Reports that the Nobserver might be closing

[policywonk]

here

Other papers are being less circumspect

I wouldn't miss it much (bought it yesterday after a long break and the only thing I really enjoyed in it was a tiny interview with Sally Phillips), but it would be a shame for one of the few left-of-centre stalwarts to disappear.

welllll it may seem that way policy but it is far harder getting stories that aren't news.

Not sure if that makes sense but generally a daily paper is reporting on news with the odd deeper story whereas the Sundays run the big interviews and still do deeper analysis and do a bit of news.

Problem is a lot of the teams have been cut back drastically meaning it's harder to cover as many bases as they used to. Sign of the times really. Also, there are all the supplements and magazines that have to be produced in the Sundays. But yes, a lot of groundwork for interviews and deeper stories - probably just doesn't appear that way to the reader I guess!

I want both - e-versions for convenience, impulse-buying and electronic storage, and print versions for baths, beds and beaches. (Although my Nobs got thoroughly blown around at West Wittering yesterday so actually, maybe the e-version would be better for British beaches.)

D'you reckon the reason for the crappy Woman magazine is advertising - that it means they can sell space for lucrative cosmetics adverts? ie they already know everyone hates it and no-one reads it but they think they have to stick with it anyway?

Oh Dh will be interested.

certainly the sector has been badly affected recently- DH worked in the area (in the distribution rather than production part) and was amde redundant in June along with a great many opthers across the UK.

I see what you mean, foxy.

One of my pet hates at the Observer is the central big-political-story-of-the-week article that always follows the same template:

'Last Thursday evening, Barbara Minister arrived in the Cabinet briefing room for a meeting with Faceless Mandarin. Earlier that day, a Big Political Story had begun to hatch, and now Minister was beginning to come to grips with the Big Catastrophe. Faceless Mandarin imparted some News of Some Kind, and Minister was faced with a stark choice: Do This or Do That. Her decision proved to be a turning point in this, the Big Political Story of the Week.

It had all seemed so much simpler three days earlier, when Timmy Researcher had approached Minister...'

etc.

Don't know if this makes sense to anyone but it really annoys me

I'm sure other newspapers aren't so rubbish though

You might well have it there, Kathy. One of the awful things about that mag (which of course I read from cover to cover, apart from the RIDICULOUS fashion spreads) is that agony-aunt-style column in which some very shiny woman recommends heart-stoppingly expensive cosmetics from high-end brands you've never heard of.

Sorry to hear about your DH peachy. Has he had any luck finding anything else?

oh I can't bear Women either. Having said that, there were no Metros at the station this morning and I was too late to buy a paper so I read the Obs Magazine from cover to cover and quite an interesting read it was too (loved the article about the safety deposit boxes!).

PW, he has a little self employed job anyway which gets us TCs so we're muddling by and he has a Uni offer of the course he always wanted to do but couldn't justify so I think, long term and with a bit of embarassing benefit scroungery he'll be in a far better place.

So not a disaster, a mere blip.

Unlike a lot of the others of course that he worked with, who won't have a natural backup to fall on, poor sods.

Really -- who could take Obs seriously after its stance on Iraq? Nail, coffin.

I've worked there. Not a fan of either Mulho or Alton (who is entirely obsessed with celebrity, and really took the paper into the nosedive). And yeah, I do feel hacked off that the paper I grew up reading and admiring has become, under their stewardship, so flimsy.

Glad to hear that Peachy.

at Policy's summary.

People I know on Sundays work just as hard - depending on the paper they may write just as many stories as well as setting up and doing longer pieces and exclusives (think my best friend's news desk is insecure, they want her to write up all the same stories in her specialist area as the dailies, as well as her own stuff for Sunday, even though she points out the story will be dead by then and the newsdesk will spike it on Sat).

Yes, from an accountant point of view it makes sense to have one lot of journalists producing a big lump of news and a big lump of features but that doesn't give you two distinct titles. You can't have the same mix and style of stories on a Sunday.

As soon as Guardian moves to seven days, the Telegraph will follow - they've been dying to follow while spending ££££££ to catch up with the Guardian online and with their daft video news (yeah, coz loads of people want to see interviews with reporter instead of just reading the damn story).

i spoke to Roger Alton a few times, dh dealt with him a lot. he was really amazingly dithery, i was surprised.

stopped buying Obs when they brought the monthly mags out, not as a major stand against the celeb stuff, just cos the paper was BORING.

foxinsocks - now that safe deposit story was a very good demonstration re how the Obs can do great stories. Was very entertaining.

Policywonk - what were the ideas re. funding and then disseminating (as in what form would resulting work be published) of investigative journalism at your round table discussion?

Re advertising - isn't the problem the disparateness of the internet? There are so many, and many small, spaces that can take advertising, that the revenues that can be raised from advertising have fallen? And also, again, the presence of Google - which is the indisputed, unchallengeable, first-stop for advertising?

I'm really interested in the whole question of advertising with regard to electronic media. Is there anyone who's involved in advertising who could come on this thread and tell us a bit more about current thinking here?

so if the BBC Licence costs about £9-10 a month how does the BBC make more money than SKY who charge a lot more a month and have advertising?

I too fear for the BBC under any government. It also doesn't help that some of the people running it are c*s.

I would miss the Observer too

I hate Observer Woman, too. I stopped buying the Observer when it became a one-track paper, banging on about carbon footprints in EVERY issue. So tedious and preachy, in a way that the Guardian isn't. The Guardian has a bit of a tongue-in-cheek vibe at time but the Obs seems to take itself too seriously, and it just doesn't offer value for money. Actually, I don't like any Sunday papers much. I buy the Sunday Times just because I like getting all the supplements, and I like the Style section, but it's not as good as the Saturday one.

The BBC has other revenue streams, such as BBC Worldwide - they sell programmes on to other broadcasters abroad, and they also make money fom merchandising and publishing.

I haven't bought the Nob for years. I even prefer the fecking ST now (good writing) even though it kills me to fund Voldemort.

Why can't news be organised like academic journals? General subscription, access to bundled products etc. Password account. I'm sure this has Already Been Addressed.

used to drive me infuckingsane when I had to log on to read the news (remember, they started off that way, the paper sites), especially when you can get it free on the bbc or in a paper I can pick up for nowt.

Feel how much lighter the papers are these days. They have far fewer pages to fill because of the lack of advertising.

The papers need to be totally accessible online otherwise no-one will even look at the site.

ST sales were up 5% last month. it's the only way the paper can survive now, attract the best writers, hope to catch reader drift adn watch as the market self-destructs.

thing about murdoch, he's a bastard etc, and the ST did just CUT freelance rates by ten per cent. buuuuuuut, they still pay well by comparison. the Nob hasn't paid tv journos for years, that wee telly supplement was done by students for nothing as long as six or seven years ago. tight bastards.

yeah but the pressure at his titles is obscene Aitch. And the pressure to err make stories work no matter what is errm rather high I believe.

I used to love The Observer. It was a great read. I still look forward to Mariella Frostrup's hard hitting advice column.

But it really has gone downhill over the last five years. I still buy it out of a sense of loyalty (weird) but I feel like it's just not that relevant to me anymore. I can't quite decide why. My mum is incensed every week by it.

Observer Woman - oh my god. What are they thinking? Such frothy crap and then quickly pop in an article about child rape in Liberia just in case anyone thinks we obsessed with fashion and make up.

Saturday's Guardian is still a great read.

true story, foxy. but at least he pays his staff, unlike the Nobber.

i am a raging socialist but these days if i buy a saturday its the times or torygraph

the latter being the better read