper's readership: a MORI poll taken between April and June 2000 showed that 80% of Guardian readers were Labour Party voters;[3] according to another MORI poll taken in 2004, 44% of Guardian readers were Labour voters and 37% Liberal Democrat voters.[4]

The newspaper's reputation as a platform for liberal opinions has led to the use of the phrase "Guardian reader" as a pejorative label for people holding such opinions.[5][6]

Founded by textile traders and merchants, The Guardian had a reputation as "an organ of the middle class",[7] or in the words of C.P. Scott's son Ted "a paper that will remain bourgeois to the last".[8] "I write for the Guardian," said Sir Max Hastings in 2005,[9] "because it is read by the new establishment", reflecting the paper's growing influence.

1821 to 1959

The Manchester Guardian was founded in Manchester in 1821 by a group of non-conformist businessmen headed by John Edward Taylor, who took advantage of the closure of the more radical Manchester Observer, the paper that had championed the cause of the 'Peterloo' protestors. Taylor had been hostile to the radical reformers, writing:

‘they have appealed not to the reason but the passions and the suffering of their abused and credulous fellow-countrymen, from whose ill-requited industry they extort for themselves the means of a plentiful and comfortable existence. “The do not toil, nether do they spin,” but they live better than those that do.’ [10]

And when the government closed down the Manchester Observer the mill-owners' champions had the upper hand.[11] The prospectus announcing 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 working class Manchester and Salford Advertiser called the Manchester Guardian ‘the foul prostitute and dirty parasite of the worst portion of the mill-owners’. [12]

The Manchester Guardian was generally hostile to labour’s claims. Of the 1832 Ten Hours Bill the paper doubted whether in view of the foreign competition ‘the framing of a law positively enacting a gradual destruction of the cotton manufacture would be a much less rational procedure’.[13] The Manchester Guardian dismissed strikes as the work of outside agitators - ‘if an accommodation can be effected the occupation of the agents of the Union is gone. They live on strife.’ [14]

The Manchester Guardian was hostile to the Unionist cause in the American civil war, writing on the news that Lincoln had been assassinated "of his rule, we can never speak except as a series of acts abhorrent to every true notion of constitutional right and human liberty".[15]

Its most famous editor, C P Scott, made the newspaper nationally recognised. 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.[citation needed]. Scott supported the movement for women's suffrage, but was critical of any tactics by the Suffragettes that involved direct action[16]: "The really ludicrous position is that Mr Lloyd George is fighting to enfranchise seven million women and the militants are smashing unoffending people's windows and breaking up benevolent societies' meetings in a desperate effort to prevent him." Scott thought the Suffragettes' "courage and devotion" was "worthy of a better cause and saner leadership".[17] It has been argued that Scott's criticism reflected a widespread disdain, at the time, for those women who "transgressed the gender expectations of Edwardian society". [16]

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. Daphna Baram tells the story of The Guardian's relationship with the Zionist movement and Israel in the book "Disenchantment: The Guardian and Israel".[18] In June 1936 ownership of the paper passed 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.

Traditionally affiliated with the centrist Liberal Party, and with a northern, non-conformist circulation base, the paper earned a national reputation and the respect of the left during the Spanish Civil War. With the pro-Liberal News Chronicle, the Labour-supporting Daily Herald, the Communist Party's Daily Worker and several Sunday and weekly papers, it supported the 'Republican' government against General Francisco Franco's insurgent 'nationalists'. The paper so loathed Labour's left wing champion Aneurin Bevan "and the hate-gospellers of his entourage" that it called for Attlee's post-war Labour government to be voted out of office.[19] Its anti-establishment stance fell short of opposing military intervention during the 1956 Suez Crisis: "The government is right to be prepared for military action at Suez", because Egyptian control of the canal would be "commercially damaging for the West and perhaps part of a plan for creating a new Arab Empire based on the Nile".[20]

