The Observer RIP (possibly)

Heavy losses cast doubt over future of The Observer

What am I going to read on Sunday now?

Hmm. Now why would News International want to indulge in such an extreme spin? In case anyone failed to notice, GMG did move to new, expensive offices last year.

Guardian's take on things I don't know anymore than you. Make of that what you will.

A lot of that reads like a lot of conjecture based on a fairly run-of-the-mill bet-hedging corporate statement. I suspect they're much more likely to start tarting it around to potential buyers.

who would buy it though? lebedev can't own every newspaper. but it might just be a strategy to get job cuts through by making people think there's a worse alternative.

the monthly mags have probably got to go. think they're supposed to make huge losses and the sport one is the only one that is any good. observer woman is shockingly bad and i can do without dr john briffa berating celebrities for eating pasta.

but what will become of Roasted?!!?!

I am staggered that we still haven't lost a single newspaper. I thought we'd be down at least one by Christmas 08.

Thanks, Roy Greenslade, you useless pillock: that was helpful.

Interesting one, this. But my gut feeling is there's no need to worry about the Observer for the forseeable future. "Extreme spin": I think Suzy's right about that, yes.

I'm still amazed at how hard Fox rode that whole Ahmadinejad christmas message on channel 4 as a HORRIBLE BAD THING, mentioning it was Channel 4 the whole time like any American would possibly give a shit. When I pointed out that C4 was a major competitor for programming w/Sky and that was probably at the bottom of it, I realized it was probably a good idea, going forward, to apply a bag of rock salt to anything News Int has to say about its competitors.

How much overlap is there between Guardian and Observer staff? Considering most publishers have been pushing through redundancies by merging daily and Sunday news operations. Jumping off from Joe's post, that would seem to be the most obvious way 'forward'. Can also see them slashing a few sections and/or farming them out to contract publishers a la Sunday Times Travel.

I can't think of many more spectacular ways to burn through money than publishing a big chunky multi-sectioned Sunday newspaper that doesn't make cash. Although buying a stake in EMAP is probably one of them.

the monthly mags have probably got to go. think they're supposed to make huge losses and the sport one is the only one that is any good.

y'know, i love the food mag, tbh, and it sprobably the only reason i'd be sad to see the obs go; that and mariella's problem page. i think kathryn flett has actually GONE INSANE, going by her recent columns.

but yeah. the times is hardly a rep source on this one. and i'd much rather see the sunday times go, having read the culture pullout for the first time in years in a cafe on sunday, and being unable to make it through the first para of any of the shitty, shitty features.

i think the sunday times is right on this occasion though: the ft has reported it too, and the guardian itself has a - slightly anodyne - version of it up. like i say, it may end just in cost-cutting but i don't think there's any reason to be sceptical that the scott trust has discussed closing the obs as a sunday paper and launching a weekly news mag. (as if the world needs another new statesman.)

otoh the guardian and the observer lose less money than the times and the sunday times do...

Joe, all the stories you list subsequent to the Times are meta-coverage prompted by the need to answer a competitor/cover the article-as-story.

I think all the magazines serve their market really well, even if the Observer Woman market is 'we're too stuck-up to pick up Grazia or Marie Claire'.

i don't think there's any reason to be sceptical that the scott trust has discussed closing the obs as a sunday paper

Er, no, I don't think anyone's denying that. But I don't think it's quite the catastrophic man-the-lifeboats situation that the Times is making out either. I mean, "Shit, should we close one of the papers, then?" is an item for discussion at pretty much every publishing board meeting now.

I would actually pay a cover price for a separate, spun-off Observer Sports Monthly, I think.

gf, the original sunday times story said the scott trust discussed closing the observer on july 6, but the plan was put on hold to work out alternatives which could mean slimming it down and making redundancies. the times follow-up said much the same thing. and this was described as "extreme spin" - if that's not scepticism, i don't know what is.

matt dc otm re osm.

anyway for this photo of max hastings alone, the observer and all its spin-off magazines must be destroyed:

http://static.guim.co.uk/sys-images/Observer/Pix/pictures/2009/7/29/1248879604435

shit, that didn't work.

