The Guardian
Encyclopedia
The Guardian, formerly known as The Manchester Guardian (founded 1821), is a British national daily newspaper in the Berliner format
. Currently edited by Alan Rusbridger
, it has grown from a nineteenth century local paper to a national paper associated with a complex organisational structure and international multimedia presence with sister papers The Observer
(British Sunday paper) and The Guardian Weekly
, as well as a large web presence.
The Guardian in paper form had a certified average daily circulation of 230,541 in Octomber 2011, behind The Daily Telegraph
and The Times
, but ahead of The Independent
. According to its editor, The Guardian has the second largest online readership of any English-language newspaper in the world, after the New York Times.
Founded in 1821 by John Edward Taylor
in Manchester
, The Manchester Guardian replaced the radical Manchester Observer which championed the Peterloo protesters. The paper identifies with centre-left liberalism
and its readership is generally on the mainstream left of British political opinion. The paper is also influential in design and publishing arena, sponsoring many awards in these areas.
The Guardian has changed format and design over the years moving from broadsheet to Berliner
, and has become an international media organisation with affiliations to other national papers with similar aims. The Guardian Weekly, which circulates worldwide, contains articles from The Guardian and its sister Sunday paper The Observer, as well as reports, features and book reviews from The Washington Post
and articles translated from Le Monde
. Other projects include GuardianFilm, the current editorial director of which is Maggie O'Kane.
According to Quarkbase, The Guardian was the most cited British newspaper on Wikipedia with 106,424 citations. The Times
was second with 52,457.
, who took advantage of the closure of the more radical Manchester Observer, the paper that had championed the cause of the Peterloo protesters. Taylor had been hostile to the radical reformers, writing, "(T)hey 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. 'They do not toil, neither do they spin,' but they live better than those that do. And when the government closed down the Manchester Observer, the mill-owners' champions had the upper hand.
The influential journalist Jeremiah Garnett
joined Taylor during the establishment of the paper.
The prospectus announcing the new publication proclaimed that it would "zealously enforce the principles of civil and religious Liberty ... warmly advocate the cause of Reform ... endeavour to assist in the diffusion of just principles of Political Economy and ... 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". 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 passing of a law positively enacting a gradual destruction of the cotton manufacture in this kingdom would be a much less rational procedure." 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 ..."
The Manchester Guardian was hostile to the Unionist
cause in the American Civil War
, writing on the news that Abraham 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 ..."
, 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. Scott supported the movement for women's suffrage
, but was critical of any tactics by the Suffragettes that involved direct action
: "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". 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".
Scott's friendship with Chaim Weizmann
played a role in the Balfour Declaration of 1917, and in 1948 The Guardian was a supporter of the new State of Israel
. Daphna Baram tells the story of The Guardians relationship with the Zionist movement and Israel in the book Disenchantment: The Guardian and Israel. 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.
, 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'.
"and the hate-gospellers of his entourage" that it called for Attlee's post-war Labour government to be voted out of office. The newspaper opposed the creation of the National Health Service
as it feared the state provision of healthcare would "eliminate selective" and lead to an increase of congenitally deformed and feckless people.
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 Egypt
ian 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."
, by British soldiers 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 [ Provisional Irish Republican Army
] might use the crowd as a shield
." (Guardian, 1 February 1972). Some Irish Nationalists
believed that Lord Widgery's enquiry into the killings was a whitewash, but The Guardian declared that "Lord Widgery's report is not one-sided" (20 April 1972). 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).
on its foundation in 1981, but the paper was enthusiastic in its support for Tony Blair
in his bid to lead the Labour Party, and to become Prime Minister.
s 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 six-month prison sentence for Tisdall, though she served only four. "I still blame myself", said Peter Preston
who was the editor of The Guardian at the time, but he went on to argue that the paper had no choice because it "believed in the rule of law".
, 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".
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 UN behest, to set that evil to rights. Their duties are clear. ... Let the momentum, and the resolution, be swift." After the event, journalist Maggie O'Kane
conceded that she and her colleagues 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."
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". 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. In 1999, Aitken was jailed for perjury
and perverting the course of justice
.
in 1999. Though the United Nations Security Council
did not support the action, The Guardian stated that "the only honourable course for Europe and America is to use military force" (Leader, 23 March 1999). Mary Kaldor
's piece was headlined "Bombs away! But to save civilians we must get in some soldiers too" (25 March 1999).
defector Oleg Gordievsky
identified prominent Guardian editor Richard Gott
as one of his agents. While Gott denied that he received cash, he confessed taking benefits from the KGB.
Gordievsky commented on the newspaper: "The KGB loved the Guardian. It was deemed highly susceptible to penetration".
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)
movement, in recent decades The Guardian has been accused of exaggerating criticism of Israeli government policy. In December 2003 columnist Julie Burchill
cited "striking bias against the state of Israel" as one of the reasons she left the paper for The Times
. A leaked report from the European Monitoring Centre on Racism cited The Economists claim that for "many British Jews," the British media's reporting on Israel "is spiced with a tone of animosity, 'as to smell of anti-Semitism'... This is above all the case with the Guardian and The Independent
". Greville Janner
, former president of the Board of Deputies of British Jews
, has accused The Guardian of being "viciously and notoriously anti-Israel".
Responding to these accusations, a Guardian editorial in 2002 condemned anti-Semitism and defended the paper's right to criticise the policies and actions of the Israeli government, arguing that those who view such criticism as inherently anti-Jewish are mistaken. Harriet Sherwood, The Guardian's foreign editor, has also denied The Guardian has an anti-Israel bias, saying that the paper aims to cover all viewpoints in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict
.
, Ohio, an average-sized 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 voting against US President George W. Bush
. The paper scrapped "Operation Clark County" on 21 October 2004 after first publishing a column of complaints from Bush supporters about the campaign under the headline "Dear Limey assholes". The public backlash against the campaign likely contributed to Bush's victory in Clark County.
, an attempt to capitalise on its large online readership in the United States, which at the time stood at more than 5.9m. The company hired former American Prospect editor, New York
magazine columnist and New York Review of Books writer Michael Tomasky
to head up the project and hire a staff of American reporters and web editors. The site featured Guardian news relevant to an American audience, coverage of US news and the Middle East, for example.
Tomasky stepped down from his position as Guardian American editor in February 2009, ceding editing and planning duties to other US and London staff. He retained his position as a columnist and blogger, taking the title editor-at-large.
In October 2009, the company abandoned the Guardian America homepage, instead directing users to a US news index page on the main website. The next month, the company laid off six American employees, including a reporter, a multimedia producer and four web editors. The move came as Guardian News and Media opted to reconsider its US strategy amid a massive effort to cut costs across the company.
." The paper further claimed that this case appears "to call into question privileges guaranteeing free speech established under the 1688 Bill of Rights". The only parliamentary question mentioning Carter Ruck in the relevant period was by Paul Farrelly
MP, in reference to legal action by Barclays and Trafigura
. The part of the question referencing Carter-Ruck relates to the latter company's September 2009 gagging order on the publication of a 2006 internal report into the 2006 Côte d'Ivoire toxic waste dump scandal, which involved a class action
case that the company only settled in September 2009 after The Guardian published some of the commodity trader's internal emails. The reporting injunction was lifted the next day, as Carter Ruck withdrew it before The Guardian could challenge it in the High Court. Alan Rusbridger
credited the rapid back-down of Carter-Ruck to Twitter, as did a BBC article.
of newspapers, radio stations, print media including The Observer
Sunday newspaper, 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. 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. 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. The paper is therefore heavily dependent on cross-subsidisation from profitable companies within the group, including Auto Trader .
The Guardians ownership by the Scott Trust is a likely factor in it 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. 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
, 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.
The continual losses made from the National Newspaper division of the Guardian Media Group
, caused the group to dispose of its Regional Media division by selling titles to competitor Trinity Mirror
in March 2010. This included the flagship Manchester Evening News
, and severed the historic link between that paper and The Guardian. The sale was in order to safeguard the future of The Guardian Newspaper as is the intended purpose of the Scott Trust.
In June 2011 Guardian News and Media revealed increased annual losses of £33m and announced that it was looking to focus on its online edition for news coverage, leaving a physical newspaper that was to contain more comment and features. It was also speculated that the Guardian may become the first British national daily paper to go solely online.
in 2005, "because it is read by the new establishment", reflecting the paper's then growing influence.
The paper's readership is generally on the mainstream left of British political opinion: a MORI
poll taken between April and June 2000 showed that 80% of Guardian readers were Labour Party
voters; according to another MORI
poll taken in 2005, 48% of Guardian readers were Labour voters and 34% Liberal Democrat voters. The newspaper's reputation as a platform for liberal
and left-wing opinions has led to the use of the epithet "Guardian reader" as a label for people holding such views.
Guardian features editor Ian Katz stated in 2004 that "... it is no secret we are a centre-left newspaper ...". In 2008, Guardian columnist Jackie Ashley
said 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 Guardians 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." The paper's comment and opinion pages, though often written by centre-left academics and writers like Polly Toynbee
, have allowed some space for right-of-centre voices such as Simon Jenkins
, Max Hastings
and Michael Gove
.
In the run-up to the 2010 general election, following a meeting of the editorial staff, the paper declared its support for the Liberal Democrats, in particular due to the party's stance on electoral reform
. The paper suggested tactical voting
to prevent a Conservative victory, given Britain's first-past-the-post
electoral system.
Assistant Editor Michael White, in discussing media self-censorship in March 2011, says, "I have always sensed liberal, middle class ill-ease in going after stories about immigration, legal or otherwise, about welfare fraud or the less attractive tribal habits of the working class, which is more easily ignored altogether. Toffs, including royal ones, Christians, especially popes, governments of Israel
, and US Republicans
are more straightforward targets."
, 617,483 for The Times
, and 215,504 for The Independent
.
.; 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 Guardians 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. http://www.guardian.co.uk/g24 It is downloadable as a PDF
file. The contents come from The Guardian and its Sunday sibling The Observer
.
format for its main section, with producing sections and supplements in a range of page sizes including tabloid, approximately A4, and pocket-size (approximately A5).
In 2004, The Guardian announced plans to change to a "Berliner
" or "midi" format similar to that used by Die Tageszeitung
in Germany, 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.
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 Guardians move, no printing presses in Britain 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.
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". Some readers were however dissatisfied as the earlier deadline needed for the all-colour sports section meant that coverage of late-finishing evening football matches
became less satisfactory 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. 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.
Before the redesign in 2005, the main news section was in the large broadsheet format, but 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.
In G2:
MediaGuardian:
SocietyGuardian (covers the British public sector
and related issues)
Formerly TechnologyGuardian (print version demised from 17 December 2009)
Weekend (the colour supplement)
Review (covers literature)
Money
Work including Graduate
Travel
Family
by Steve Bell
Doonesbury
Perry Bible Fellowship
My Peculiar World by Karrie Fransman (in G2)
A Softer World
Loomus, by Steven Appleby
(Saturday, in the Family section) Media Tarts (Monday, in the Media section)
Clare in the Community
(Wednesday, in the Society section) Home-Clubber
(Saturday, in the Guide section) The Pitchers, by Berger & Wyse (Friday, in the Film and Music section). Berger & Wyse also produce a weekly cartoon for the food pages of Weekend magazine.
Editorial cartoonist
s Martin Rowson
and Steve Bell
have received hate mail
for their treatment of topics that some deem controversial.
s Mail Online
, with 39 million unique browsers per month to the Mail's 53.9m, and in April 2011 MediaWeek reported that it is the fifth most popular newspaper site in the world.
The Comment is Free section features columns by the paper's journalists and regular commentators, as well as articles from guest writers, with readers comments and responses below. The section includes all the opinion pieces published in the paper itself, as well as many others that only appear online.
The Guardian has taken what they call a very 'open' stance in delivering news, and have launched an open platform for their content. This allows external developers to easily use Guardian content in external applications, and even to feed third-party content back into the Guardian network.
The Guardian also had a number of talkboards that were noted for their mix of political discussion and whimsy, until they were closed on Friday 25 February 2011. 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 pointed to The Guardians talkboards.
The paper has also launched a dating website, Soulmates, and is experimenting with new media, having previously offered a free twelve part weekly podcast
series by Ricky Gervais
. In January 2006 Gervais' show topped the iTunes
podcast chart having been downloaded by two million listeners worldwide, and is scheduled to be listed in the 2007 Guinness Book of Records as the most downloaded podcast.
. 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.
"GuardianFilms was born in a sleeping bag in the Burmese rainforest
," wrote O'Kane in 2003. "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."
According to GuardianFilms's own webpage, its international work has focused on training talented local journalists based on the premise that "the era of a traditional London or Washington based foreign correspondent or fireman is coming to an end and the world urgently needs a more searching challenging journalism brought to us by people who speak the language and can secure access far beyond the "Green Zone Journalist" limits of the traditional correspondent." It says it is especially focused on reporting the Muslim world in a more challenging manner, and has trained a number of journalists in Iraq, Afghanistan and Zimbabwe.
GuardianFilms has received several broadcasting awards. In addition to two Amnesty International Media Awards in 2004 and 2005, "The Baghdad Blogger: Salam Pax" won a Royal Television Society Award in 2005. "Baghdad: A Doctor's Story" won an Emmy Award for Best International Current Affairs film in 2007. In 2008 "Inside the Surge" won the Royal Television Society award for best international news film – the first time a newspaper has won such an award. In 2008 The Guardian's Katine website was awarded for its outstanding new media output at the One World Media awards. In 2008 GuardianFilms' undercover video report revealing vote rigging by Robert Mugabe's Zanu PF party during the 2007 Zimbabwe election won best news programme of the year at the Broadcast Awards.
played on The Guardian's reputation for frequent typographical error
s, such as misspelling its own name as The . The domain grauniad.co.uk is registered to the paper and redirects to their website.
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 instead of auction. There are fewer typographical errors in the paper since the end of hot-metal typesetting
. One of their writers, Keith Devlin
, suggested that the high number of observed misprints was due more to the quality of the readership than their greater frequency.
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.
, and "Front Page of the Year" in 2002 ("A declaration of war", 12 September 2001). It was also co-winner of the World's Best-designed Newspaper as awarded by the Society for News Design
(2006).
