The Guardian: now kind of irrelevant?

[CrotchBurn]

I mean with the online version. There used to be a time (only four or five years ago I'd say) where almost all articles were open for comment, and you could really get stuck into reading users' debates. You'd get some smart and informed posters discussing stuff in detail, it was really interesting.

Now it seems basically one out of every ten articles only ( if that) has comments enabled. There used to be a weekly thread where some posters even had their own little community. What's going on?! For a few years now it's felt like a proper ghost town.

To be honest the hounding of suzanne moore was the final nail in the coffin for me personally. But even putting that aside - you used to have these articles ("the UK is an evil place!", "why men should hate themselves!" Etc etc) but at least "below the line" was a laugh.

Anyone noticed the same?! Where else is good with an interesting collection of posters comments?

@BrightYellowDaffodil
hysterical, scaremongering and handwringing at a time when people's mental health was being shredded by a constant stream of negative press being fed to us wherever we looked

Absolutely. But that's okay, they made up for it by churning out articles on 'how the tories destroyed my mental health' written by their stable of 20-something navel gazers.

If you buy newspapers for journalism, what are you doing buying the Guardian? It's full of fluff, and that's been the case for about a decade
I’m amazed it still exists. Is so irrelevant -assumed had gone to same dinosaur cemetery as Jeremy Corbyn. I would have thought Twitter would have seen it off by now.

There's a few papers I don't like, but while other people do they aren't irrelevant

@Stellaris22

Where have I suggested the Guardian - or indeed any media outlet - should lie? But with the right to publish comes a responsibility, and that responsibility is not to make things worse. To compare the Times' reporting with the Guardian's is to compare chalk and cheese - the Times managed to report the same stories with the same gravity without the dramatics.

And yes, I will tell anyone to wind in their neck who thinks they can respond as an earlier poster did. You will note from my original post that I didn't reference the NHS or indeed any particular area of Covid reporting, so the poster above leapt to conclusions. Neither you nor the poster above knows what anyone else has experienced; it's not a Top Trumps of "My experience is worse than yours so my opinion matters more".

The Guardian moderation is shit. I once had a comment deleted for saying Brooklyn Beckham is no oil painting.

The only column I still read is the wonderfully astringent Marina Hyde.

The Guardian seems less and less about news and more a lifestyle magazine with a news section. There is still some great news reporting, but it's too often drowned out by the lifestyle crap. Not a great surprise, maybe, given that the current editor was never a journalist.

The final straw, for me, was the editor giving her boyfriend Adrian Chiles a column for him to witter on about absolutely fuck all: how I learned to enjoy ironing, what I think about Ranch dressing. It's like the boring priest in Father Ted - I'm waiting for his column on insulation or his favourite humming noise.

@CrotchBurn I’m not Owen’s mum. Grow up and don’t be pathetic. I haven’t insulted you but the whole tone of this - and a few other threads in a similar vein - is pathetic. Grown-up women behaving in such a needy, cliquey fashion.

I think a quarter of voters not finding it irrelevant is enough. Not everyone has to like it. Doesn't make it irrelevant.

I’m reading this thread with great interest. I’m another life-long Guardian reader, who feels increasingly that the content and some of the journalists are no longer for me. I love John Crace, Marina Hyde and most of all Hadley Freeman, but can’t abide Owen Jones - he’s almost enough of a reason on his own to stop subscribing.

But I do worry that virtually every other option is more right-wing, and the media is so dominated by the right-wing view, I feel I need to keep supporting the Guardian.

And I don’t want to put more money in Murdoch’s pocket 😒

@BrightYellowDaffodil how was it hysterical if you've never set foot on an ICU
or ward ? You've seen a few youtube clips and suddenly you know it all. Love the self righteous indignation > 1000 deaths a day, 30 odd thousand in hospital and it's scaremongering... you give yourself away as soon as you use the word 'handwringing', always the sign of an I'm alright jack.
Like hell you ever read the guardian. More like the DM

@BrightYellowDaffodil Correct me if I'm wrong but an opinion trumps actual experience ? Laughable.

Nancy Banks-Smith was great back in the day. Marina Hyde and Hadley Freeman are her worthy successors.

Hadley is very GC, which I like; Marina kinda stays in her lane: skewering the government and footballers

Nancy Banks-Smith was great back in the day.

Her Ambridge column was comedy gold. Did she leave or did they just stop publishing this?

@SomethingOnce

It’s a comic for woke kids and Americans

I used to love the Guardian.

Love this - sums it up perfectly.

I gave up with the guardian years ago - it’s too ‘right on’ for me, not enough to critical thought, just the left wing view for absolutely everything. Comments full of virtue signallers clambering all over one another to be the most woke. It was infuriating.

Long time Guardian reader and I’m totally baffled by its take on trans issues. If it goes on yes I will probably cancel my online sub.

I did like the US election coverage, that was brilliant.

I mostly buy it on a Saturday... I love Marina Hyde - she is beyond funny, Hadley Freeman, Ranganathan, Coco Khan ... I quite like Tim Dowling, the Crace bloke, though don’t read those two so often; I enjoy the dating feature, the food and recipes, book Review bit.

Who is Owen thingy? Will have to look him up.

Also- what actually happened to Suzanne Moore??

To give the G its dues, I do enjoy Harris and Monbiot.

Was going to say Gary Younge too, but I see he’s leaving/has recently left.

@BrightYellowDaffodil She's in her 90s I believe, therefore retired!

@justanotherremainer

Yabu. Comments are the worst Part about online news. I don’t want to know what some random thinks

Comments are often better than the articles.

@MoodyMarshall I never knew that! Don’t blame her for retiring then, but I do miss her columns.

NBS was so funny! I do like Hadley Freeman and Mariana Hyde too ... Also Lucy Mangan, where did she go?

@Ginfennelrosemary

Also- what actually happened to Suzanne Moore??

She was denounced at a staff meeting, Cultural Revolution style, except she was absent.