Guardian named as world’s best-designed newspaper

Posted by Dominic Ponsford on 21 February 2006 at 13:04
Tags: Awards, Guardian

After becoming the first newspaper to be shortlisted in the Design Museum’s Designer of the Year prize, the Guardian has been named as the world’s best-designed newspaper by the Society for News Design.

The paper changed to Berliner format in September as part of a £100 million relaunch and re-pressing. But although it has won design plaudits it has only been a qualified success with readers. The current sales figure of 394,913 suggests the relaunch has only succeeded in pushing The Guardian back up to where it was sales-wise before coming under attack from the newly tabloid Independent and Times two years ago.

After Danish newspaper cartoon row - Hindus protest at religious paintings by Muslim artist

Posted by Dominic Ponsford on 17 February 2006 at 15:46
Tags: Newspapers

India has a population of 150 million Muslims but so far there have been no protests against the Danish Muhammed cartoons.

However, Hindu fundamentalists have taken exception to a series of paintings by Muslim artist MF Husain depicting naked images of the Hindu Gods.

Husain is more than 90, according to the Asia Times and last year his painting “The Last Supper” fetched some $2 million.

Indy boosts circulation by bribing readers?

Posted by Dominic Ponsford on 8 February 2006 at 14:36
Tags: Independent

Newspapers have tried everything to boost circulation from cutting prices to giving away free DVDs - so it only had to be a matter of time before they started literally paying readers to take their paper.

Buying a copy of The Week in WH Smith today for £2.15 I was handed a copy of the Independent and informed my purchase would now only cost me £1.85.

It will interesting to find out whether such “sales” count in the paper’s official paid for circulation or as one of the bulk give-away copies. I suspect the former.

“Embarrassing”, “humiliating” and “depressing” - reaction to Guardian’s Big Brother coverage

Posted by Dominic Ponsford on 6 February 2006 at 12:40
Tags: Nationals, Newspapers

The sound of draws dropping to the floor resounded around the Press Gazette offices last week when news emerged that according to The Guardian’s own research – it and sister paper the Observer wrote more about the latest series of Big Brother than any other national titles.

When Big Brother first came on the scene back in 2000 eyebrows were raised when red-tops put the antics of housemates on the front page and the series was largely ignored by the broadsheets.

Who would have predicted back then that in 2006 news values would have changed so much that The Guardian would not only lead the nation’s Big Brother coverage – but put a picture of the winning contestant on its front page.

Guardian readers editor Ian Mayes today revealed the reaction of some of the paper’s journalists to the Guardian’s decision to become THE Big Brother paper (a title previous held by The Star).

Mayes reports that “embarrassing”, “humiliating” and “depressing” are some of the responses he received after conducting an informal poll,..

But editor Alan Rusbridger is undaunted by the critics. He told Mayes: “Do you want us to report the world as it is, or the world as you would like it to be.”

Discuss.