Guardian journalists have won a range of British Press Awards, including
Other awards include:
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
. It has been the winner for six years in a row of the British Press Awards
for Best Electronic Daily Newspaper. The site won an Eppy
award from the US-based magazine Editor & Publisher
in 2000 for the best-designed newspaper online service. 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
. It scored 3.8 out of a possible 4.0.
, 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.
opened The Newsroom, an archive and visitor centre in London in 2002. The centre preserved and promoted the histories and values of the newspapers through its archive, educational programmes and exhibitions. The Newsroom's activities all transferred to Kings Place in 2008. Now known as the Guardian News & Media Archive, the archive preserves and promotes the histories and values of the Guardian and the Observer newspapers by collecting and making accessible material that provides an accurate and comprehensive history of the papers. The archive holds official records of the Guardian and the Observer and also seeks to acquire material from people who have been associated with the papers. As well as corporate records the archive therefore holds correspondence, diaries, notebooks, original cartoons and photographs belonging to staff of the papers. This material may be consulted by members of the public by prior appointment. There is also an extensive Manchester Guardian archive at the University of Manchester
's John Rylands University 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.
Berliner (format)
Berliner, or "midi", is a newspaper format with pages normally measuring about . The Berliner format is slightly taller and marginally wider than the tabloid/compact format; and is both narrower and shorter than the broadsheet format....
. Currently edited by Alan Rusbridger
Alan Rusbridger
Alan Charles Rusbridger is the editor of the British newspaper The Guardian. He has also been a reporter and a columnist.-Early life:...
, it has grown from a nineteenth century local paper to a national paper associated with a complex organisational structure and international multimedia presence with sister papers The Observer
The Observer
The Observer is a British newspaper, published on Sundays. In the same place on the political spectrum as its daily sister paper The Guardian, which acquired it in 1993, it takes a liberal or social democratic line on most issues. It is the world's oldest Sunday newspaper.-Origins:The first issue,...
(British Sunday paper) and The Guardian Weekly
The Guardian Weekly
The Guardian Weekly is a weekly newspaper published by the Guardian Media Group and is one of the world's oldest international newspapers. It was founded with the aim of spreading progressive British ideas into America after the First World War...
, as well as a large web presence.
The Guardian in paper form had a certified average daily circulation of 230,541 in Octomber 2011, behind The Daily Telegraph
The Daily Telegraph
The Daily Telegraph is a daily morning broadsheet newspaper distributed throughout the United Kingdom and internationally. The newspaper was founded by Arthur B...
and The Times
The Times
The Times is a British daily national newspaper, first published in London in 1785 under the title The Daily Universal Register . The Times and its sister paper The Sunday Times are published by Times Newspapers Limited, a subsidiary since 1981 of News International...
, but ahead of The Independent
The Independent
The Independent is a British national morning newspaper published in London by Independent Print Limited, owned by Alexander Lebedev since 2010. It is nicknamed the Indy, while the Sunday edition, The Independent on Sunday, is the Sindy. Launched in 1986, it is one of the youngest UK national daily...
. According to its editor, The Guardian has the second largest online readership of any English-language newspaper in the world, after the New York Times.
Founded in 1821 by John Edward Taylor
John Edward Taylor
John Edward Taylor was the founder of the Manchester Guardian newspaper, later to become The Guardian.-Biography:...
in Manchester
Manchester
Manchester is a city and metropolitan borough in Greater Manchester, England. According to the Office for National Statistics, the 2010 mid-year population estimate for Manchester was 498,800. Manchester lies within one of the UK's largest metropolitan areas, the metropolitan county of Greater...
, The Manchester Guardian replaced the radical Manchester Observer which championed the Peterloo protesters. The paper identifies with centre-left liberalism
Social liberalism
Social liberalism is the belief that liberalism should include social justice. It differs from classical liberalism in that it believes the legitimate role of the state includes addressing economic and social issues such as unemployment, health care, and education while simultaneously expanding...
and its readership is generally on the mainstream left of British political opinion. The paper is also influential in design and publishing arena, sponsoring many awards in these areas.
The Guardian has changed format and design over the years moving from broadsheet to Berliner
Berliner (format)
Berliner, or "midi", is a newspaper format with pages normally measuring about . The Berliner format is slightly taller and marginally wider than the tabloid/compact format; and is both narrower and shorter than the broadsheet format....
, and has become an international media organisation with affiliations to other national papers with similar aims. The Guardian Weekly, which circulates worldwide, contains articles from The Guardian and its sister Sunday paper The Observer, as well as reports, features and book reviews from The Washington Post
The Washington Post
The Washington Post is Washington, D.C.'s largest newspaper and its oldest still-existing paper, founded in 1877. Located in the capital of the United States, The Post has a particular emphasis on national politics. D.C., Maryland, and Virginia editions are printed for daily circulation...
and articles translated from Le Monde
Le Monde
Le Monde is a French daily evening newspaper owned by La Vie-Le Monde Group and edited in Paris. It is one of two French newspapers of record, and has generally been well respected since its first edition under founder Hubert Beuve-Méry on 19 December 1944...
. Other projects include GuardianFilm, the current editorial director of which is Maggie O'Kane.
According to Quarkbase, The Guardian was the most cited British newspaper on Wikipedia with 106,424 citations. The Times
The Times
The Times is a British daily national newspaper, first published in London in 1785 under the title The Daily Universal Register . The Times and its sister paper The Sunday Times are published by Times Newspapers Limited, a subsidiary since 1981 of News International...
was second with 52,457.
Early years
The Manchester Guardian was founded in Manchester in 1821 by a group of non-conformist businessmen headed by John Edward TaylorJohn Edward Taylor
John Edward Taylor was the founder of the Manchester Guardian newspaper, later to become The Guardian.-Biography:...
, who took advantage of the closure of the more radical Manchester Observer, the paper that had championed the cause of the Peterloo protesters. Taylor had been hostile to the radical reformers, writing, "(T)hey 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. 'They do not toil, neither do they spin,' but they live better than those that do. And when the government closed down the Manchester Observer, the mill-owners' champions had the upper hand.
The influential journalist Jeremiah Garnett
Jeremiah Garnett
Jeremiah Garnett was an English journalist, active in the politics of Lancashire and the founding of The Guardian.-Life:Jeremiah, younger brother of Richard Garnett and elder brother of Thomas Garnett , was born at Otley in Yorkshire, 2 October 1793...
joined Taylor during the establishment of the paper.
The prospectus announcing the new publication proclaimed that it would "zealously enforce the principles of civil and religious Liberty ... warmly advocate the cause of Reform ... endeavour to assist in the diffusion of just principles of Political Economy and ... 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". 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 passing of a law positively enacting a gradual destruction of the cotton manufacture in this kingdom would be a much less rational procedure." 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 ..."
The Manchester Guardian was hostile to the Unionist
Union (American Civil War)
During the American Civil War, the Union was a name used to refer to the federal government of the United States, which was supported by the twenty free states and five border slave states. It was opposed by 11 southern slave states that had declared a secession to join together to form the...
cause in the American Civil War
American Civil War
The American Civil War was a civil war fought in the United States of America. In response to the election of Abraham Lincoln as President of the United States, 11 southern slave states declared their secession from the United States and formed the Confederate States of America ; the other 25...
, writing on the news that Abraham Lincoln
Abraham Lincoln
Abraham Lincoln was the 16th President of the United States, serving from March 1861 until his assassination in April 1865. He successfully led his country through a great constitutional, military and moral crisis – the American Civil War – preserving the Union, while ending slavery, and...
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 ..."
C. P. Scott
Its most famous editor, C. P. ScottC. P. Scott
Charles Prestwich Scott was a British journalist, publisher and politician. Born in Bath, Somerset, he was the editor of the Manchester Guardian from 1872 until 1929 and its owner from 1907 until his death...
, 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
Second Boer War
The Second Boer War was fought from 11 October 1899 until 31 May 1902 between the British Empire and the Afrikaans-speaking Dutch settlers of two independent Boer republics, the South African Republic and the Orange Free State...
against popular opinion. Scott supported the movement for women's suffrage
Women's suffrage
Women's suffrage or woman suffrage is the right of women to vote and to run for office. The expression is also used for the economic and political reform movement aimed at extending these rights to women and without any restrictions or qualifications such as property ownership, payment of tax, or...
, but was critical of any tactics by the Suffragettes that involved direct action
Direct action
Direct action is activity undertaken by individuals, groups, or governments to achieve political, economic, or social goals outside of normal social/political channels. This can include nonviolent and violent activities which target persons, groups, or property deemed offensive to the direct action...
: "The really ludicrous position is that Mr Lloyd George
David Lloyd George
David Lloyd George, 1st Earl Lloyd-George of Dwyfor OM, PC was a British Liberal politician and statesman...
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". 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".
Scott's friendship with Chaim Weizmann
Chaim Weizmann
Chaim Azriel Weizmann, , was a Zionist leader, President of the Zionist Organization, and the first President of the State of Israel. He was elected on 1 February 1949, and served until his death in 1952....
played a role in the Balfour Declaration of 1917, and in 1948 The Guardian was a supporter of the new State of Israel
Israel
The State of Israel is a parliamentary republic located in the Middle East, along the eastern shore of the Mediterranean Sea...
. Daphna Baram tells the story of The Guardians relationship with the Zionist movement and Israel in the book Disenchantment: The Guardian and Israel. In June 1936, ownership of the paper passed to the Scott Trust
Scott Trust
The Scott Trust Limited is the British company which owns Guardian Media Group and thus The Guardian, The Observer and Auto Trader as well as various local newspapers, Smooth Radio and other radio stations, and various other media businesses in the UK...
(named after the last owner, John Russell Scott, who was the first chairman of the Trust). This move ensured the paper's independence.
Spanish Civil War
Traditionally affiliated with the centrist to centre-left Liberal PartyLiberal Party (UK)
The Liberal Party was one of the two major political parties of the United Kingdom during the 19th and early 20th centuries. It was a third party of negligible importance throughout the latter half of the 20th Century, before merging with the Social Democratic Party in 1988 to form the present day...
, 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
Spanish Civil War
The Spanish Civil WarAlso known as The Crusade among Nationalists, the Fourth Carlist War among Carlists, and The Rebellion or Uprising among Republicans. was a major conflict fought in Spain from 17 July 1936 to 1 April 1939...
. With the pro-Liberal
Liberal Party (UK)
The Liberal Party was one of the two major political parties of the United Kingdom during the 19th and early 20th centuries. It was a third party of negligible importance throughout the latter half of the 20th Century, before merging with the Social Democratic Party in 1988 to form the present day...
News Chronicle
News Chronicle
The News Chronicle was a British daily newspaper. It ceased publication on 17 October 1960, being absorbed into the Daily Mail. Its offices were in Bouverie Street, off Fleet Street, London, EC4Y 8DP, England.-Daily Chronicle:...
, the Labour
Labour Party (UK)
The Labour Party is a centre-left democratic socialist party in the United Kingdom. It surpassed the Liberal Party in general elections during the early 1920s, forming minority governments under Ramsay MacDonald in 1924 and 1929-1931. The party was in a wartime coalition from 1940 to 1945, after...
-supporting Daily Herald, the Communist Party
Communist Party of Great Britain
The Communist Party of Great Britain was the largest communist party in Great Britain, although it never became a mass party like those in France and Italy. It existed from 1920 to 1991.-Formation:...
's Daily Worker
Daily Worker
The Daily Worker was a newspaper published in New York City by the Communist Party USA, a formerly Comintern-affiliated organization. Publication began in 1924. While it generally reflected the prevailing views of the party, some attempts were made to make it appear that the paper reflected a...
and several Sunday and weekly papers, it supported the 'Republican' government against General Francisco Franco
Francisco Franco
Francisco Franco y Bahamonde was a Spanish general, dictator and head of state of Spain from October 1936 , and de facto regent of the nominally restored Kingdom of Spain from 1947 until his death in November, 1975...
's insurgent 'nationalists'.
Post-war
The paper so loathed Labour's left wing champion Aneurin BevanAneurin Bevan
Aneurin "Nye" Bevan was a British Labour Party politician who was the Deputy Leader of the Labour Party from 1959 until his death in 1960. The son of a coal miner, Bevan was a lifelong champion of social justice and the rights of working people...
"and the hate-gospellers of his entourage" that it called for Attlee's post-war Labour government to be voted out of office. The newspaper opposed the creation of the National Health Service
National Health Service
The National Health Service is the shared name of three of the four publicly funded healthcare systems in the United Kingdom. They provide a comprehensive range of health services, the vast majority of which are free at the point of use to residents of the United Kingdom...
as it feared the state provision of healthcare would "eliminate selective" and lead to an increase of congenitally deformed and feckless people.
Its anti-establishment stance fell short of opposing military intervention during the 1956 Suez Crisis
Suez Crisis
The Suez Crisis, also referred to as the Tripartite Aggression, Suez War was an offensive war fought by France, the United Kingdom, and Israel against Egypt beginning on 29 October 1956. Less than a day after Israel invaded Egypt, Britain and France issued a joint ultimatum to Egypt and Israel,...
: "The government is right to be prepared for military action at Suez", because Egypt
Egypt
Egypt , officially the Arab Republic of Egypt, Arabic: , is a country mainly in North Africa, with the Sinai Peninsula forming a land bridge in Southwest Asia. Egypt is thus a transcontinental country, and a major power in Africa, the Mediterranean Basin, the Middle East and the Muslim world...
ian 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."
Northern Ireland
When 14 civil rights demonstrators were killed on 30 January 1972, known as Bloody SundayBloody Sunday (1972)
Bloody Sunday —sometimes called the Bogside Massacre—was an incident on 30 January 1972 in the Bogside area of Derry, Northern Ireland, in which twenty-six unarmed civil rights protesters and bystanders were shot by soldiers of the British Army...