1959 to 2000

When 14 Civil Rights demonstrators were killed on Bloody Sunday, 30 January 1972, in Northern Ireland, The Guardian blamed the protesters: "The organisers of the demonstration, Miss Bernadette Devlin among them, deliberately challenged the ban on marches. They knew that stone throwing and sniping could not be prevented, and that the IRA might use the crowd as a shield." (Guardian, 1 February 1972[21] ). Lord Widgery's enquiry into the killings was believed by some in the Nationalist community to have been a whitewash[22] – The Guardian, however, declared that "Lord Widgery's report is not one-sided" (20 April 1972[23]). The paper also supported internment without trial in Northern Ireland: "Internment without trial is hateful, repressive and undemocratic. In the existing Irish situation, most regrettably, it is also inevitable. ... To remove the ringleaders, in the hope that the atmosphere might calm down, is a step to which there is no obvious alternative." (Guardian leader, 10 August 1971) And before then, The Guardian had called for British troops to be sent to the region: British soldiers could "present a more disinterested face of law and order" (leader, 15 August 1969), but only on condition that "Britain takes charge" (leader, 4 August 1969).

Three of The Guardian's four leader writers joined the Social Democratic Party on its foundation in 1981, but the paper was enthusiastic in its support for Tony Blair in his bid to lead the Labour Party,[24] and to become Prime Minister.[25]

In 1983 the paper was at the centre of a controversy surrounding documents regarding the stationing of cruise missiles in Britain that were leaked to The Guardian by civil servant Sarah Tisdall. The paper eventually complied with a court order to hand over the documents to the authorities, which resulted in a prison sentence for Tisdall.

In the lead up to the first Gulf War, between 1990 and 1991, The Guardian expressed doubts about military action against Iraq: "Frustration in the Gulf leads temptingly to the invocation of task forces and tactical bombing, but the military option is no option at all. The emergence yesterday of a potential hostage problem of vast dimensions only emphasised that this is far too complex a crisis for gunboat diplomacy. Loose talk of “carpet bombing” Baghdad should be put back in the bottle of theoretical but unacceptable scenarios". [26]

But on the eve of the war, the paper rallied to the war cause: 'The simple cause, at the end, is just. An evil regime in Iraq instituted an evil and brutal invasion. Our soldiers and airmen are there, at U.N. behest, to set that evil right. Their duties are clear ... let the momentum and the resolution be swift.[27]

After the event, journalist Maggie O'Kane conceded that she and other journalists had been a mouthpiece for war propaganda: "we, the media, were harnessed like beach donkeys and led through the sand to see what the British and US military wanted us to see in this nice clean war." (Guardian 16 December 1995)

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 Harrods owner Mohamed Al Fayed 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".[28] 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.[29] In 1999, Aitken was jailed for perjury and perverting the course of justice.[30]

Since 2000

In the early 2000s, The Guardian challenged the Act of Settlement 1701 and the Treason Felony Act 1848.[31][32]

The paper supported NATO's military intervention in the Kosovo War in 1999. Though the United Nations Security Council did not support the attack, The Guardian insisted that "The only honourable course for Europe and America is to use military force" (Leader, 23 March 1999). More bluntly, Mary Kaldor headlined her piece "Bombs away!" (25 March 1999).

Hugo Young warned "armchair critics of Nato's strategy in Kosovo" what was at stake: "the defeat of Nato by Yugoslavia is a prospect that cannot be contemplated" (Guardian, 27 April 1999). The moral certainty about Nato was mirrored by a similarly low opinion of the country they were fighting over: "a god-forsaken, dirt-poor, hate-ridden blot on the map of Europe", according to Polly Toynbee (Guardian, 18 April 1999).

