#63

Are you talking about the paper, or the website? They are quite different. I can’t see how you could justify that opinion based on the printed broadsheet to be honest, although of course there’s all sorts of balls in the G2 supplement. But then that’s what it’s for.

#64

revolutionary.

1 Like
#65

this brave soul has been eating ten portions of fruit and veg a day

2 Likes
#66

I quite like Stuart Heritage. They do make him do some awful shite though.

#67

Yeah I never buy the paper. Nor do about 90% of its readership, at least.

They could probably get loads of academic-written stuff for free, actually. Just contact publishers and ask who’s got a book coming out soon, pick out the good ones and offer to host an opinion column in which the book is subtly plugged at the bottom of the page.

I can do capitalism better than the guardian.

#68

oof, wouldn;t want to smell their place just now

#69

To be honest they get quite a few columns done by academics every now and then. A lot do so to sell their book but there a few semi regulars, Evengy Morosov comes to mind. They tend to be a little buried in the fluff though. Obviously dont generate enough click through.

But in all honesty most academics that are successful enough to write for the guardian (and be considered academics) are busy people. The £300 odd writing fee they give to freelancers is not going to make it worth their time anyway. Sure plenty of people with PHDs or who dont have tenure or enough success to go on the lecture circuit could do with that cash, but I mean plenty of journalists have PHDs or came from academia, it doesnt instantly make them more thorougher and insightful writers.

I would just be happy if newspapers still invested and promoted actual journalism. Not just quickly written opinion pieces or reporting what someone said on twitter. I mean foreign correspondences have never been so important with the level of misinformation about yet they are almost completely dead in modern news, and rarely ever publish front page or feature length content.

#70

*audience

2 Likes
#71

How is it still going? Last I heard it was operating at a loss of something like £70m a year.

#72

The ultimate owner of the Guardian is The Scott Trust. The trust has very deep pockets (£ 970 mln) so the Guardian can continue to operate at a loss for at least another decade. They did start a three-year program last year though to reverse losses, with the aim to break even by 2018/19.

#73

Do you know if Glenn Greenwald is a salaried member of staff for the Guardian? I don’t think he is but can’t be sure.

#74

He’s not. He left in 2013 to work for eBay founder Pierre Omidyar’s Internet-based investigate journalism effort, called First Look Media. So far it has been struggling to achieve anything of note.

#75

for a moment I was thinking “isn’t that…”

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#76

I see.

#77

whenever I buy the guardian I’m surprised that there’s some actual journalism in there. The much clearer delineation between ‘real news’ and stupid fluff helps, as well, it contextualises the shitty stuff much better and more obviously. That isn’t to say that there isn’t still loads of total garbage in there, but it definitely is much easier to only read the absolute wank and ignore the decent stuff while browsing the website.

#78

this all confirms that the internet hasn’t been the free market of ideas they sold it as. i mean what’s that thing about most people only having a handful of go-to websites. i know i do. it’s been especially terrible for journalism, where most news sites now are clickbait shite interspersed with the odd interesting article. no coincidence the better news outlets have a pretty hardheaded paywall system or clearly save the really good stuff for print - private eye, jacobin etc. shame.

#79

thought they broke a load of juicy sleaze about the fbi earlier this year (still haven’t read this series so probably wrong).

#80

anyone remember the exiled online? that was so fucking awesome. only discovered it just as they were wrapping it up. they broke some great stories.

#81

The Intercept (First Look Media’s main website) obtained a number of classified FBI policy guides. None of the revelations contained in these documents were particularly revealing: the FBI struggles to keep out law enforcement officers coming from extremist right-wing or white supremacist backgrounds, the FBI can infiltrate political and religious groups, the FBI uses racial and religion-based profiling, the FBI can trace journalist calls without judicial approval, etc.

This scoop was not widely picked up by mainstream media in the US.

#82

wtf everyone knows that shit. sad! the podcast is quite good tho.

1 Like