, by British soldiers in Northern Ireland, The Guardian blamed the protesters: "The organisers of the demonstration, Miss Bernadette Devlin
Bernadette Devlin McAliskey
Josephine Bernadette Devlin McAliskey , also known as Bernadette Devlin and Bernadette McAliskey, is a socialist republican political activist...
among them, deliberately challenged the ban on marches. They knew that stone throwing and sniping could not be prevented, and that the IRA [ Provisional Irish Republican Army
Provisional Irish Republican Army
The Provisional Irish Republican Army is an Irish republican paramilitary organisation whose aim was to remove Northern Ireland from the United Kingdom and bring about a socialist republic within a united Ireland by force of arms and political persuasion...
] might use the crowd as a shield
Human shield
Human shield is a military and political term describing the deliberate placement of civilians in or around combat targets to deter an enemy from attacking those targets. It may also refer to the use of civilians to literally shield combatants during attacks, by forcing the civilians to march in...
." (Guardian, 1 February 1972). Some Irish Nationalists
Irish nationalism
Irish nationalism manifests itself in political and social movements and in sentiment inspired by a love for Irish culture, language and history, and as a sense of pride in Ireland and in the Irish people...
believed that Lord Widgery's enquiry into the killings was a whitewash, but The Guardian declared that "Lord Widgery's report is not one-sided" (20 April 1972). 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).
Social Democratic Party and New Labour
Three of The Guardians four leader writers joined the SDPSocial Democratic Party (UK)
The Social Democratic Party was a political party in the United Kingdom that was created on 26 March 1981 and existed until 1988. It was founded by four senior Labour Party 'moderates', dubbed the 'Gang of Four': Roy Jenkins, David Owen, Bill Rodgers and Shirley Williams...
on its foundation in 1981, but the paper was enthusiastic in its support for Tony Blair
Tony Blair
Anthony Charles Lynton Blair is a former British Labour Party politician who served as the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 2 May 1997 to 27 June 2007. He was the Member of Parliament for Sedgefield from 1983 to 2007 and Leader of the Labour Party from 1994 to 2007...
in his bid to lead the Labour Party, and to become Prime Minister.
Sarah Tisdall
In 1983, the paper was at the centre of a controversy surrounding documents regarding the stationing of cruise missileCruise missile
A cruise missile is a guided missile that carries an explosive payload and is propelled, usually by a jet engine, towards a land-based or sea-based target. Cruise missiles are designed to deliver a large warhead over long distances with high accuracy...
s in Britain that were leaked to The Guardian by civil servant Sarah Tisdall
Sarah Tisdall
Sarah Tisdall was a Foreign and Commonwealth Office clerical officer who was jailed for leaking British government documents to a newspaper in 1983.-Cruise missiles:...
. The paper eventually complied with a court order to hand over the documents to the authorities, which resulted in a six-month prison sentence for Tisdall, though she served only four. "I still blame myself", said Peter Preston
Peter Preston
Peter John Preston is a British journalist and author. He was educated at Loughborough Grammar School and St John's College, Oxford, where he edited the student paper Cherwell...
who was the editor of The Guardian at the time, but he went on to argue that the paper had no choice because it "believed in the rule of law".
First Gulf war
In the lead up to the first Gulf WarGulf War
The Persian Gulf War , commonly referred to as simply the Gulf War, was a war waged by a U.N.-authorized coalition force from 34 nations led by the United States, against Iraq in response to Iraq's invasion and annexation of Kuwait.The war is also known under other names, such as the First Gulf...
, 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".
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 UN behest, to set that evil to rights. Their duties are clear. ... Let the momentum, and the resolution, be swift." After the event, journalist Maggie O'Kane
Maggie O'Kane
Maggie O'Kane is an award-winning Irish journalist and documentary film maker. She has been most associated with The Guardian newspaper where she was a foreign correspondent who filed graphic stories from Sarajevo while it was under siege between 1992 and 1996. She also contributed to the BBC from...
conceded that she and her colleagues 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."
Jonathan Aitken
In 1995, both the Granada TelevisionGranada Television
Granada Television is the ITV contractor for North West England. Based in Manchester since its inception, it is the only surviving original ITA franchisee from 1954 and is ITV's most successful....
programme World In Action
World in Action
World in Action was a British investigative current affairs programme made by Granada Television from 1963 until 1998. Its campaigning journalism frequently had a major impact on events of the day. Its production teams often took audacious risks and gained a solid reputation for its often...
and The Guardian were sued for libel by the then cabinet minister Jonathan Aitken, for their allegation that the Harrods
Harrods
Harrods is an upmarket department store located in Brompton Road in Brompton, in the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea, London. The Harrods brand also applies to other enterprises undertaken by the Harrods group of companies including Harrods Bank, Harrods Estates, Harrods Aviation and Air...
owner Mohamed Al Fayed had paid for Aitken and his wife to stay at the Hôtel Ritz
Hôtel Ritz Paris
The Hôtel Ritz is a grand palatial hotel in the heart of Paris, the 1st arrondissement. It overlooks the octagonal border of the Place Vendôme at number 15...
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". 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. In 1999, Aitken was jailed for perjury
Perjury
Perjury, also known as forswearing, is the willful act of swearing a false oath or affirmation to tell the truth, whether spoken or in writing, concerning matters material to a judicial proceeding. That is, the witness falsely promises to tell the truth about matters which affect the outcome of the...
and perverting the course of justice
Perverting the course of justice
Perverting the course of justice, in English, Canadian , and Irish law, is a criminal offence in which someone prevents justice from being served on himself or on another party...
.
Kosovo
The paper supported NATO's military intervention in the Kosovo WarKosovo War
The term Kosovo War or Kosovo conflict was two sequential, and at times parallel, armed conflicts in Kosovo province, then part of FR Yugoslav Republic of Serbia; from early 1998 to 1999, there was an armed conflict initiated by the ethnic Albanian "Kosovo Liberation Army" , who sought independence...
in 1999. Though the United Nations Security Council
United Nations Security Council
The United Nations Security Council is one of the principal organs of the United Nations and is charged with the maintenance of international peace and security. Its powers, outlined in the United Nations Charter, include the establishment of peacekeeping operations, the establishment of...
did not support the action, The Guardian stated that "the only honourable course for Europe and America is to use military force" (Leader, 23 March 1999). Mary Kaldor
Mary Kaldor
Mary Kaldor is a British academic, currently Professor of Global Governance at the London School of Economics, where she is also the Director of its Centre for the Study of Global Governance. She has been a key figure in the development of cosmopolitan democracy...
's piece was headlined "Bombs away! But to save civilians we must get in some soldiers too" (25 March 1999).
Journalist working for Russian intelligence services
KGBKGB
The KGB was the commonly used acronym for the . It was the national security agency of the Soviet Union from 1954 until 1991, and was the premier internal security, intelligence, and secret police organization during that time.The State Security Agency of the Republic of Belarus currently uses the...
defector Oleg Gordievsky
Oleg Gordievsky
Oleg Antonovich Gordievsky , CMG , is a former Colonel of the KGB and KGB Resident-designate and bureau chief in London, who was a secret agent of the British Secret Intelligence Service from 1974 to 1985.-Early career:Oleg Gordievsky attended the Moscow State Institute of International...
identified prominent Guardian editor Richard Gott
Richard Gott
Richard Willoughby Gott is a British journalist and historian, who has written extensively on Latin America...
as one of his agents. While Gott denied that he received cash, he confessed taking benefits from the KGB.
Gordievsky commented on the newspaper: "The KGB loved the Guardian. It was deemed highly susceptible to penetration".
Since 2000
- In the early 2000s, The Guardian challenged the Act of Settlement 1701Act of Settlement 1701The Act of Settlement is an act of the Parliament of England that was passed in 1701 to settle the succession to the English throne on the Electress Sophia of Hanover and her Protestant heirs. The act was later extended to Scotland, as a result of the Treaty of Union , enacted in the Acts of Union...
and the Treason Felony Act 1848Treason Felony Act 1848The Treason Felony Act 1848 is an Act of the Parliament of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland. The Act is still in force. It is a law which protects HM the Queen and the Crown....
. - In October 2004, The Guardian published a humorous column by Charlie BrookerCharlie BrookerCharlton "Charlie" Brooker is a British journalist, comic writer and broadcaster. His style of humour is savage and profane, with surreal elements and a consistent satirical pessimism...
in its entertainment guide, which appeared to call for the assassination of George W. BushGeorge W. BushGeorge Walker Bush is an American politician who served as the 43rd President of the United States, from 2001 to 2009. Before that, he was the 46th Governor of Texas, having served from 1995 to 2000....
. This caused some controversy and the paper was forced to issue an apology and remove the article from its website. - Following the 7 July 2005 London bombings7 July 2005 London bombingsThe 7 July 2005 London bombings were a series of co-ordinated suicide attacks in the United Kingdom, targeting civilians using London's public transport system during the morning rush hour....
, The Guardian published an article on its comment pages by Dilpazier AslamDilpazier AslamDilpazie/r Aslam is a former trainee journalist with The Guardian. He came to public attention in July 2005 when he lost his position with the newspaper after being named as a member of the Islamist group Hizb ut-Tahrir. The Guardian was alerted to Aslam's membership in the group by bloggers who...
, a 27 year old British Muslim journalism trainee from YorkshireYorkshireYorkshire is a historic county of northern England and the largest in the United Kingdom. Because of its great size in comparison to other English counties, functions have been increasingly undertaken over time by its subdivisions, which have also been subject to periodic reform...
. Aslam was a member of Hizb ut-TahrirHizb ut-TahrirHizb ut-Tahrir is an international Sunni. pan-Islamic political organisation but keeps it open for all including shias,some of its beliefs are against sunni school of thought, whose goal is for all Muslim countries to unify as an Islamic state or caliphate ruled by Islamic law and with a caliph...
, 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. The Home OfficeHome OfficeThe Home Office is the United Kingdom government department responsible for immigration control, security, and order. As such it is responsible for the police, UK Border Agency, and the Security Service . It is also in charge of government policy on security-related issues such as drugs,...
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. - In early 2009, the paper started a tax investigation into a number of major UK companies, including publishing a database of the tax paid by the FTSE 100 companies. Internal documents relating to Barclays Bank's tax avoidanceTax avoidanceTax avoidance is the legal utilization of the tax regime to one's own advantage, to reduce the amount of tax that is payable by means that are within the law. The term tax mitigation is a synonym for tax avoidance. Its original use was by tax advisors as an alternative to the pejorative term tax...
were removed from The Guardians website after Barclays obtained a gagging order. - The paper played a key role in exposing the depth of the News of the World phone hacking affairNews of the World phone hacking affairThe News International phone-hacking scandal is an ongoing controversy involving mainly the News of the World but also other British tabloid newspapers published by News International, a subsidiary of News Corporation. Employees of the newspaper were accused of engaging in phone hacking, police...
.
Wars in Afghanistan and Iraq
During the AfghanistanWar in Afghanistan (2001–present)
The War in Afghanistan began on October 7, 2001, as the armed forces of the United States of America, the United Kingdom, Australia, and the Afghan United Front launched Operation Enduring Freedom...
and Iraq
2003 invasion of Iraq
The 2003 invasion of Iraq , was the start of the conflict known as the Iraq War, or Operation Iraqi Freedom, in which a combined force of troops from the United States, the United Kingdom, Australia and Poland invaded Iraq and toppled the regime of Saddam Hussein in 21 days of major combat operations...
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
Weapons of mass destruction
A weapon of mass destruction is a weapon that can kill and bring significant harm to a large number of humans and/or cause great damage to man-made structures , natural structures , or the biosphere in general...
': "It is not credible to argue, as Iraq did in its initial reaction to Mr Powell
Colin Powell
Colin Luther Powell is an American statesman and a retired four-star general in the United States Army. He was the 65th United States Secretary of State, serving under President George W. Bush from 2001 to 2005. He was the first African American to serve in that position. During his military...
[at the Security Council], that it is simply all lies. ... Iraq must disarm." (Guardian Leader, Thursday 6 February 2003)
Accusations of bias in coverage of Israel
Despite its early support for the ZionistZionism
Zionism is a Jewish political movement that, in its broadest sense, has supported the self-determination of the Jewish people in a sovereign Jewish national homeland. Since the establishment of the State of Israel, the Zionist movement continues primarily to advocate on behalf of the Jewish state...
movement, in recent decades The Guardian has been accused of exaggerating criticism of Israeli government policy. In December 2003 columnist Julie Burchill
Julie Burchill
Julie Burchill is an English writer and journalist. Beginning as a writer for the New Musical Express at the age of 17, she has written for newspapers such as The Sunday Times and The Guardian. She is a self-declared "militant feminist". She has several times been involved in legal action...
cited "striking bias against the state of Israel" as one of the reasons she left the paper for The Times
The Times
The Times is a British daily national newspaper, first published in London in 1785 under the title The Daily Universal Register . The Times and its sister paper The Sunday Times are published by Times Newspapers Limited, a subsidiary since 1981 of News International...
. A leaked report from the European Monitoring Centre on Racism cited The Economists claim that for "many British Jews," the British media's reporting on Israel "is spiced with a tone of animosity, 'as to smell of anti-Semitism'... This is above all the case with the Guardian and The Independent
The Independent
The Independent is a British national morning newspaper published in London by Independent Print Limited, owned by Alexander Lebedev since 2010. It is nicknamed the Indy, while the Sunday edition, The Independent on Sunday, is the Sindy. Launched in 1986, it is one of the youngest UK national daily...
". Greville Janner
Greville Janner
Greville Ewan Janner, Baron Janner of Braunstone is a British Labour politician, lawyer and author. A QC since 1971, he was a Labour MP from 1970 to 1997...
, former president of the Board of Deputies of British Jews
Board of Deputies of British Jews
The Board of Deputies of British Jews is the main representative body of British Jews. Founded in 1760 as a joint committee of the Sephardi and Ashkenazi Jewish communities in London, it has since become a widely recognised forum for the views of the different sectors of the UK Jewish...
, has accused The Guardian of being "viciously and notoriously anti-Israel".
Responding to these accusations, a Guardian editorial in 2002 condemned anti-Semitism and defended the paper's right to criticise the policies and actions of the Israeli government, arguing that those who view such criticism as inherently anti-Jewish are mistaken. Harriet Sherwood, The Guardian's foreign editor, has also denied The Guardian has an anti-Israel bias, saying that the paper aims to cover all viewpoints in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict
Israeli-Palestinian conflict
The Israeli–Palestinian conflict is the ongoing conflict between Israelis and Palestinians. The conflict is wide-ranging, and the term is also used in reference to the earlier phases of the same conflict, between Jewish and Zionist yishuv and the Arab population living in Palestine under Ottoman or...