During the Afghanistan and Iraq wars, The Guardian attracted a significant proportion of anti-war readers as one of the mass-media outlets most critical of UK and USA military initiatives. The paper did, however, endorse the argument that Iraq had to be disarmed of 'Weapons of Mass Destruction': "It is not credible to argue, as Iraq did in its initial reaction to Mr Powell [at the Security Council], that it is simply all lies. ...Iraq must disarm." (Guardian Leader, Thursday 6 February 2003) And the paper congratulated UK Prime Minister on his victory: "For a leader who went to war in the absence of a single political ally who believed in the war as unreservedly as he did, Iraq now looks like a vindication on an astounding scale." (Hugo Young, 13 April 2003)

Despite its early support for the Zionist movement, in recent decades The Guardian has often been perceived as critical of Israeli government policy. In December 2003 journalist Julie Burchill cited this as one of the reasons she left the paper for The Times.[33] She later accused The Guardian of being anti-semitic.[34]

In 2008 the editor of The Guardian, Alan Rusbridger, apologised for an editorial in the paper in 2002 concerning "Operation Defensive Shield", which stated that "Israel's actions in Jenin were every bit as repellent as Osama Bin Laden's attack on New York on September 11." Rusbridger described the statement as a misjudgment.[35].

In 2006, the paper was accused by Harvard law professor Alan Dershowitz of being biased against Israel.[36] This allegation was denied by The Guardian's foreign editor, Harriet Sherwood, who says the paper aims to cover all viewpoints in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.[37] On 6 June 2007 the paper commemorated the 40th anniversary of the Six Day War by giving equal space to the Israeli and Palestinian prime ministers to explain their views on the conflict and its legacy.[38][39]

In August 2004, for the US presidential election, the daily G2 supplement launched an experimental letter-writing campaign in Clark County, Ohio, a small county in a swing state. G2 editor Ian Katz bought a voter list from the county for $25 and asked readers to write to people listed as undecided in the election, giving them an impression of the international view and the importance of making the correct decision. There was something of a backlash to this campaign. The paper scrapped Operation Clark County on 21 October 2004 after first publishing a column of vituperation under the headline "Dear Limey assholes".[40]

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.[41] This caused some controversy and the paper was forced to issue an apology and remove the article from its website.[42][43]

Guardian Feature Editor Ian Katz stated in 2004 that "it is no secret we are a centre-left newspaper"[44]. In 2008 Guardian columist Jackie Ashley claimed that editorial contributors were a mix of "right-of-centre libertarians, greens, Blairites, Brownites, Labourite but less enthusiastic Brownites, etc" and that the newspaper was "clearly left of centre and vaguely progressive". She also said that "you can be absolutely certain that come the next general election, The Guardian's stance will not be dictated by the editor, still less any foreign proprietor (it helps that there isn't one) but will be the result of vigorous debate within the paper"[45].

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.[46] 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.[47] 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.[48]

On 8 January 2007, an article in The Guardian read: "Romania's first gift to the European Union, a caucus of neo-fascists and Holocaust deniers", alluding to the fact that Romania and Bulgaria's joining of the European Union would allow for the formation of a far-right faction in the European Parliament. As Robin Shepherd, an expert on global integration and GMF political analyst, pointed out, many frowned upon the tone with which the English press wrote about Europe's newcomers. He asked: "...what is a high-level, pro-European Union newspaper playing at in headlining a report on the rise of hard-line nationalism with language that could itself be construed as pandering to xenophobia?"[49]

The paper's comment and opinion pages, though dominated by centre-left writers and academics like Polly Toynbee, allow some space for right-of-centre voices such as Max Hastings.

Ownership

The Guardian is part of the GMG Guardian Media Group of newspapers, radio stations, print media including The Observer Sunday newspaper, the Manchester Evening News, The Guardian Weekly international newspaper, and new media—Guardian Abroad website, and guardian.co.uk. All the aforementioned were owned by The Scott Trust, a charitable foundation existing between 1936 and 2008, which aimed to ensure the paper's editorial independence in perpetuity, maintaining its financial health to ensure it did not become vulnerable to take overs by for-profit media groups, and the serious compromise of editorial independence that this often brings. At the beginning of October 2008, the Scott Trusts assets were transferred to a new limited company, The Scott Trust Limited, with the intention being that the original trust would be wound up.[50] Dame Liz Forgan, chair of the Scott Trust, reassured staff that the purposes of the new company remained as under the previous arrangements.

