Why the Guardian is going down the pan!

[ska invita]

Came across this - not fussed about the loss of a restaurant critic (sounds like a hard job) but interesting bit here is that the Observer might be getting sold to Tortoise Media

"
Rayner, who has reviewed restaurants for The Observer for 25 years, said last month that he had been shortlisted for columnist of the year in the BSME Awards “in the same month that The Guardian has told me they will terminate all our contracts if they can sell The Observer to Tortoise”.

Tortoise and Guardian News and Media have previously assured Observer staff that their jobs will be safe if the sale goes ahead."

Jay Rayner leaves Observer as departing editor slams planned sale

Observer restaurant critic Jay Rayner is moving to the FT amid his longtime newspaper's contentious sale process.

pressgazette.co.uk

by pure coincidence i just stumbled onto Tortoise Media on youtube < a bit like sunday supplement arts section

Tortoise

Welcome to Tortoise's YouTube channel. We are a different kind of newsroom – what’s different about us is slow news. We don’t do breaking news, but what’s driving the news. We don’t cover every story, but reveal a few. We take the time to see the fuller picture, to make sense of the forces...

www.youtube.com

WIki says
Tortoise Media is a British news website co-founded in 2018 by former BBC News director and The Times editor James Harding and former US ambassador to the United Kingdom Matthew Barzun.[1][2][3]

....which doesn't bode well for a change in Observers closeness to establishment politics, but hope springs eternal it might move the dial a bit

ETA supposedly called Tortoise because "part of the slow journalism movement"

 

[Cerv]

the Observer's loss is the FT's gain.

Rayner's column always a great read, even though I could count on one hand the number of places I've visited off the back of a review. too many outside my price range or outside of London.

 

[May Kasahara]

ska invita Private Eye has been covering the prospective sale to Tortoise, it's contentious to say the least. And sounds like it's being very badly handled on top of that.

 

[lazythursday]

ska invita Private Eye has been covering the prospective sale to Tortoise, it's contentious to say the least. And sounds like it's being very badly handled on top of that.

I hope the sale goes through, because the Observer is consistently further to the right than the Guardian, produces much of the content on the Guardian website that enrages me and I won't miss it at all when it becomes paywalled and driven (further) into the ground by whatever hedge fund wankers are behind Tortoise.

 

[May Kasahara]

I don't pay close enough attention to tell the difference tbh

 

[May Kasahara]

But I sympathise with every employee worried about their working future, especially where they're being kept in the dark/treated like they're of no consequence.

 

[ska invita]

I hope the sale goes through, because the Observer is consistently further to the right than the Guardian, produces much of the content on the Guardian website that enrages me and I won't miss it at all when it becomes paywalled and driven (further) into the ground by whatever hedge fund wankers are behind Tortoise.

Yes exactly that, and beyond that its also been a paper thats been the voice of the secret and military services and very much in the control of the Labour party right. Dont ask me for precise evidence for that but trust me - have seen it over the years

 

[lazythursday]

Yes exactly that, and beyond that its also been a paper thats been the voice of the secret and military services and very much in the control of the Labour party right. Dont ask me for precise evidence for that but trust me - have seen it over the years

Yes - certainly lots of evidence of this pre-Guardian ownership (the secret services connections).

I actually worked for the Guardian /Observer (in a non editorial role) for a year or so shortly after The Observer had been taken over. The whole place was stuffed full of private school establishment wankers to some extent but The Observer was on another level when it came to entitled patrician public school attitudes. The staff had been used to somewhat more salubrious working conditions under their previous ownership (dodgy conglomerate Lonrho / Tiny Rowland) and were deeply unhappy at being subsumed by the Guardian. Some of them were such arseholes. So it's funny to me that everyone behaves now like the two papers intrinsically belong together.

Of course will be an entirety different staff by now! (but probably still 50% privately educated)

 

[ska invita]

Yes - certainly lots of evidence of this pre-Guardian ownership (the secret services connections).

I actually worked for the Guardian /Observer (in a non editorial role) for a year or so shortly after The Observer had been taken over. The whole place was stuffed full of private school establishment wankers to some extent but The Observer was on another level when it came to entitled patrician public school attitudes. The staff had been used to somewhat more salubrious working conditions under their previous ownership (dodgy conglomerate Lonrho / Tiny Rowland) and were deeply unhappy at being subsumed by the Guardian. Some of them were such arseholes. So it's funny to me that everyone behaves now like the two papers intrinsically belong together.

Of course will be an entirety different staff by now! (but probably still 50% privately educated)

thats really interesting...when did it get subsumed into the Guardian?

 

[lazythursday]

thats really interesting...when did it get subsumed into the Guardian?

Mid 1993. I worked there in 1995 I think, but they'd only pretty recently moved into the old Guardian building in Farringdon Road, so the integration must have taken ages.

 

[Sue]

But I sympathise with every employee worried about their working future, especially where they're being kept in the dark/treated like they're of no consequence.

Tbh, that seems to be how it always goes with redundancies/takeovers etc.