.
Clark County
In August 2004, for the US presidential election, the daily G2 supplement launched an experimental letter-writing campaign in Clark CountyClark County, Ohio
As of the census of 2000, there were 144,742 people, 56,648 households, and 39,370 families residing in the county. The population density was 362 people per square mile . There were 61,056 housing units at an average density of 153 per square mile...
, Ohio, an average-sized county in a swing state
Swing state
In United States presidential politics, a swing state is a state in which no single candidate or party has overwhelming support in securing that state's electoral college votes...
. 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 voting against US President George W. Bush
George W. Bush
George Walker Bush is an American politician who served as the 43rd President of the United States, from 2001 to 2009. Before that, he was the 46th Governor of Texas, having served from 1995 to 2000....
. The paper scrapped "Operation Clark County" on 21 October 2004 after first publishing a column of complaints from Bush supporters about the campaign under the headline "Dear Limey assholes". The public backlash against the campaign likely contributed to Bush's victory in Clark County.
Guardian America
In 2007, the paper launched a website Guardian AmericaGuardian America
Guardian America is an American version of the British news website The Guardian. Although the British version is also available in print, under the name The Guardian, Guardian America is not....
, an attempt to capitalise on its large online readership in the United States, which at the time stood at more than 5.9m. The company hired former American Prospect editor, New York
New York (magazine)
New York is a weekly magazine principally concerned with the life, culture, politics, and style of New York City. Founded by Milton Glaser and Clay Felker in 1968 as a competitor to The New Yorker, it was brasher and less polite than that magazine, and established itself as a cradle of New...
magazine columnist and New York Review of Books writer Michael Tomasky
Michael Tomasky
Michael Tomasky is a liberal American columnist, journalist and author. He is the editor in chief of Democracy, a special correspondent for Newsweek / The Daily Beast, a contributing editor for The American Prospect, and a contributor to The New York Review of Books.-Biography:Tomasky was born...
to head up the project and hire a staff of American reporters and web editors. The site featured Guardian news relevant to an American audience, coverage of US news and the Middle East, for example.
Tomasky stepped down from his position as Guardian American editor in February 2009, ceding editing and planning duties to other US and London staff. He retained his position as a columnist and blogger, taking the title editor-at-large.
In October 2009, the company abandoned the Guardian America homepage, instead directing users to a US news index page on the main website. The next month, the company laid off six American employees, including a reporter, a multimedia producer and four web editors. The move came as Guardian News and Media opted to reconsider its US strategy amid a massive effort to cut costs across the company.
Gagged from reporting Parliament
In October 2009, The Guardian reported that it was forbidden to report on a parliamentary matter, namely a question recorded in a Commons order paper, to be answered by a minister later that week. The paper noted that it was being "forbidden from telling its readers why the paper is prevented—for the first time in memory—from reporting parliament. Legal obstacles, which cannot be identified, involve proceedings, which cannot be mentioned, on behalf of a client who must remain secret. The only fact the Guardian can report is that the case involves the London solicitors Carter-RuckCarter-Ruck
Carter-Ruck is a British law firm founded by Peter Carter-Ruck.According to their website they specialise in libel, privacy, international law and commercial litigation....
." The paper further claimed that this case appears "to call into question privileges guaranteeing free speech established under the 1688 Bill of Rights". The only parliamentary question mentioning Carter Ruck in the relevant period was by Paul Farrelly
Paul Farrelly
Christopher Paul Farrelly is a British Labour Party politician and journalist, who has been the Member of Parliament for Newcastle-under-Lyme since 2001.-Early life:...
MP, in reference to legal action by Barclays and Trafigura
Trafigura
Trafigura is an Amsterdam-based multinational company founded in 1993 trading in base metals and energy, including oil. the company had equity of more than $2 billion and a turnover of $73 billion that generated $440 million of profit....
. The part of the question referencing Carter-Ruck relates to the latter company's September 2009 gagging order on the publication of a 2006 internal report into the 2006 Côte d'Ivoire toxic waste dump scandal, which involved a class action
Class action
In law, a class action, a class suit, or a representative action is a form of lawsuit in which a large group of people collectively bring a claim to court and/or in which a class of defendants is being sued...
case that the company only settled in September 2009 after The Guardian published some of the commodity trader's internal emails. The reporting injunction was lifted the next day, as Carter Ruck withdrew it before The Guardian could challenge it in the High Court. Alan Rusbridger
Alan Rusbridger
Alan Charles Rusbridger is the editor of the British newspaper The Guardian. He has also been a reporter and a columnist.-Early life:...
credited the rapid back-down of Carter-Ruck to Twitter, as did a BBC article.
Ownership
The Guardian is part of the GMG Guardian Media GroupGuardian Media Group
Guardian Media Group plc is a company of the United Kingdom owning various mass media operations including The Guardian and The Observer. The Group is owned by the Scott Trust. It was founded as the Manchester Guardian Ltd in 1907 when C. P. Scott bought the Manchester Guardian from the estate of...
of newspapers, radio stations, print media including The Observer
The Observer
The Observer is a British newspaper, published on Sundays. In the same place on the political spectrum as its daily sister paper The Guardian, which acquired it in 1993, it takes a liberal or social democratic line on most issues. It is the world's oldest Sunday newspaper.-Origins:The first issue,...
Sunday newspaper, The Guardian Weekly
The Guardian Weekly
The Guardian Weekly is a weekly newspaper published by the Guardian Media Group and is one of the world's oldest international newspapers. It was founded with the aim of spreading progressive British ideas into America after the First World War...
international newspaper, and new media—Guardian Abroad website, and guardian.co.uk
Guardian.co.uk
guardian.co.uk, formerly known as Guardian Unlimited, is a British website owned by the Guardian Media Group. Georgina Henry is the editor...
. All the aforementioned were owned by The Scott Trust
Scott Trust
The Scott Trust Limited is the British company which owns Guardian Media Group and thus The Guardian, The Observer and Auto Trader as well as various local newspapers, Smooth Radio and other radio stations, and various other media businesses in the UK...
, a charitable foundation existing between 1936 and 2008, which aimed to ensure the paper's editorial independence
Editorial independence
Editorial independence is the freedom of editors to make decisions without interference from the owners of a publication. Editorial independence is tested, for instance, if a newspaper runs articles that may be unpopular with its advertising clientele....
in perpetuity, maintaining its financial health to ensure it did not become vulnerable to take overs by for-profit media groups. 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. Dame Liz Forgan
Liz Forgan
Dame Elizabeth "Liz" Anne Lucy Forgan, DBE is an English journalist and executive for radio and television.-Early life:Forgan was educated at the independent Benenden School in Kent, a girls's boarding school, and at St Hugh's College, Oxford, then an all-female college.She initially worked on...
, 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. The paper is therefore heavily dependent on cross-subsidisation from profitable companies within the group, including Auto Trader .
The Guardians ownership by the Scott Trust is a likely factor in it being the only British national daily to conduct (since 2003) an annual social, ethical and environmental audit
Audit
The general definition of an audit is an evaluation of a person, organization, system, process, enterprise, project or product. The term most commonly refers to audits in accounting, but similar concepts also exist in project management, quality management, and energy conservation.- Accounting...
in which it examines, under the scrutiny of an independent external auditor, its own behaviour as a company. 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
Project Syndicate
Project Syndicate is an international not-for-profit newspaper syndicate and association of newspapers. It distributes commentaries and analysis by experts, activists, Nobel laureates, statesmen, economists, political thinkers, business leaders and academics to its member publications, and...
, established by George Soros
George Soros
George Soros is a Hungarian-American business magnate, investor, philosopher, and philanthropist. He is the chairman of Soros Fund Management. Soros supports progressive-liberal causes...
, and intervened in 1995 to save the Mail & Guardian
Mail & Guardian
The Mail & Guardian is a South African weekly newspaper, published by M&G Media in Johannesburg, South Africa, with a strong focus on politics, government, the environment, civil society and business.- The Mail & Guardian newspaper :...
in South Africa, but Guardian Media Group sold the majority of its shares in the Mail & Guardian in 2002.
The continual losses made from the National Newspaper division of the Guardian Media Group
Guardian Media Group
Guardian Media Group plc is a company of the United Kingdom owning various mass media operations including The Guardian and The Observer. The Group is owned by the Scott Trust. It was founded as the Manchester Guardian Ltd in 1907 when C. P. Scott bought the Manchester Guardian from the estate of...
, caused the group to dispose of its Regional Media division by selling titles to competitor Trinity Mirror
Trinity Mirror
Trinity Mirror plc is a large British newspaper and magazine publisher. It is Britain's biggest newspaper group, publishing 240 regional papers as well as the national Daily Mirror, Sunday Mirror and People, and the Scottish Sunday Mail and Daily Record. Its headquarters are at Canary Wharf in...
in March 2010. This included the flagship Manchester Evening News
Manchester Evening News
The Manchester Evening News is a regional daily newspaper covering Greater Manchester in the United Kingdom. It is published every day except Sunday and is owned by Trinity Mirror plc following its sale by Guardian Media Group in early 2010. It has an average daily circulation of 90,973 copies...
, and severed the historic link between that paper and The Guardian. The sale was in order to safeguard the future of The Guardian Newspaper as is the intended purpose of the Scott Trust.
In June 2011 Guardian News and Media revealed increased annual losses of £33m and announced that it was looking to focus on its online edition for news coverage, leaving a physical newspaper that was to contain more comment and features. It was also speculated that the Guardian may become the first British national daily paper to go solely online.
Stance and editorial opinion
Founded by textile traders and merchants, The Guardian had a reputation as "an organ of the middle class", or in the words of C.P. Scott's son Ted "a paper that will remain bourgeois to the last". "I write for the Guardian," said Sir Max HastingsMax Hastings
Sir Max Hugh Macdonald Hastings, FRSL is a British journalist, editor, historian and author. He is the son of Macdonald Hastings, the noted British journalist and war correspondent and Anne Scott-James, sometime editor of Harper's Bazaar.-Life and career:Hastings was educated at Charterhouse...
in 2005, "because it is read by the new establishment", reflecting the paper's then growing influence.
The paper's readership is generally on the mainstream left of British political opinion: a MORI
MORI
Ipsos MORI is the second largest market research organisation in the United Kingdom, formed by a merger of Ipsos UK and MORI, two of the Britain's leading survey companies in October 2005...
poll taken between April and June 2000 showed that 80% of Guardian readers were Labour Party
Labour Party (UK)
The Labour Party is a centre-left democratic socialist party in the United Kingdom. It surpassed the Liberal Party in general elections during the early 1920s, forming minority governments under Ramsay MacDonald in 1924 and 1929-1931. The party was in a wartime coalition from 1940 to 1945, after...
voters; according to another MORI
MORI
Ipsos MORI is the second largest market research organisation in the United Kingdom, formed by a merger of Ipsos UK and MORI, two of the Britain's leading survey companies in October 2005...
poll taken in 2005, 48% of Guardian readers were Labour voters and 34% Liberal Democrat voters. The newspaper's reputation as a platform for liberal
Social liberalism
Social liberalism is the belief that liberalism should include social justice. It differs from classical liberalism in that it believes the legitimate role of the state includes addressing economic and social issues such as unemployment, health care, and education while simultaneously expanding...
and left-wing opinions has led to the use of the epithet "Guardian reader" as a label for people holding such views.
Guardian features editor Ian Katz stated in 2004 that "... it is no secret we are a centre-left newspaper ...". In 2008, Guardian columnist Jackie Ashley
Jackie Ashley
Jacqueline Ashley is a British journalist and broadcaster.Ashley is the daughter of Jack Ashley, Baron Ashley of Stoke, the life peer and former Labour MP. Her mother was Pauline Kay Ashley née Crispin...
said 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 Guardians 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." The paper's comment and opinion pages, though often written by centre-left academics and writers like Polly Toynbee
Polly Toynbee
Polly Toynbee is a British journalist and writer, and has been a columnist for The Guardian newspaper since 1998. She is a social democrat and broadly supports the Labour Party, while urging it in many areas to be more left-wing...
, have allowed some space for right-of-centre voices such as Simon Jenkins
Simon Jenkins
Sir Simon David Jenkins is a British newspaper columnist and author, and since November 2008 has been chairman of the National Trust. He currently writes columns for both The Guardian and London's Evening Standard, and was previously a commentator for The Times, which he edited from 1990 to 1992...
, Max Hastings
Max Hastings
Sir Max Hugh Macdonald Hastings, FRSL is a British journalist, editor, historian and author. He is the son of Macdonald Hastings, the noted British journalist and war correspondent and Anne Scott-James, sometime editor of Harper's Bazaar.-Life and career:Hastings was educated at Charterhouse...
and Michael Gove
Michael Gove
Michael Andrew Gove, MP is a British politician, who currently serves as the Secretary of State for Education and as the Conservative Party Member of Parliament for the Surrey Heath constituency. He is also a published author and former journalist.Born in Edinburgh, Gove was raised in Aberdeen...
.
In the run-up to the 2010 general election, following a meeting of the editorial staff, the paper declared its support for the Liberal Democrats, in particular due to the party's stance on electoral reform
Electoral reform
Electoral reform is change in electoral systems to improve how public desires are expressed in election results. That can include reforms of:...
. The paper suggested tactical voting
Tactical voting
In voting systems, tactical voting occurs, in elections with more than two viable candidates, when a voter supports a candidate other than his or her sincere preference in order to prevent an undesirable outcome.It has been shown by the Gibbard-Satterthwaite theorem that any voting method which is...
to prevent a Conservative victory, given Britain's first-past-the-post
First-past-the-post
First-past-the-post voting refers to an election won by the candidate with the most votes. The winning potato candidate does not necessarily receive an absolute majority of all votes cast.-Overview:...
electoral system.