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.[51] 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 former ownership by the Scott Trust is likely a factor in its 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.[52] It is also the only British daily national newspaper to employ an internal ombudsman (called the 'readers' editor') to handle complaints and corrections.

The Guardian and its parent groups participate in Project Syndicate,[53] 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.

Format and circulation

Today, The Guardian is printed in full colour, although the Northern Irish edition still has some black-and-white pages.[54] It was also the first newspaper in the UK to use the Berliner format.

History

The Guardian's Newsroom visitor centre and archive (No 60), with an old sign with the name The Manchester Guardian

The first edition was published on 5 May 1821,[55] at which time The Guardian was a weekly, published on Saturdays and costing 7d.; the stamp duty on newspapers (4d. 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 2d.

In 1952 the paper took the step of printing news on the front page, replacing the adverts that had hitherto filled that space. Then-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."

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 centre-left 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.

On 12 February 1988 The Guardian had a significant redesign; as well as improving the quality of its printers' ink, it also changed its masthead to the now familiar juxtaposition of an italic Garamond "The", with a bold Helvetica "Guardian", that remained in use until the 2005 redesign.

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 Guardian's 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.

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. The Guardian Weekly is also linked to a website for expatriates, Guardian Abroad.

g24 is a constantly-updated electronic newspaper available free of charge. [4] It is downloadable as a PDF file. The contents come from The Guardian and its Sunday sibling The Observer.

Moving to the Berliner paper format

File:Guardian01.jpg
The Guardian's 21 January 2007 edition, including the G2 supplement

In 2004, The Guardian announced plans to change to a "Berliner" or "midi" format similar to that used by Die Tageszeitung and Le Monde in France and many other European papers; at 470×315 mm, this is slightly larger than a traditional tabloid. Planned for the autumn of 2005, this change followed the moves by The Independent and The Times 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 2005.[56] 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 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 paper's presses was part-owned by Telegraph Newspapers and Express Newspapers, and it was contracted to use the plant until 2009. Another press was shared with the Guardian Media Group's north western tabloid local papers, which did not wish to switch to the Berliner format.

The new format was generally well received by Guardian readers, who were encouraged to provide feedback on the changes. The only controversy was over the dropping of the Doonesbury cartoon strip. The paper 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. G2 supplement 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".[57] 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.[58] In 2006, the US-based Society for News Design chose The Guardian and Polish daily Rzeczpospolita as the world's best-designed newspapers– from among 389 entries from 44 countries.[59]

Supplements and features

File:TheGuardian20051001.jpg
The Saturday edition of The Guardian includes some sections of varying sizes.

On each weekday The Guardian comes with the G2 supplement containing feature articles, columns, television and radio listings, and the quick crossword. Since the change to the Berliner format, there is a separate daily Sport section. Other regular supplements during the week include:

Monday
MediaGuardian
Tuesday
EducationGuardian
Wednesday
SocietyGuardian (covers the British public sector and related issues)
Thursday
TechnologyGuardian
Friday
Film & Music
Saturday
The Guide (a weekly listings magazine), Weekend (the colour supplement), Review (covers literature), Money, Work, Graduate, Travel and Family.

Though the main news section was in the large broadsheet format, the supplements were all in the half-sized tabloid format, with the exception of the glossy Weekend section which was a 290×245 mm magazine and The Guide which was in a small 225×145 mm format.

With the change of the main section to the Berliner format, the specialist sections are now printed as Berliner, as is a now-daily Sports section, but G2 has moved to a "magazine-sized" demi-Berliner format. A Thursday Technology section and daily science coverage in the news section replaced Life and Online. Weekend and The Guide are still in the same small formats as before the change.

On Monday to Thursday, the supplements carry substantial quantities of recruitment advertising as well as editorial on their specialised topics.

Regular columns

Current columnists

Regular cartoon strips

Editorial cartoonists Martin Rowson and Steve Bell get frequent hate mail for their treatment of controversial topics.[60]

Online media

Main article: guardian.co.uk

The Guardian and its Sunday sibling, The Observer publish all their news online, with free access both to current news and an archive of three million stories. A third of the site's hits are for items over a month old.[61] The website also offers a free printable A4 format PDF 24-hour newspaper, G24[62]– made up of the top stories– and, for a monthly subscription, the complete newspaper in PDF format. It is the second-most popular UK newspaper site[63] with more than 18.5 million users a month, compared with the top site telegraph.co.uk's 18.6 million.

