The Guardian or theguardian?

Well Liza and the rest of the Cabaret team are having a rest today so here’s my promised bitch-list about the new Guardian. The main problems:

1 – Lucy Mangan is still there. 2 - "this week x has been watching/reading" at the bottom of each one-page G2 column: perhaps my least favourite newspaper innovation ever. 3 – Lucy Mangan is still there. 4 – the comment pages now feature simon jenkins and max hastings, and are about as left-wing as Mussolini (after 1922, history fans). 5 – alan rusbridger has admitted that the paper is moving to the centre ground and abandoning its radical, muckraking roots. 6 – I’ve lost the evidence like a big idiot, but I’m sure I’ve already spotted at least two more examples of big league product placement (one of them Sky Sports) within editorial content. This follows up the ignominious sop they made to Nike earlier this year (depicted right). 7 – however much they (and The Independent, and The Times) pretend otherwise, the fact of the matter is: smaller newspaper = less space = inferior coverage. 8 – I like music and film as much as the next shallow twentysomething, but to rebrand Friday Review as Music & Film and therefore drop theatre, dance, architecture, art and other less populist forms seems a leetle bit like, um, dumbing down. 9 – Lucy Mangan is still there.

What I like about the new Guardian – the daily sports supplement, the Doonesbury debacle, and the masthead.