Assistant Editor Michael White, in discussing media self-censorship in March 2011, says, "I have always sensed liberal, middle class ill-ease in going after stories about immigration, legal or otherwise, about welfare fraud or the less attractive tribal habits of the working class, which is more easily ignored altogether. Toffs, including royal ones, Christians, especially popes, governments of Israel
Israel
The State of Israel is a parliamentary republic located in the Middle East, along the eastern shore of the Mediterranean Sea...
, and US Republicans
Republican Party (United States)
The Republican Party is one of the two major contemporary political parties in the United States, along with the Democratic Party. Founded by anti-slavery expansion activists in 1854, it is often called the GOP . The party's platform generally reflects American conservatism in the U.S...
are more straightforward targets."
Circulation and format
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 TelegraphThe Daily Telegraph
The Daily Telegraph is a daily morning broadsheet newspaper distributed throughout the United Kingdom and internationally. The newspaper was founded by Arthur B...
, 617,483 for The Times
The Times
The Times is a British daily national newspaper, first published in London in 1785 under the title The Daily Universal Register . The Times and its sister paper The Sunday Times are published by Times Newspapers Limited, a subsidiary since 1981 of News International...
, and 215,504 for The Independent
The Independent
The Independent is a British national morning newspaper published in London by Independent Print Limited, owned by Alexander Lebedev since 2010. It is nicknamed the Indy, while the Sunday edition, The Independent on Sunday, is the Sindy. Launched in 1986, it is one of the youngest UK national daily...
.
Publication history
The first edition was published on 5 May 1821, at which time The Guardian was a weekly, published on Saturdays and costing 7dPenny
A penny is a coin or a type of currency used in several English-speaking countries. It is often the smallest denomination within a currency system.-Etymology:...
.; the stamp duty
Stamp duty
Stamp duty is a tax that is levied on documents. Historically, this included the majority of legal documents such as cheques, receipts, military commissions, marriage licences and land transactions. A physical stamp had to be attached to or impressed upon the document to denote that stamp duty...
on newspapers (4d
Penny
A penny is a coin or a type of currency used in several English-speaking countries. It is often the smallest denomination within a currency system.-Etymology:...
. 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
Manchester Evening News
The Manchester Evening News is a regional daily newspaper covering Greater Manchester in the United Kingdom. It is published every day except Sunday and is owned by Trinity Mirror plc following its sale by Guardian Media Group in early 2010. It has an average daily circulation of 90,973 copies...
. 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
The Independent
The Independent is a British national morning newspaper published in London by Independent Print Limited, owned by Alexander Lebedev since 2010. It is nicknamed the Indy, while the Sunday edition, The Independent on Sunday, is the Sindy. Launched in 1986, it is one of the youngest UK national daily...
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
Italic type
In typography, italic type is a cursive typeface based on a stylized form of calligraphic handwriting. Owing to the influence from calligraphy, such typefaces often slant slightly to the right. Different glyph shapes from roman type are also usually used—another influence from calligraphy...
Garamond
Garamond
Garamond is the name given to a group of old-style serif typefaces named after the punch-cutter Claude Garamond . Most of the Garamond faces are more closely related to the work of a later punch-cutter, Jean Jannon...
"The", with a bold Helvetica
Helvetica
Helvetica is a widely used sans-serif typeface developed in 1957 by Swiss typeface designer Max Miedinger with Eduard Hoffmann.-Visual distinctive characteristics:Characteristics of this typeface are:lower case:square dot over the letter i....
"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 Guardians move to the Berliner format. In 1993 the paper declined to participate in the broadsheet 'price war' started by Rupert Murdoch
Rupert Murdoch
Keith Rupert Murdoch, AC, KSG is an Australian-American business magnate. He is the founder and Chairman and CEO of , the world's second-largest media conglomerate....
's The Times. In June 1993, The Guardian bought The Observer
The Observer
The Observer is a British newspaper, published on Sundays. In the same place on the political spectrum as its daily sister paper The Guardian, which acquired it in 1993, it takes a liberal or social democratic line on most issues. It is the world's oldest Sunday newspaper.-Origins:The first issue,...
from Lonrho, thus gaining a serious Sunday newspaper partner with similar political views.
Its international weekly edition is now titled The Guardian Weekly
The Guardian Weekly
The Guardian Weekly is a weekly newspaper published by the Guardian Media Group and is one of the world's oldest international newspapers. It was founded with the aim of spreading progressive British ideas into America after the First World War...
, 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
Le Monde
Le Monde is a French daily evening newspaper owned by La Vie-Le Monde Group and edited in Paris. It is one of two French newspapers of record, and has generally been well respected since its first edition under founder Hubert Beuve-Méry on 19 December 1944...
. The Guardian Weekly is also linked to a website for expatriates, Guardian Abroad.
g24 is a constantly-updated electronic newspaper available free of charge. http://www.guardian.co.uk/g24 It is downloadable as a PDF
Portable Document Format
Portable Document Format is an open standard for document exchange. This file format, created by Adobe Systems in 1993, is used for representing documents in a manner independent of application software, hardware, and operating systems....
file. The contents come from The Guardian and its Sunday sibling The Observer
The Observer
The Observer is a British newspaper, published on Sundays. In the same place on the political spectrum as its daily sister paper The Guardian, which acquired it in 1993, it takes a liberal or social democratic line on most issues. It is the world's oldest Sunday newspaper.-Origins:The first issue,...
.
Moving to the Berliner paper format
The Guardian is printed in full colour, and was the first newspaper in the UK to use the BerlinerBerliner (format)
Berliner, or "midi", is a newspaper format with pages normally measuring about . The Berliner format is slightly taller and marginally wider than the tabloid/compact format; and is both narrower and shorter than the broadsheet format....
format for its main section, with producing sections and supplements in a range of page sizes including tabloid, approximately A4, and pocket-size (approximately A5).
In 2004, The Guardian announced plans to change to a "Berliner
Berliner (format)
Berliner, or "midi", is a newspaper format with pages normally measuring about . The Berliner format is slightly taller and marginally wider than the tabloid/compact format; and is both narrower and shorter than the broadsheet format....
" or "midi" format similar to that used by Die Tageszeitung
Die tageszeitung
die tageszeitung , was founded in 1978 in Berlin. It is a cooperative-owned German daily newspaper which is administrated by a workers' self-management...
in Germany, Le Monde
Le Monde
Le Monde is a French daily evening newspaper owned by La Vie-Le Monde Group and edited in Paris. It is one of two French newspapers of record, and has generally been well respected since its first edition under founder Hubert Beuve-Méry on 19 December 1944...
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
The Independent
The Independent is a British national morning newspaper published in London by Independent Print Limited, owned by Alexander Lebedev since 2010. It is nicknamed the Indy, while the Sunday edition, The Independent on Sunday, is the Sindy. Launched in 1986, it is one of the youngest UK national daily...
and The Times
The Times
The Times is a British daily national newspaper, first published in London in 1785 under the title The Daily Universal Register . The Times and its sister paper The Sunday Times are published by Times Newspapers Limited, a subsidiary since 1981 of News International...
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.
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
Masthead (publishing)
The masthead is a list, published in a newspaper or magazine, of its staff. In some publications it names only the most senior individuals; in others, it may name many or all...
for the newspaper, its first since 1988. A typeface family called Guardian Egyptian, designed by Paul Barnes
Paul Barnes (designer)
Paul Barnes is a graphic design and typographer. He has designed several new typefaces.-Career:After an education at the University of Reading, in 1992 he emigrated to the United States to work with Roger Black. In 1995 he left Roger Black and began work as a freelance designer in London...
and Christian Schwartz
Christian Schwartz
Christian Schwartz is an American type designer. He has been awarded the German Design Award and the Prix Charles Peignot.-Life :...
, 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 Guardians move, no printing presses in Britain could produce newspapers in the Berliner format. There were additional complications as one of the paper's presses was part-owned by Telegraph Newspapers
The Daily Telegraph
The Daily Telegraph is a daily morning broadsheet newspaper distributed throughout the United Kingdom and internationally. The newspaper was founded by Arthur B...
and Express Newspapers, and it was contracted to use the plant until 2009. Another press was shared with the Guardian Media Group
Guardian Media Group
Guardian Media Group plc is a company of the United Kingdom owning various mass media operations including The Guardian and The Observer. The Group is owned by the Scott Trust. It was founded as the Manchester Guardian Ltd in 1907 when C. P. Scott bought the Manchester Guardian from the estate of...
's north western tabloid local papers, which did not wish to switch to the Berliner format.
Reception
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 DoonesburyDoonesbury
Doonesbury is a comic strip by American cartoonist Garry Trudeau, that chronicles the adventures and lives of an array of characters of various ages, professions, and backgrounds, from the President of the United States to the title character, Michael Doonesbury, who has progressed from a college...
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". Some readers were however dissatisfied as the earlier deadline needed for the all-colour sports section meant that coverage of late-finishing evening football matches
became less satisfactory 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. In 2006, the US-based Society for News Design
Society for News Design
The Society for News Design is an international organization for professionals working in the news sector of the media industry, specifically those involved with graphic design, illustration, web design and infographics....
chose The Guardian and Polish daily Rzeczpospolita
Rzeczpospolita (newspaper)
Rzeczpospolita is a Polish national daily newspaper, with a circulation around of 160,000. Issued every day except Sunday. Rzeczpospolita was printed in broadsheet format, then switched to compact at October 16, 2007...
as the world's best-designed newspapers– from among 389 entries from 44 countries.
Regular content and features
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 are shown below.Before the redesign in 2005, the main news section was in the large broadsheet format, but 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.
G2
The following sections are in G2 every day from Monday to Friday: Arts, TV and Radio, Puzzles.Monday
Sport:- Clogger, a humorous look at the weekend's football. This includes an ever-changing list of sub-features such as:
- Jobs Guus HiddinkGuus HiddinkGuus Hiddink is a Dutch football manager and former player. He was the most recently manager of the Turkish national football team. He is considered to be one of the best managers of his generation and was the best-paid coach in international football in 2009...
could do - Total earnings of Fabio CapelloFabio CapelloFabio Capello is an Italian football manager and former player. He is the manager of the England national football team.Capello has the distinction of winning the domestic league title with every club he has coached throughout his career...
- Jobs Guus Hiddink
- Screen Break, by Martin Kelner: analysis of TV sports coverage
- What's rocking sport, where sportspeople select their favourite music
In G2:
- Charlie BrookerCharlie BrookerCharlton "Charlie" Brooker is a British journalist, comic writer and broadcaster. His style of humour is savage and profane, with surreal elements and a consistent satirical pessimism...
's column - Ask Hadley: fashion advice from Hadley FreemanHadley FreemanHadley Freeman is an American journalist formerly based in London, but now living in New York.She was born in New York to Jewish parents, and attended St Anne's College, Oxford University where she read English Literature and edited Cherwell....
MediaGuardian:
- ABC circulation figures (every month)
- Media Monkey: gossip from the media sector
Tuesday
EducationGuardian:- Multiple choice: poses the same question to three different people (e.g. a teacher, a parent and a pupil)
Wednesday
In G2:- Marcel Berlins' column
- The digested read, by John CraceJohn Crace (writer)John Crace is a British journalist writing for The Guardian.Crace is probably best known for his "The Digested Read" column, in which he reviews new fiction by condensing it into short narratives of about 700 words in the style of the book itself...
- Notes & QueriesNotes & QueriesNotes & Queries is a weekly column in The Guardian newspaper which publishes readers' questions together with answers submitted by other readers....
SocietyGuardian (covers the British public sector
Public sector
The public sector, sometimes referred to as the state sector, is a part of the state that deals with either the production, delivery and allocation of goods and services by and for the government or its citizens, whether national, regional or local/municipal.Examples of public sector activity range...
and related issues)
- Eco Soundings: environmental news
Thursday
In G2:- Private Lives
Formerly TechnologyGuardian (print version demised from 17 December 2009)
- The "Free Our Data" campaign
Saturday
The Guide (a weekly listings magazine)- All Ears
Weekend (the colour supplement)
- One Million Tiny Plays About Britain
- "This Column Will Change Your Life" by Oliver BurkemanOliver BurkemanOliver Burkeman is a journalist for the British newspaper The Guardian, currently writing features for G2. He is a winner of the Foreign Press Association's Young Journalist of the Year award, and has been shortlisted for the Orwell Prize. He writes a popular weekly column on psychology, This...
- Food
- The New Vegetarian
Review (covers literature)
Money
Work including Graduate
Travel
Family
Regular cartoon strips
If... (comic)
If... is an ongoing political comic strip which appears in the UK newspaper The Guardian, written and drawn by Steve Bell since its creation in 1982.-Style:...
by Steve Bell
Steve Bell (cartoonist)
Steve Bell is an English political cartoonist, whose work appears in The Guardian and other publications. He is known for his left-wing views and distinctive caricatures.-Early life:...
Doonesbury
Doonesbury is a comic strip by American cartoonist Garry Trudeau, that chronicles the adventures and lives of an array of characters of various ages, professions, and backgrounds, from the President of the United States to the title character, Michael Doonesbury, who has progressed from a college...
A Softer World
A Softer World is a thrice weekly webcomic by Canadians Joey Comeau and Emily Horne. It first came online on February 7, 2003. Early comics had been published, intermittently, in zine form. With the launch of the website, the comic has gained wider recognition, most notably when Warren Ellis...
Steven Appleby
Steven Appleby is a cartoonist and illustrator living in Britain. He is a dual citizen of the UK and Canada. His humour is usually observational or absurd....
(Saturday, in the Family section)
Clare in the Community
Clare in the Community is a British comic strip in The Guardian newspaper, written by Harry Venning. The title is a pun on care in the community. The strip has been successfully adapted for radio on BBC Radio 4....
(Wednesday, in the Society section)
Modern Toss
Modern Toss is a British series of cartoon booklets and books aimed at adults, and a television series based on them. It is the creation of Mick Bunnage and Jon Link; their company is called Modern Toss Ltd, also going under the name '*hitflap' .The cartoons feature low-quality drawing, offensive...