The Guardian also has a number of talkboards that are noted for their mix of political discussion and whimsy. They were spoofed in The Guardian 's own regular humorous Chatroom column in G2. The spoof column purported to be excerpts from a chatroom on permachat.co.uk, a real URL which points to The Guardian's talkboards.

In the 'Comment is Free' section the public is invited to join in rigorous and sometimes bad-tempered debates about political issues. The section is comprised of Guardian columns and online pieces by other contributors, many of whom end up facing heavy criticism from readers. Notable writers who came in for criticism include:

  • Radio DJ Mike Read upon declaring his support for Boris Johnson in the 2008 London Mayor election[64]
  • Max Gogarty's travel blog about his trip to India and Thailand, after it was discovered that his father, Paul Gogarty, had also written travel articles for The Guardian, raising charges of nepotism[65]

The paper has also launched a dating website, Soulmates,[66] and is experimenting with new media, having previously offered a free twelve part weekly Podcast series by Ricky Gervais.[67] In January 2006 Gervais' show topped the iTunes podcast chart having been downloaded by two million listeners worldwide,[68] and is scheduled to be listed in the 2007 Guinness Book of Records as the most downloaded Podcast.[69]

GuardianFilms

In 2003, The Guardian started the film production company GuardianFilms, headed by journalist Maggie O'Kane. Much of the company's output is documentary made for television– and it has included Salam Pax's Baghdad Blogger for BBC Two's daily flagship Newsnight, some of which have been shown in compilations by CNN International, Sex On The Streets and Spiked, both made for the UK's Channel 4 television.[5]

"GuardianFilms was born in a sleeping bag in the Burmese rainforest," wrote O'Kane in 2003.[70] "I was a foreign correspondent for the paper, and it had taken me weeks of negotiations, dealing with shady contacts and a lot of walking to reach the cigar-smoking Karen twins– the boy soldiers who were leading attacks against the country's ruling junta. After I had reached them and written a cover story for the newspaper's G2 section, I got a call from the BBC's documentary department, which was researching a film on child soldiers. Could I give them all my contacts?

"The plight of the Karen people, who were forced into slave labour in the rainforest to build pipelines for oil companies (some of them British), was a tale of human suffering that needed to be told by any branch of the media that was interested. I handed over all the names and numbers I had, as well as details of the secret route through Thailand to get into Burma. Good girl. Afterwards– and not for the first time– it seemed to me that we at The Guardian should be using our resources ourselves. Instead of providing contact numbers for any independent TV company prepared to get on the phone to a journalist, we should make our own films."

The nickname The Grauniad for the paper originated with the satirical magazine Private Eye. It came about because of The Guardian's reputation for frequent and sometimes unintentionally amusing typographical errors, hence the popular myth that the paper once misspelled its own name on the page one masthead as The Gaurdian, though many recall the more inventive The Grauniad. The domain grauniad.co.uk is registered to the paper, and redirects to its website at guardian.co.uk.

The very first issue of the newspaper contained a number of errors, perhaps the most notable being a notification that there would soon be some goods sold at atction instead of auction. There are fewer typographical errors in the paper since the end of hot-metal typesetting.[citation needed]

In fact, the paper was not more prone than other papers to misprints but because the paper was printed in Manchester, Londoners saw the first edition printed each night. National papers in Britain at this time contained large numbers of "typos" which they removed progressively as the night wore on and they were noticed. Thus a paper like The Times would have as many mistakes in the North of England as The Guardian did in London. However, because media opinion was set in London, only The Guardian got a bad reputation.[citation needed]

Until the founding of The Independent, The Guardian was Britain's only 'serious' national daily newspaper to support centrist or centre-left politics. The term "Guardian reader" has been used pejoratively by those who do not agree with the paper– and self-deprecatingly by those who do.

