I was a bit sceptical when I read the Sunday Times piece on the Observer possibly closing down since it should be generally taken as read that hit pieces by papers on their rivals’ finances are basically attempts to nobble their advertisers. You don’t look good putting your product in another product in a death spiral. But now the Guardian Media Group have confirmed that something’s afoot.
Many will shrug, and not a few will be glad to see it go. All newspapers are seeing readers drift away, but over the last few years the Observer has managed the curious distinction of wilfully repelling sections of its readership. I can’t think of another paper that would publish a women’s magazine that produces incandescent rage in women or which hires a columnist like Nick Cohen, the major part of whose output consists of telling his readers how much he hates them. And then there’s the matter of destroying the integrity of their news coverage to promote government spin on the Iraq invasion. The world seems to be full of ex-Observer readers who have their favourite bete noire.
And then when you look at the rest of the paper in the light of the bit you actively hate, you find yourself with nothing much at all: just a whole bunch of ‘will this do’, phoned in by autopilot. OPverall you got the feeling that the editorial policy was: they’ll take any old crap we care to offer: they’re just Observer readers.
It’s curious that the Observer managed to retain its integrity as a paper when it was owned by an oil company and then Tiny Rowland, the unacceptable face of capitalism in person. Perhaps potentially hostile ownership conditions put the staff on their mettle. But under the supposedly friendly ownership of the Guardian, the paper seems to have succumbed to terminal cynicism.
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