(Saturday, in the Guide section)
Editorial cartoonist
Editorial cartoonist
An editorial cartoonist, also known as a political cartoonist, is an artist who draws editorial cartoons that contain some level of political or social commentary....
s Martin Rowson
Martin Rowson
Martin George Edmund Rowson is a British cartoonist and novelist. His genre is political satire and his style is scathing and graphic. His work frequently appears in The Guardian and The Independent...
and Steve Bell
Steve Bell (cartoonist)
Steve Bell is an English political cartoonist, whose work appears in The Guardian and other publications. He is known for his left-wing views and distinctive caricatures.-Early life:...
have received hate mail
Hate mail
Hate mail is a form of harassment, usually consisting of invective and potentially intimidating or threatening comments towards the recipient...
for their treatment of topics that some deem controversial.
Online media
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. The website also offers G24, a free printable A4 format PDF 24-hour newspaper containing the top stories and, for a monthly subscription, the complete newspaper in PDF format. it is the second most popular UK newspaper website, behind the Daily MailDaily Mail
The Daily Mail is a British daily middle-market tabloid newspaper owned by the Daily Mail and General Trust. First published in 1896 by Lord Northcliffe, it is the United Kingdom's second biggest-selling daily newspaper after The Sun. Its sister paper The Mail on Sunday was launched in 1982...
s Mail Online
Mail Online
Mail Online is the name of the website of the Daily Mail, a newspaper in the United Kingdom. It contains almost all the stories from the Daily Mail and includes a large archive of main stories...
, with 39 million unique browsers per month to the Mail's 53.9m, and in April 2011 MediaWeek reported that it is the fifth most popular newspaper site in the world.
The Comment is Free section features columns by the paper's journalists and regular commentators, as well as articles from guest writers, with readers comments and responses below. The section includes all the opinion pieces published in the paper itself, as well as many others that only appear online.
The Guardian has taken what they call a very 'open' stance in delivering news, and have launched an open platform for their content. This allows external developers to easily use Guardian content in external applications, and even to feed third-party content back into the Guardian network.
The Guardian also had a number of talkboards that were noted for their mix of political discussion and whimsy, until they were closed on Friday 25 February 2011. 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 pointed to The Guardians talkboards.
The paper has also launched a dating website, Soulmates, and is experimenting with new media, having previously offered a free twelve part weekly podcast
Podcast
A podcast is a series of digital media files that are released episodically and often downloaded through web syndication...
series by Ricky Gervais
Ricky Gervais
Ricky Dene Gervais is an English comedian, actor, director, radio presenter, producer, musician, and writer.Gervais achieved mainstream fame with his television series The Office and the subsequent series Extras, both of which he co-wrote and co-directed with friend and frequent collaborator...
. In January 2006 Gervais' show topped the iTunes
ITunes
iTunes is a media player computer program, used for playing, downloading, and organizing digital music and video files on desktop computers. It can also manage contents on iPod, iPhone, iPod Touch and iPad....
podcast chart having been downloaded by two million listeners worldwide, and is scheduled to be listed in the 2007 Guinness Book of Records as the most downloaded podcast.
GuardianFilms
In 2003, The Guardian started the film production company GuardianFilms, headed by journalist Maggie O'KaneMaggie O'Kane
Maggie O'Kane is an award-winning Irish journalist and documentary film maker. She has been most associated with The Guardian newspaper where she was a foreign correspondent who filed graphic stories from Sarajevo while it was under siege between 1992 and 1996. She also contributed to the BBC from...
. Much of the company's output is documentary made for television– and it has included Salam Pax
Salam Pax
Salam Pax is the pseudonym of Salam Abdulmunem , aka Salam al-Janabi , under which he became the "most famous blogger in the world" during and after the 2003 invasion of Iraq. Along with a massive readership, his site "Where is Raed?" received notable media attention. The pseudonym consists of the...
's Baghdad Blogger for BBC Two
BBC Two
BBC Two is the second television channel operated by the British Broadcasting Corporation in the United Kingdom. It covers a wide range of subject matter, but tending towards more 'highbrow' programmes than the more mainstream and popular BBC One. Like the BBC's other domestic TV and radio...
's daily flagship Newsnight
Newsnight
Newsnight is a BBC Television current affairs programme noted for its in-depth analysis and often robust cross-examination of senior politicians. Jeremy Paxman has been its main presenter for over two decades....
, some of which have been shown in compilations by CNN
CNN
Cable News Network is a U.S. cable news channel founded in 1980 by Ted Turner. Upon its launch, CNN was the first channel to provide 24-hour television news coverage, and the first all-news television channel in the United States...
International, Sex On The Streets and Spiked, both made for the UK's Channel 4
Channel 4
Channel 4 is a British public-service television broadcaster which began working on 2 November 1982. Although largely commercially self-funded, it is ultimately publicly owned; originally a subsidiary of the Independent Broadcasting Authority , the station is now owned and operated by the Channel...
television.
"GuardianFilms was born in a sleeping bag in the Burmese rainforest
Rainforest
Rainforests are forests characterized by high rainfall, with definitions based on a minimum normal annual rainfall of 1750-2000 mm...
," wrote O'Kane in 2003. "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
BBC
The British Broadcasting Corporation is a British public service broadcaster. Its headquarters is at Broadcasting House in the City of Westminster, London. It is the largest broadcaster in the world, with about 23,000 staff...
'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
Thailand
Thailand , officially the Kingdom of Thailand , formerly known as Siam , is a country located at the centre of the Indochina peninsula and Southeast Asia. It is bordered to the north by Burma and Laos, to the east by Laos and Cambodia, to the south by the Gulf of Thailand and Malaysia, and to the...
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."
According to GuardianFilms's own webpage, its international work has focused on training talented local journalists based on the premise that "the era of a traditional London or Washington based foreign correspondent or fireman is coming to an end and the world urgently needs a more searching challenging journalism brought to us by people who speak the language and can secure access far beyond the "Green Zone Journalist" limits of the traditional correspondent." It says it is especially focused on reporting the Muslim world in a more challenging manner, and has trained a number of journalists in Iraq, Afghanistan and Zimbabwe.
GuardianFilms has received several broadcasting awards. In addition to two Amnesty International Media Awards in 2004 and 2005, "The Baghdad Blogger: Salam Pax" won a Royal Television Society Award in 2005. "Baghdad: A Doctor's Story" won an Emmy Award for Best International Current Affairs film in 2007. In 2008 "Inside the Surge" won the Royal Television Society award for best international news film – the first time a newspaper has won such an award. In 2008 The Guardian's Katine website was awarded for its outstanding new media output at the One World Media awards. In 2008 GuardianFilms' undercover video report revealing vote rigging by Robert Mugabe's Zanu PF party during the 2007 Zimbabwe election won best news programme of the year at the Broadcast Awards.
Nickname
The nickname The Grauniad for the paper originated with the satirical magazine Private Eye. This anagramAnagram
An anagram is a type of word play, the result of rearranging the letters of a word or phrase to produce a new word or phrase, using all the original letters exactly once; e.g., orchestra = carthorse, A decimal point = I'm a dot in place, Tom Marvolo Riddle = I am Lord Voldemort. Someone who...
played on The Guardian's reputation for frequent typographical error
Typographical error
A typographical error is a mistake made in, originally, the manual type-setting of printed material, or more recently, the typing process. The term includes errors due to mechanical failure or slips of the hand or finger, but usually excludes errors of ignorance, such as spelling errors...
s, such as misspelling its own name as The . The domain grauniad.co.uk is registered to the paper and redirects to their website.
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 instead of auction. There are fewer typographical errors in the paper since the end of hot-metal typesetting
Hot metal typesetting
In printing and typography, hot metal typesetting refers to 19th-century technologies for typesetting text in letterpress printing. This method injects molten type metal into a mold that has the shape of one or more glyphs...
. One of their writers, Keith Devlin
Keith Devlin
Keith J. Devlin is a British mathematician and popular science writer. He has lived in the USA since 1987 and has dual American-British citizenship.- Biography :...
, suggested that the high number of observed misprints was due more to the quality of the readership than their greater frequency.
April Fool content
The Guardian, along with other British news outlets, has a tradition of spoofParody
A parody , in current usage, is an imitative work created to mock, comment on, or trivialise an original work, its subject, author, style, or some other target, by means of humorous, satiric or ironic imitation...
articles on April Fool's Day, sometimes contributed by regular advertisers such as BMW
BMW
Bayerische Motoren Werke AG is a German automobile, motorcycle and engine manufacturing company founded in 1916. It also owns and produces the Mini marque, and is the parent company of Rolls-Royce Motor Cars. BMW produces motorcycles under BMW Motorrad and Husqvarna brands...
. The most elaborate of these was a travel supplement on San Serriffe
San Serriffe
San Serriffe is a fictional island nation created for April Fools' Day, 1977, by Britain's Guardian newspaper. An elaborate description of the nation, using puns and plays on words relating to typography , was reported as legitimate news, apparently fooling many readers...
, whilst an article in The Guardian dated 1 April 2006 written by one Olaf Priol suggested that Chris Martin
Chris Martin
Christopher Anthony John "Chris" Martin is an English song-writer, who is the lead vocalist, pianist and rhythm guitarist of the band Coldplay. He is married to actress Gwyneth Paltrow.-Early life:...
of Coldplay
Coldplay
Coldplay are a British alternative rock band formed in 1996 by lead vocalist Chris Martin and lead guitarist Jonny Buckland at University College London. After they formed Pectoralz, Guy Berryman joined the group as a bassist and they changed their name to Starfish. Will Champion joined as a...
would be supporting the Conservatives
Conservative Party (UK)
The Conservative Party, formally the Conservative and Unionist Party, is a centre-right political party in the United Kingdom that adheres to the philosophies of conservatism and British unionism. It is the largest political party in the UK, and is currently the largest single party in the House...
at the next general election and had already written a campaign song for them. Olaf Priol is an anagram
Anagram
An anagram is a type of word play, the result of rearranging the letters of a word or phrase to produce a new word or phrase, using all the original letters exactly once; e.g., orchestra = carthorse, A decimal point = I'm a dot in place, Tom Marvolo Riddle = I am Lord Voldemort. Someone who...
of April Fool.
Received
The Guardian has been awarded the National Newspaper of the Year in 1999, 2006 and 2011 by the British Press AwardsBritish Press Awards
The British Press Awards is an annual ceremony that celebrates the best of British journalism. Established in the 1970s, honours are voted on by a panel of journalists and newspaper executives...
, and "Front Page of the Year" in 2002 ("A declaration of war", 12 September 2001). It was also co-winner of the World's Best-designed Newspaper as awarded by the Society for News Design
Society for News Design
The Society for News Design is an international organization for professionals working in the news sector of the media industry, specifically those involved with graphic design, illustration, web design and infographics....
(2006).
Guardian journalists have won a range of British Press Awards, including
- "Reporter of the Year" (Nick DaviesNick DaviesNick Davies is a British investigative journalist, writer and documentary maker.Davies has written extensively as a freelancer, as well as for The Guardian and The Observer, and been named Reporter of the Year Journalist of the Year and Feature Writer of the Year at the British Press Awards...
, 2000; Paul LewisPaul Lewis (journalist)Paul Lewis is a British journalist at The Guardian best known for his award-winning investigation of the Death of Ian Tomlinson at the 2009 G-20 summit protests. In August 2010 Lewis became head of the Guardians "multimedia special projects team" which aims to find "new angles on breaking news...
, 2010) - "Foreign Reporter of the Year" (James MeekJames MeekJames Meek was Minister of Cambuslang from 1774 until his death. He was Moderator of the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland in 1795, but is most remembered as the model Enlightenment cleric who wrote the entry for Cambuslang in the First Statistical Account of Scotland.-Biography :James...
, 2004; Ghaith Abdul-AhadGhaith Abdul-AhadGhaith Abdul-Ahad is an Iraqi journalist who began working after the U.S. invasion and has written for The Guardian and Washington Post and published photographs in the New York Times, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, The Guardian, The Times , and other media outlets...
, 2008) - "Columnist of the Year" (Polly ToynbeePolly ToynbeePolly Toynbee is a British journalist and writer, and has been a columnist for The Guardian newspaper since 1998. She is a social democrat and broadly supports the Labour Party, while urging it in many areas to be more left-wing...
, 2007; Charlie BrookerCharlie BrookerCharlton "Charlie" Brooker is a British journalist, comic writer and broadcaster. His style of humour is savage and profane, with surreal elements and a consistent satirical pessimism...
, 2009) - "Feature Writer of the Year" (Emma BrockesEmma BrockesEmma Brockes is a British author and journalist for The Guardian newspaper. She lives in New York.Brockes graduated in 1997 with a first from St Edmund Hall, Oxford University where she was editor of the student newspaper Cherwell and won the Philip Geddes prize for journalism...
, 2002; Tanya GoldTanya GoldTanya Gold is a British journalist. She has written for a variety of newspapers in the United Kingdom, including The Guardian, the Daily Mail, The Independent, The Daily Telegraph and the Evening Standard. In 2009 she was highly commended in the Feature Writer of the Year category at the British...
, 2010; Amelia Gentleman, 2011). - "Cartoonist of the Year" (Steve BellSteve Bell (cartoonist)Steve Bell is an English political cartoonist, whose work appears in The Guardian and other publications. He is known for his left-wing views and distinctive caricatures.-Early life:...
, 2003) - "Political Journalist of the Year" (Patrick WintourPatrick WintourPatrick Wintour is a British journalist, political editor of The Guardian. The son of the late Charles Vere Wintour by his marriage to Eleanor Trego Wintour , Wintour was educated at...
, 2007; Andrew Sparrow, 2011) - "Interviewer of the Year" (Decca Aitkenhead, 2009)
- "Sports Photographer of the Year" (Tom Jenkins, 2004, 2006, 2007)
Other awards include:
- Bevins PrizeBevins PrizeThe Bevins Prize is a British award recognising outstanding investigative journalism. Established in 2008, it is named for the journalist Anthony Bevins and awarded by the Bevins Trust. Also known as the "Rat up a Drainpipe Award", the Prize's trophy is modelled after a drain pipe.-Winners:* 2008:...
for investigative journalism (Paul LewisPaul Lewis (journalist)Paul Lewis is a British journalist at The Guardian best known for his award-winning investigation of the Death of Ian Tomlinson at the 2009 G-20 summit protests. In August 2010 Lewis became head of the Guardians "multimedia special projects team" which aims to find "new angles on breaking news...