The Guardian's science coverage is extensive. The paper also appears to have moved away from covering alternative therapies. Its Weekend supplement featured a column by Emma Mitchell, a natural health therapist, until August 2006 and G2 was, until the relaunch, home to Edzard Ernst's weekly column on complementary medicine (Ernst is professor of complementary medicine at the Plymouth, Devon-based Peninsula Medical School,[71]). The paper now carries the debunking Bad Science column[72] by Ben Goldacre which has been the source of a recent controversy over the efficacy of homeopathy.


April Fool content

The Guardian, along with other British news outlets, 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 1 April 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.
  • Political comedy Yes Minister mocked The Guardian several times. In the fourth episode of series 3 (1982), a conversation about a priceless antique vase goes:
Annie Hacker: "A friend of mine was very interested in it."
Bernard Woolley: "Hmm?"
Annie: "Her name's Jenny Goodwin from The Guardian."
Bernard: "The Guardian!"
Annie: "Yes."
Bernard: "A journalist."
Annie: "Yes, well, The Guardian anyway..."
  • The 1984 Christmas special of Yes Minister shows a number of newspapers tipping Jim Hacker as the next Prime Minister including The Guardian misspelled as The Gaurdian in the header. 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 inhabited by badgers for generations. In fact Hacker points out jokingly the "bodgers" have lived there for "generators", satirising The Guardian's reputation for spelling errors.
  • In Episode 4 of the second series of Yes, Prime Minister:
Jim Hacker: 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 Hitchhiker'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", adding later about space: "There's so much of it, and so little in it, it sometimes reminds me of The Observer".
  • In the Sandy Duncan episode in the first season of The Muppet Show, Statler demonstrates his extreme age by using the pre-1959 name:
Waldorf: Statler, do you 'get' the banana sketch?
Statler: No, I get The New York Times and The Manchester Guardian.
  • In an episode of the 1970s US horror series Kolchak: The Night Stalker (The Vampire), the main character, reporter Carl Kolchak (Darren McGavin), lies to a police chief by telling him that he writes for The Manchester Guardian.
  • In the 2006 film American Dreamz, the US president played by Dennis Quaid is known for not reading the papers, until he starts reading The Guardian.
  • In the film, The Bourne Ultimatum, Jason Bourne (Matt Damon) is mentioned in an article published in The Guardian and a reporter working for the newspaper itself plays a key role in the film.
  • In the Season Six episode of The West Wing (2004) entitled "The Wake Up Call", Assistant White House Press Secretary Annabeth Schott, portrayed by Kristen Chenowith, responds to a reporter quoting a damning allegation by The Guardian, stating "Well, the British papers can be a little dodgy."
  • In the novel The Line of Beauty by Alan Hollinghurst, the character Toby Fedden is briefly employed as a reporter for "The Guardian" and is criticized by his father, a Conservative MP.

Awards

Received

The Guardian has been awarded the National Newspaper of the Year in 1999 and 2006 by the British Press Awards, as well as being co-winner of the World's Best-designed Newspaper as awarded by the Society for News Design (2006). The guardian.co.uk website won the Best Newspaper category three years running in 2005, 2006 and 2007 Webby Awards, beating (in 2005) the New York Times, the Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal and Variety.[73] It has been the winner for six years in a row of the British Press Awards for Best Electronic Daily Newspaper.[74] The site won an Eppy award from the US-based magazine Editor & Publisher in 2000 for the best-designed newspaper online service.[75] The website is known for its commentary on sporting events, particularly its over-by-over cricket commentary.

In 2007 the newspaper was ranked first in a study on transparency which analysed 25 mainstream English-language media vehicles, and which was conducted by the International Center for Media and the Public Agenda of the University of Maryland.[76] It scored 3.8 out of a possible 4.0.

Given

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.

The annual Guardian Student Media Awards, founded in 1999, recognise excellence in journalism and design of British university and college student newspapers, magazines and websites.