, 2010) - Martha Gellhorn Prize for JournalismMartha Gellhorn Prize for JournalismThe Martha Gellhorn Prize for Journalism, named for the renowned war correspondent, Martha Gellhorn, was established in 1999 by the Martha Gellhorn Trust. It is founded on the following principles:...
(Nick DaviesNick DaviesNick Davies is a British investigative journalist, writer and documentary maker.Davies has written extensively as a freelancer, as well as for The Guardian and The Observer, and been named Reporter of the Year Journalist of the Year and Feature Writer of the Year at the British Press Awards...
, 1999; Chris McGrealChris McGrealChris McGreal is a reporter for The Guardian who frequently covers Middle East issues.-Career:McGreal started in journalism with the BBC, covering Mexico and Central America. In 1985 he moved to The Independent, and then to The Guardian in 1992...
, 2003; Ghaith Abdul-AhadGhaith Abdul-AhadGhaith Abdul-Ahad is an Iraqi journalist who began working after the U.S. invasion and has written for The Guardian and Washington Post and published photographs in the New York Times, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, The Guardian, The Times , and other media outlets...
, 2005; Ian Cobain, 2009)
The guardian.co.uk
Guardian.co.uk
guardian.co.uk, formerly known as Guardian Unlimited, is a British website owned by the Guardian Media Group. Georgina Henry is the editor...
website won the Best Newspaper category three years running in 2005, 2006 and 2007 Webby Awards
Webby Awards
A Webby Award is an international award presented annually by The International Academy of Digital Arts and Sciences for excellence on the Internet with categories in websites, interactive advertising, online film and video, and mobile....
, beating (in 2005) the New York Times, the Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal
The Wall Street Journal
The Wall Street Journal is an American English-language international daily newspaper. It is published in New York City by Dow Jones & Company, a division of News Corporation, along with the Asian and European editions of the Journal....
and Variety
Variety (magazine)
Variety is an American weekly entertainment-trade magazine founded in New York City, New York, in 1905 by Sime Silverman. With the rise of the importance of the motion-picture industry, Daily Variety, a daily edition based in Los Angeles, California, was founded by Silverman in 1933. In 1998, the...
. It has been the winner for six years in a row of the British Press Awards
British Press Awards
The British Press Awards is an annual ceremony that celebrates the best of British journalism. Established in the 1970s, honours are voted on by a panel of journalists and newspaper executives...
for Best Electronic Daily Newspaper. The site won an Eppy
Editor & Publisher
Editor & Publisher is a monthly magazine covering the North American newspaper industry. It is based in New York City. E&P calls itself "America's Oldest Journal Covering the Newspaper Industry" and describes itself on its website as "the authoritative journal covering all aspects of the North...
award from the US-based magazine Editor & Publisher
Editor & Publisher
Editor & Publisher is a monthly magazine covering the North American newspaper industry. It is based in New York City. E&P calls itself "America's Oldest Journal Covering the Newspaper Industry" and describes itself on its website as "the authoritative journal covering all aspects of the North...
in 2000 for the best-designed newspaper online service. 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
University of Maryland, College Park
The University of Maryland, College Park is a top-ranked public research university located in the city of College Park in Prince George's County, Maryland, just outside Washington, D.C...
. 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 AwardGuardian First Book Award
Guardian First Book Award, issued before 1999 as Guardian Fiction Prize or Guardian Fiction Award, is awarded to new writing in fiction and non-fiction.-History:...
, 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
Hay Festival
The Hay Festival of Literature & Arts is an annual literature festival held in Hay-on-Wye, Powys, Wales for ten days from May to June. Devised by Norman and Peter Florence in 1988, the festival was described by Bill Clinton in 2001 as "The Woodstock of the mind"...
in Hay-on-Wye
Hay-on-Wye
Hay-on-Wye , often described as "the town of books", is a small market town and community in Powys, Wales.-Location:The town lies on the east bank of the River Wye and is within the Brecon Beacons National Park, just north of the Black Mountains...
.
The annual Guardian Student Media Awards
Guardian Student Media Awards
The Guardian Student Media Awards are an annual UK-wide student journalism competition run by The Guardian newspaper.-History:Since 1947, The National Union of Students have run a student journalism competition of some kind. In 1978, The Guardian joined forces with the NUS for the inaugural...
, founded in 1999, recognise excellence in journalism and design of British university and college student newspapers, magazines and websites.
In memory of Paul Foot
Paul Foot
Paul Mackintosh Foot was a British investigative journalist, political campaigner, author, and long-time member of the Socialist Workers Party...
, who died in 2004, The Guardian and Private Eye jointly set up the "Paul Foot Award
Paul Foot Award
The Paul Foot Award is an award given for investigative or campaigning journalism, set up by The Guardian and Private Eye in memory of the journalist Paul Foot, who died in 2004....
", with an annual £10,000 prize fund, for investigative or campaigning journalism.
Editors
- John Edward TaylorJohn Edward TaylorJohn Edward Taylor was the founder of the Manchester Guardian newspaper, later to become The Guardian.-Biography:...
(1821–1844) - Jeremiah GarnettJeremiah GarnettJeremiah Garnett was an English journalist, active in the politics of Lancashire and the founding of The Guardian.-Life:Jeremiah, younger brother of Richard Garnett and elder brother of Thomas Garnett , was born at Otley in Yorkshire, 2 October 1793...
(1844–1861) (jointly with Russell Scott Taylor in 1847–1848) - Edward TaylorJohn Edward TaylorJohn Edward Taylor was the founder of the Manchester Guardian newspaper, later to become The Guardian.-Biography:...
(1861–1872) - Charles Prestwich Scott (1872–1929)
- Ted ScottEdward Taylor ScottEdward Taylor "Ted" Scott was a British journalist, who was editor and briefly co-owner of the Manchester Guardian, and the younger son of its legendary editor-owner C. P...
(1929–1932) - William Percival CrozierWilliam Percival CrozierWilliam Percival Crozier was a British journalist and editor of the Manchester Guardian from 1932, when he succeeded Ted Scott, who had died in a sailing accident, until his death in 1944....
(1932–1944) - Alfred Powell Wadsworth (1944–1956)
- Alastair HetheringtonAlastair HetheringtonHector Alastair Hetherington was a British journalist, newspaper editor and academic. For nearly twenty years he was the editor of The Guardian, and is regarded as one of the leading editors of the second half of the twentieth century.-Early years:Hetherington was the son of Sir Hector...
(1956–1975) - Peter PrestonPeter PrestonPeter John Preston is a British journalist and author. He was educated at Loughborough Grammar School and St John's College, Oxford, where he edited the student paper Cherwell...
(1975–1995) - Alan RusbridgerAlan RusbridgerAlan Charles Rusbridger is the editor of the British newspaper The Guardian. He has also been a reporter and a columnist.-Early life:...
(1995–present)
Notable regular contributors (past and present)
Columnists
|
Victor Gollancz Sir Victor Gollancz was a British publisher, socialist, and humanitarian.-Early life:Born in Maida Vale, London, he was the son of a wholesale jeweller and nephew of Rabbi Professor Sir Hermann Gollancz and Professor Sir Israel Gollancz; after being educated at St Paul's School, London and taking... Richard Gott Richard Willoughby Gott is a British journalist and historian, who has written extensively on Latin America... Roy Greenslade Roy Greenslade is Professor of Journalism at City University London and has been a media commentator since 1992, most notably for The Guardian.... Germaine Greer Germaine Greer is an Australian writer, academic, journalist and scholar of early modern English literature, widely regarded as one of the most significant feminist voices of the later 20th century.... Harry Griffin Arthur Harry Griffin , usually known in print as A. Harry Griffin, was a British journalist and mountaineer... Ben Hammersley Ben Hammersley is a British internet technologist, journalist, author, broadcaster, and diplomat, currently based in London, England.... Johann Hari Johann Hari is an award winning British journalist who has been a columnist at The Independent, the The Huffington Post, and contributed to several other publications. In 2011, Hari was accused of plagiarism; he subsequently was suspended from The Independent and surrendered his 2008 Orwell Prize... Clifford Harper Clifford Harper is an illustrator and militant anarchist. He was born in Chiswick, West London on the 13th of July 1949. His father was a postman and his mother a cook. Expelled from school at 13 and placed on 2 years probation at 14, he then worked in a series of "menial jobs" before 'turning on,... Patrick Haseldine Patrick John Haseldine is a former British diplomat who was dismissed in August 1989 by the then Foreign Secretary, John Major, for "various disciplinary offences constituting breaches of the Diplomatic Service Regulations"... Max Hastings Sir Max Hugh Macdonald Hastings, FRSL is a British journalist, editor, historian and author. He is the son of Macdonald Hastings, the noted British journalist and war correspondent and Anne Scott-James, sometime editor of Harper's Bazaar.-Life and career:Hastings was educated at Charterhouse... Roy Hattersley Roy Sydney George Hattersley, Baron Hattersley is a British Labour politician, author and journalist from Sheffield. He served as Deputy Leader of the Labour Party from 1983 to 1992.-Early life:... Isabel Hilton Isabel Nancy Hilton OBE is a Scottish journalist and broadcaster based in London.-Biography:She was educated at Edinburgh University where she studied Chinese to post-graduate level... Tom Hodgkinson Tom Hodgkinson is a British writer and the editor of The Idler, which he established in 1993 with his friend Gavin Pretor-Pinney. His philosophy, in his published books and articles, is of a relaxed approach to life, enjoying it as it comes rather than toiling for an imagined better future... Will Hodgkinson Will Hodgkinson is a journalist and author from London, England. He writes for The Guardian newspaper, 'The Times newspaper, 'Mojo magazine, and presents the Sky Arts TV show Songbook, in which he interviews contemporary songwriters.... Simon Hoggart Simon David Hoggart is an English journalist and broadcaster. He writes on politics for The Guardian, and on wine for The Spectator. Until 2006 he presented The News Quiz on Radio 4... Stewart Holden Stewart Holden is a competitive Scrabble player from the United Kingdom. Holden is originally from Oxford but has resided in Belfast, Northern Ireland since 2008... Clare Hollingworth Clare Hollingworth is a British journalist and author who is noted as the first war correspondent to report the outbreak of World War II.-Career:... Will Hutton William Nicolas Hutton is an English writer, weekly columnist and former editor-in-chief for The Observer. He is currently Principal of Hertford College, Oxford and Chair of the Big Innovation Centre , an initiative from The Work Foundation , having been Chief Executive of The Work Foundation from... Marina Hyde Marina Hyde is an English columnist who writes articles on topics such as current affairs, politics, celebrity and sport for The Guardian newspaper... C. L. R. James Cyril Lionel Robert James , who sometimes wrote under the pen-name J.R. Johnson, was an Afro-Trinidadian historian, journalist, socialist theorist and essayist. His works are influential in various theoretical, social, and historiographical contexts... Erwin James Erwin James is the pseudonym for convicted murderer and Guardian journalist Erwin James Monahan. James was released in August 2004 having served 20 years of a life sentence. While in prison he wrote a regular column, and continues to write as well as do charity work after his release... (pseudonym) Waldemar Januszczak Waldemar Januszczak is a British art critic. Formerly the art critic of The Guardian, he now writes for The Sunday Times, and has twice won the Critic of the Year award... Simon Jenkins Sir Simon David Jenkins is a British newspaper columnist and author, and since November 2008 has been chairman of the National Trust. He currently writes columns for both The Guardian and London's Evening Standard, and was previously a commentator for The Times, which he edited from 1990 to 1992... Alex Kapranos Alexander Paul Kapranos Huntley , commonly known as Alex Kapranos, is a United Kingdom-based musician who is the lead singer and the guitarist of the Glasgow band Franz Ferdinand.-Early life:... Saeed Kamali Dehghan Saeed Kamali Dehghan is an award-winning Iranian journalist who writes for The Guardian. He has been named as the 2010 Journalist of the Year in Britain at the Foreign Press Association. He currently writes for The Guardian from London but and has worked as an Iran correspondent for The Guardian... Maev Kennedy Maev Kennedy is a staff news writer for The Guardian and writes regularly for the Museums Journal. At the Guardian she has edited the diary column and also been the arts and heritage correspondent, and also writes on archaeology.... Naomi Klein Naomi Klein is a Canadian author and social activist known for her political analyses and criticism of corporate globalization.-Family:... Arthur Koestler Arthur Koestler CBE was a Hungarian author and journalist. Koestler was born in Budapest and, apart from his early school years, was educated in Austria... Aleks Krotoski Aleksandra K. "Aleks" Krotoski is an American broadcaster and journalist, currently based in the UK, who writes about technology and interactivity. She presents The Guardian podcast Tech Weekly and contributes to guardian.co.uk... David Leigh David Leigh is a British journalist and author, currently investigations executive editor of The Guardian.-Early life:Leigh was born in 1946 and educated at Nottingham High School and King's College, Cambridge, receiving a research degree from Cambridge in 1968.-Career:Leigh has been a prominent... Rod Liddle Roderick E. L. Liddle is an English print, radio, and television journalist.He is an associate editor of The Spectator, and former editor of BBC Radio 4's Today programme, he is the author of Too Beautiful for You , Love Will Destroy Everything , and co-author of The Best of Liddle Britain... Sue Limb Sue Limb is a British writer and broadcaster. She studied Elizabethan lyric poetry at Cambridge and then trained in education. She lives on an organic farm near Nailsworth, Gloucestershire.... (as Dulcie Domum) Maureen Lipman Maureen Diane Lipman CBE is a British film, theatre and television actress, columnist and comedienne.-Early life:Lipman was born in Hull in the East Riding of Yorkshire, England, the daughter of Maurice Julius Lipman and Zelma Pearlman. Her father was a tailor; he used to have a shop between the... Derek Malcolm Derek Malcolm is a British film critic and historian.Malcolm was educated at Eton College and Oxford University. He worked for several decades as a film critic for The Guardian, having previously been an amateur jockey and the paper's first horse racing correspondent. In 1977, he was a member of... Johnjoe McFadden Johnjoe McFadden is an Irish / British scientist, academic and writer. He is Professor of Molecular Genetics at the University of Surrey, United Kingdom.-Life:He was born in Donegal, Ireland but raised in the UK... Dan McDougall Dan McDougall is a Scots foreign correspondent. A former New Delhi-based South Asia Correspondent for The Observer Newspaper he has filed reportage from over 50 countries including India, China, Pakistan, Afghanistan, The Democratic Republic of the Congo, The Lebanon and the Palestinian territories... Neil McIntosh Neil McIntosh is a British journalist working for the Wall Street Journal, where he is Editor of Europe.WSJ.com. The site launched on 9 February 2009... Gareth McLean Gareth McLean is a Scottish journalist who writes for The Guardian newspaper and on Soap operas for the Radio Times magazine.McLean graduated with an MA in English from the University of Aberdeen, working at The Scotsman newspaper as a Feature Writer from 1997 until he began writing as a TV Critic... Anna Minton Anna Minton is a British writer and journalist. Born 19 April 1970, educated at St.Paul's Girls' School, London and Queen's College Oxford. Minton has worked as a foreign correspondent, business reporter and social affairs writer and has won a number of national journalism awards... George Monbiot George Joshua Richard Monbiot is an English writer, known for his environmental and political activism. He lives in Machynlleth, Wales, writes a weekly column for The Guardian, and is the author of a number of books, including Captive State: The Corporate Takeover of Britain and Bring on the... Malcolm Muggeridge Thomas Malcolm Muggeridge was an English journalist, author, media personality, and satirist. During World War II, he was a soldier and a spy... |
James Naughtie James Naughtie is a British radio presenter and radio news presenter for the BBC. Since 1994 he has been one of the main presenters of Radio 4's Today programme.- Biography :... Richard Norton-Taylor Richard Norton-Taylor is a British editor, journalist and playwright.He is a security-affairs editor of the British newspaper The Guardian.-Early life and education:... Maggie O'Kane Maggie O'Kane is an award-winning Irish journalist and documentary film maker. She has been most associated with The Guardian newspaper where she was a foreign correspondent who filed graphic stories from Sarajevo while it was under siege between 1992 and 1996. She also contributed to the BBC from... Susie Orbach Susie Orbach is a psychotherapist, psychoanalyst, writer, and social critic from London, UK.-Background:Orbach was born in London, in 1946, and was brought up in Chalk Farm, north London, the child of Jewish parents, British MP Maurice Orbach and an American mother... Greg Palast Gregory Allyn Palast is a New York Times-bestselling author and a freelance journalist for the British Broadcasting Corporation as well as the British newspaper The Observer. His work frequently focuses on corporate malfeasance but has also been known to work with labor unions and consumer... David Pallister David Pallister is a British investigative journalist. He worked on The Guardian for many years, specializing in miscarriages of justice, the arms trade, corruption in international business and British and international politics, terrorism and terrorist financing , mercenaries, race relations and... Michael Parkinson Sir Michael Parkinson, CBE is an English broadcaster, journalist and author. He presented his interview programme, Parkinson, from 1971 to 1982 and from 1998 to 2007.- Early life :... Salam Pax Salam Pax is the pseudonym of Salam Abdulmunem , aka Salam al-Janabi , under which he became the "most famous blogger in the world" during and after the 2003 invasion of Iraq. Along with a massive readership, his site "Where is Raed?" received notable media attention. The pseudonym consists of the... ' Jim Perrin Jim Perrin is an English rock climber and travel writer.Born in Manchester, Perrin has lived in Wales since the age of 17. Before turning to writing, he worked in Cwm Pennant as a shepherd. As a writer, he has made regular contributions to a number of newspapers and climbing magazines... Melanie Phillips Melanie Phillips is a British journalist and author. She began her career on the left of the political spectrum, writing for such publications as The Guardian and New Statesman. In the 1990s she moved to the right, and she now writes for the Daily Mail newspaper, covering political and social... John Pilger John Richard Pilger is an Australian journalist and documentary maker, based in London. He has twice won Britain's Journalist of the Year Award, and his documentaries have received academy awards in Britain and the US.... Anna Politkovskaya Anna Stepanovna Politkovskaya was a Russian journalist, author, and human rights activist known for her opposition to the Chechen conflict and then-President of Russia Vladimir Putin... Peter Preston Peter John Preston is a British journalist and author. He was educated at Loughborough Grammar School and St John's College, Oxford, where he edited the student paper Cherwell... Adam Raphael Adam Eliot Geoffrey Raphael is an award-winning English journalist and author. In the British Press Awards of 1973, he was named Journalist of the Year for his work on labour conditions in South Africa, and he has also been a presenter and editor of BBC Television's Newsnight. Since 2004, he has... Arthur Ransome Arthur Michell Ransome was an English author and journalist, best known for writing the Swallows and Amazons series of children's books. These tell of school-holiday adventures of children, mostly in the Lake District and the Norfolk Broads. Many of the books involve sailing; other common subjects... Andrew Rawnsley Andrew Nicholas James Rawnsley is a British political journalist, notably for The Observer, and broadcaster.-Early life:... Brian Redhead Brian Leonard Redhead was a British author, journalist and broadcaster. He was probably best known as a co-presenter of the Today programme on BBC Radio 4 which he worked on from 1975 until 1993, shortly before his death... James H Reeve James Hengist Reeve is a cult UK broadcaster, journalist, raconteur and radio phone-in host based in the Manchester area. James has hosted shows on Piccadilly Radio, BBC GMR , BBC Radio Five Live, The New Hallam FM, talkSPORT, TeamTalk 252 stations and, up until July 2006, presented the late night... Gillian Reynolds Gillian Reynolds MBE, née Morton is a British radio critic, journalist and broadcaster. The daughter of market traders in Liverpool, she was educated at St Anne's College, Oxford University.... Jon Ronson Jon Ronson is a Welsh journalist, documentary filmmaker, radio presenter and nonfiction author, whose works include The Men Who Stare At Goats. His journalism and columns have appeared in British publications including The Guardian newspaper, City Life and Time Out magazine... Mike Selvey Mike Selvey is an English former Test and county cricketer, and now a cricket writer and commentator. Selvey played in three Tests for England between 1976 and 1977... Norman Shrapnel Norman Shrapnel , was an English journalist, author, and parliamentary correspondent.Shrapnel was born in Grimsby, Lincolnshire, and was educated at The King's School, Grantham. In 1947, after war service in the RAF, he joined the Manchester Guardian as reporter, book reviewer, and theatre critic... Frank Sidebottom Christopher Mark Sievey was an English musician and comedian known for fronting the band The Freshies in the late 1970s and early 1980s and for his comic persona Frank Sidebottom from 1984 onwards.... Michael Simkins Michael Simkins is an English actor.-Life and career:Simkins was born in Brighton, Sussex. He attended Brighton, Hove and Sussex Grammar School and while still at school performed works by Gilbert and Sullivan in a group called the Wandering Minstrels, which he co-founded in Brighton in the... Howard Spring Howard Spring was a Welsh author.He began his writing career as a journalist, but from 1934 produced a series of best-selling novels, the most successful of which was Fame is the Spur , which has been both a major film, starring Michael Redgrave, and a BBC television series , starring Tim... Jean Stead Jean Stead , is a reporter, national news editor for The Guardian, and labour historian.- Biography :Jean Stead was trained as a reporter on the Yorkshire Post, working as a reporter for 10 years in Leeds and London... David Steel David Martin Scott Steel, Baron Steel of Aikwood, KT, KBE, PC is a British Liberal Democrat politician who served as the Leader of the Liberal Party from 1976 until its merger with the Social Democratic Party in 1988 to form the Liberal Democrats... Jonathan Steele Jonathan Steele is a British journalist, author of several books on international affairs.Jonathan Steele was educated at King's College, Cambridge and Yale University . He has reported on Afghanistan, Russia, Iraq, and other countries. He was Washington Bureau Chief, Moscow Bureau Chief, and... Mary Stott Mary Stott was a British feminist and journalist. Stott was a journalist and columnist on the "Women's Page" of The Guardian.... R. H. Tawney Richard Henry Tawney was an English economic historian, social critic, Christian socialist, and an important proponent of adult education.... A. J. P. Taylor Alan John Percivale Taylor, FBA was a British historian of the 20th century and renowned academic who became well known to millions through his popular television lectures.-Early life:... Arnold Toynbee Arnold Toynbee was a British economic historian also noted for his social commitment and desire to improve the living conditions of the working classes.-Biography:... Polly Toynbee Polly Toynbee is a British journalist and writer, and has been a columnist for The Guardian newspaper since 1998. She is a social democrat and broadly supports the Labour Party, while urging it in many areas to be more left-wing... Jill Tweedie Jill Sheila Tweedie was an influential feminist, writer and broadcaster. She was educated at the independent Croydon High School in Croydon, South London. She is mainly remembered for her column in The Guardian on feminist issues , 'Letters from a faint-hearted feminist' and for her autobiography... F. A. Voigt Frederick Augustus Voigt , British journalist and author of German descent, most famous for his work with the Manchester Guardian and his opposition to dictatorship and totalitarianism on the European Continent.-Life:... Ed Vulliamy Ed Vulliamy is a British journalist and writer. His mother is the children's author and illustrator Shirley Hughes and his grandfather the Liverpool store owner Thomas Hughes. He was educated at the independent University College School and at Hertford College, Oxford before becoming a journalist... Hank Wangford Hank Wangford is a distinguished English country and western songwriter. Hank Wangford is the stage name of Dr. Samuel Hutt, . His music is notable for its humour and cheerful irony, and occasional excursions into biting political undercurrent.... Jonathan Watts Jonathan Watts is an award-winning journalist and the author of . He served as president of the from 2008-2009 and as vice president of the Foreign Correspondents' Club of Japan from 2001-2003... Brian Whitaker Brian Whitaker has been a journalist for the British newspaper The Guardian since 1987 and its Middle East editor from 2000-2007. He is currently an editor on the paper's "Comment Is Free". He also writes articles for Guardian Unlimited, the internet edition of the paper... Michael White (journalist) Michael White is an associate editor and former political editor of The Guardian.-Early life:White was raised in Wadebridge, Cornwall... Ann Widdecombe Ann Noreen Widdecombe is a former British Conservative Party politician and has been a novelist since 2000. She is a Privy Councillor and was the Member of Parliament for Maidstone from 1987 to 1997 and for Maidstone and The Weald from 1997 to 2010. She was a social conservative and a member of... Zoe Williams Zoe Williams is a British columnist and journalist.-Early life:She attended the independent Godolphin and Latymer School girls school and read Modern History at Lincoln College, Oxford.. Her parents separated in 1976 and formally divorced 20 years later.-Writing:Williams writes forThe Guardian and... Ted Wragg Edward Conrad Wragg known as Ted Wragg, was a British educationalist and academic known for his advocacy of the cause of education and opposition to political interference in the field... Hugo Young Hugo John Smelter Young was a British journalist and columnist and senior political commentator at The Guardian.-Early life and education:... Tony Zappone Tony Zappone , became at age 16 the youngest credentialed journalist to lend press coverage to a major national political convention. He was also the youngest contributor of evidence during the Warren Commission hearings into the slaying of President John F. Kennedy... Slavoj Žižek Slavoj Žižek is a Slovenian philosopher, critical theorist working in the traditions of Hegelianism, Marxism and Lacanian psychoanalysis. He has made contributions to political theory, film theory, and theoretical psychoanalysis.... Victor Zorza Victor Zorza was a Polish born journalist who contributed to the West's understanding of the Soviet Union, and was later known for pioneering work promoting palliative care in Russia.- Early life :... |
Cartoonists
Satirists
Experts
Photographers and Picture Editors
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The Guardian News & Media Archive
The Guardian and its sister newspaper The ObserverThe Observer
The Observer is a British newspaper, published on Sundays. In the same place on the political spectrum as its daily sister paper The Guardian, which acquired it in 1993, it takes a liberal or social democratic line on most issues. It is the world's oldest Sunday newspaper.-Origins:The first issue,...
opened The Newsroom, an archive and visitor centre in London in 2002. The centre preserved and promoted the histories and values of the newspapers through its archive, educational programmes and exhibitions. The Newsroom's activities all transferred to Kings Place in 2008. Now known as the Guardian News & Media Archive, the archive preserves and promotes the histories and values of the Guardian and the Observer newspapers by collecting and making accessible material that provides an accurate and comprehensive history of the papers. The archive holds official records of the Guardian and the Observer and also seeks to acquire material from people who have been associated with the papers. As well as corporate records the archive therefore holds correspondence, diaries, notebooks, original cartoons and photographs belonging to staff of the papers. This material may be consulted by members of the public by prior appointment. There is also an extensive Manchester Guardian archive at the University of Manchester
University of Manchester
The University of Manchester is a public research university located in Manchester, United Kingdom. It is a "red brick" university and a member of the Russell Group of research-intensive British universities and the N8 Group...
's John Rylands University Library
John Rylands University Library
The John Rylands University Library is the University of Manchester's library and information service. It was formed in July 1972 from the merger of the library of the Victoria University of Manchester with the John Rylands Library...
and there is a collaboration programme between the two archives. The British Library
British Library
The British Library is the national library of the United Kingdom, and is the world's largest library in terms of total number of items. The library is a major research library, holding over 150 million items from every country in the world, in virtually all known languages and in many formats,...
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
- Online newspaperOnline newspaperAn online newspaper, also known as a web newspaper, is a newspaper that exists on the World Wide Web or Internet, either separately or as an online version of a printed periodical....
- Broadcast journalismBroadcast journalismBroadcast journalism is the field of news and journals which are "broadcast", that is, published by electrical methods, instead of the older methods, such as printed newspapers and posters. Broadcast methods include radio , television , and, especially recently, the Internet generally...
- Internet radioInternet radioInternet radio is an audio service transmitted via the Internet...
- Internet televisionInternet televisionInternet television is the digital distribution of television content via the Internet...
- Death of Ian TomlinsonDeath of Ian TomlinsonIan Tomlinson was an English newspaper vendor who collapsed and died in the City of London after coming into contact with the police while on his way home from work during the 2009 G-20 summit protests. A first postmortem examination indicated he had suffered a heart attack and had died of natural...