In memory of Paul Foot, who died in 2004, The Guardian and Private Eye jointly set up the "Paul Foot Award", with an annual £10,000 prize fund, for investigative or campaigning journalism.[77]

Editors

Notable regular contributors (past and present)

Columnists

Cartoonists

Satirists

Experts

Photographers and Picture Editors

  • Herbert Walter Doughty (The Manchester Guardian's first photographer, July 1908)
  • Eamonn McCabe

The Newsroom archive

The Guardian and its sister newspaper The Observer also provide The Newsroom, a visitor centre in London.[82] 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.

In November 2007 The Guardian and The Observer made their archives available over the internet via DigitalArchive. The current extent of the archives available are 1821 to 2000 for The Guardian and 1791 to 2000 for The Observer. These archives will eventually run up to 2003.

See also

References

  1. ^ ABCs: National daily newspaper circulation January 2009, The Guardian, February 6, 2009.
  2. ^ Audit Bureau of Circulations Ltd– abc.org.uk
  3. ^ International Socialism Spring 2003, ISBN 1-898876-97-5
  4. ^ MORI, 2005-03-09. "Voting Intention by Newspaper Readership"
  5. ^ Hansard 374:54 2001-11-19
  6. ^ What the papers say, BBC News, 17 October 2005
  7. ^ Frederick Engels, The Condition of the Working Class in England, Progress, 1973, p 109.
  8. ^ Ayerst, The Guardian, 1971, p.471.
  9. ^ New Statesman, 21 February 2005.
  10. ^ (Manchester Gazette, 7 August 1819, in Ayerst, The Guardian, 1971, p.20)
  11. ^ Stanley Harrison, Poor Men’s Guardians, 1974, p.53
  12. ^ 21 May 1836
  13. ^ 28 Jan. 1832
  14. ^ 26 Feb. 1873
  15. ^ 27 April 1865
  16. ^ a b June Purvis: "Unladylike behaviour", The Guardian, 13 November 2007
  17. ^ quoted in David Ayerst, The Guardian, 1971, p 353
  18. ^ Daphna Baram (2003). Disenchantment: The Guardian and Israel. Politico. ISBN 1-84275-119-0.
  19. ^ Manchester Guardian, leader, 22 October 1951
  20. ^ Leader, 2 August 1956
  21. ^ "Leader, 1 February 1972 The division deepens" The Guardian.
  22. ^ "'Bloody Sunday' report excuses Army", BBC ON THIS DAY (news stories from 19 April 1972)
  23. ^ "Leader, 20 April 1972 To make history repeat itself" The Guardian.
  24. ^ Guardian leader, 2 July 1994.
  25. ^ Guardian leader, 2 May 1997/
  26. ^ leader 6 August 1990
  27. ^ Leader, 17 January 1991
  28. ^ Jonathan Aitken, 1995. "The simple sword of truth." The Guardian.
  29. ^ Luke Harding and David Pallister, 1997 "He lied and lied and lied" The Guardian.
  30. ^ BBC News, 1999. "Aitken pleads guilty to perjury."
  31. ^ Clare Dyer, 6 December 2000. "A challenge to the crown: now is the time for change" The Guardian
  32. ^ Nicholas Watt, 7 December 2000. "Broad welcome for debate on monarchy" The Guardian
  33. ^ Julie Burchill, 29 November 2003. "Good bad and ugly." The Guardian.
  34. ^ "The Guardian, the newspaper I left some years ago in protest at what I saw as its vile anti-Semitism."[1]
  35. ^ "'Guardian' editor apologizes for Jenin editorial". Jerusalem Post. March 4, 2008.
  36. ^ "'The Guardian' at the crossroads". Jerusalem Post. September 27, 2006.
  37. ^ "News coverage". The Guardian. October 25, 2006.
  38. ^ Ismail Haniyeh, 6 June 2007. "1967: Our rights have to be recognised." The Guardian.
  39. ^ Ehud Olmert, 6 June 2007. "1967: Israel cannot make peace alone." The Guardian.
  40. ^ "Dear Limey Assholes". The Guardian. 2004-10-18. Retrieved 2008-05-13. {{cite web}}: Italic or bold markup not allowed in: |publisher= (help)
  41. ^ CNS News, 25 October 2004."Left-Wing UK Paper Pulls Bush Assassination Column."
  42. ^ Charlie Brooker, 24 October 2004."Screen Burn, The Guide." The Guardian.
  43. ^ Full text of deleted article
  44. ^ Cite error: The named reference undecidedvoters was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  45. ^ Jackie Ashley (2008). "Are the Guardianistas rats?". The Guardian. Retrieved 2008-07-13.
  46. ^ Dilpazier Aslam, 2005-07-13. "We rock the boat." The Guardian.
  47. ^ Media Guardian, 2005-07-22. "Background: the Guardian and Dilpazier Aslam." The Guardian.
  48. ^ Steve Busfield, 2005-07-22. "Dilpazier Aslam leaves Guardian." The Guardian.
  49. ^ Robin Shepherd, "Romania, Bulgaria, and the EU's Future." GMFUS
  50. ^ Tara Conlan "Guardian owner the Scott Trust to be wound up after 72 years", The Guardian, 8 October 2008. Retrieved on 10 October 2008.
  51. ^ Guardian Media Group plc 2006. "Guardian Media Group 2005/6 results".
  52. ^ Guardian Newspapers Ltd & Scott Trust, 2005. "Social, ethical and environmental audit, 2005".
  53. ^ "Project Syndicate". Retrieved 2006-04-04.
  54. ^ "Tuesday's morning conference". The Guardian. 2007-09-13. Retrieved 2007-02-11. {{cite web}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)
  55. ^ Schoolnet n.d. "Manchester Guardian."
  56. ^ Claire Cozens, 2005-09-01. "New-look Guardian launches on September 12." The Guardian.
  57. ^ Guardian Reborn, guardian.co.uk.Retrieved on 2007-07-22.
  58. ^ Claire Cozens, 2006-01-13. "Telegraph sales hit all-time low." The Guardian.
  59. ^ Steve Busfield (February 21, 2006). "Guardian wins design award". Guardian.
  60. ^ Martin Rowson 25 November 2005."Drawing Fire."The Guardian.
  61. ^ Emily Bell, 2005-10-08. "Editor's Week." The Guardian.
  62. ^ G24 e-daily page
  63. ^ Newspaper website audits come under close scrutiny, 26 May 2008.
  64. ^ Comment is free: I'm backing Boris
  65. ^ Max, 19, hits the road | Travelog | Guardian Unlimited
  66. ^ Guardian Soulmates website.Retrieved on 2007-08-03.
  67. ^ Jason Deans, 2005-12-08. "Gervais to host Radio 2 Christmas show." The Guardian.
  68. ^ Media Guardian "Comedy stars and radio DJs top the download charts." The Guardian.
  69. ^ John Plunkett, 2006-02-06. "[2]." The Guardian.
  70. ^ [3]
  71. ^ Sarah Boseley, 2003-09-26 "The alternative professor." The Guardian.
  72. ^ "Bad Science". The Guardian. Retrieved 2007-02-10.
  73. ^ The Webby Awards, 2005. "9th Annual Webby Awards nominations and winners."
  74. ^ "The 2006 Newspaper Awards". Retrieved 2006-05-29.
  75. ^ Eppy Awards, 2000. "Winners."
  76. ^ "Openness & Accountability: A Study of Transparency in Global Media Outlets". Retrieved 2008-06-19.
  77. ^ The Paul Foot Award for campaigning journalism
  78. ^ Profile, The Guardian.Retrieved 2007-07-22.
  79. ^ Zorza inThe Guardian Index, 1842-1928 Book preview, Adam Matthew Publications, Marlborough, Wiltshire.Retrieved on 2007-07-22.
  80. ^ Profile:"Pundit with a Punch", Time, 7 July 1958.Retrieved on 2007-07-22.
  81. ^ The Legend at Shenton's website.Retrieved on 2007-07-22.
  82. ^ http://www.guardian.co.uk/newsroom
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