click here if you dare: http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/gallery/2009/aug/02/suit-style-icon?picture=350962107

yeah, that was pretty grotesque. was slightly alarmed that the food mag is on hiatus for august - do they do that every summer?

ken looks quite cute though

http://static.guim.co.uk/sys-images/Observer/Pix/pictures/2009/8/1/1249120178263/Ken-Livingstone-in-fashio-001.jpg

If the figures that Times article reports are accurate, they're pretty horrendous. £36 million loss on revenues of £250 million. If this was any other business than the looking-glass world of the media, both papers would have gone by now. Something has got to give in the next couple of years, surely.

gf, the original sunday times story said the scott trust discussed closing the observer on july 6

Joe, it suggests that this discussion has been happening since 2004! I'm sorry, but "Guardian Media Group plots closure of Observer newspaper" is an absurdly OTT headline given that what's happening here -- much-needed discussion about the future -- is par for the course in every single newspaper boardroom.

(Anyway. All this reminds me of a story told by my pal on his first day at the Guardian, some 10 years ago now. He was being shown around the office and walked past a lift. "That takes you to the Observer offices," said one of his new colleagues. "Every week we get all our money, shovel it in there, and they burn it for us.")

click here if you dare: http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/gallery/2009/aug/02/suit-style-icon?picture=350962107

That singer from Hot Chip has really let himself go.

I defy anyone to look good in any of those outfits.

LOL John Torode dressed as Edwin Collins circa Orange Juice.

Anyway. All this reminds me of a story told by my pal on his first day at the Guardian, some 10 years ago now. He was being shown around the office and walked past a lift. "That takes you to the Observer offices," said one of his new colleagues. "Every week we get all our money, shovel it in there, and they burn it for us.")

― grimly fiendish, Monday, 3 August 2009 13:55 (22 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

pretty sure the autotrader staff say the same about the guardian.

Much of this is payback for all those stories about free sheets, surely...

OMG, never need to see Jeremy Vine in tight green trousers ever again.

I would actually pay a cover price for a separate, spun-off Observer Sports Monthly, I think.

― Matt DC, Monday, August 3, 2009 12:09 PM (2 hours ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

I would rather they spun it off to be honest. Rest of the paper has no interest for me, being awful and all.

Guardian internal memo says they're considering the closure.

The fact that they'd already dummied a weekly newsmag can't be good for the obs (and I do like that idea, I think that's the medium-term future for investigative reporting). I know the staff hate it, but I'd much rather that than closure.

Guardian internal memo says they're considering the closure

Exactly. TS: "considering" v "plotting". Fuck's sake, I will eat my green visor if some NI exec somewhere hasn't looked at the figures for the Times/Sunday Times and gone: "Jesus, can't we shut one of these?" The difference being that Uncle Rupe still really, really likes newspapers.

I know the staff hate it, but I'd much rather that than closure

Well, it's not either-or. There's always the option of them keeping the paper roughly as it is but making savage cuts to staffing ... you know, the sort of thing that's happening everywhere else :)

(Disclaimer: I know very little about the Observer staffing levels. But the hunch I have is that it's not exactly having to worry about bums on seats. Certainly, the more perceptive of my Guardian moles have used phrases such as "ridiculously overstaffed" in the past.)

(About the entire operation, that is.)

I don't see the huge gap between "considering" and "plotting" that you do. FFS, if the trust had liked the dummies back in June, the thing would already be shut. The mgmt are obviously wanting shot of it.

As for trimmed down: I think they're wise enough to realise that there's not a huge amount of point in the massive cuts/merger scenario. Their primary duty is to the Graun, and it would suffer under daily/weekly mergers as both sides always do, and as we've both seen. And big drops in staff will make it even less competitive than it already is, so what's the point of that - nostalgia?

Don't wanna be dissing 'em, cuz a certain editor is a good friend of my mum's, but during the two weeks i spent there I didn't notice a whole lot of active reporting going on.

Mostly they seemed to spend three of the week's days reading journals and booking dinners, followed by one day of making a few phone calls and another of running themselves ragged curning out articles. Not that two weeks is much of a sample.

no, that is how all weekly newspapers work ime.

ah yr making me nostalgic for sunday paper newsrooms

I don't see the huge gap between "considering" and "plotting" that you do

Er: the former is what they're doing. What everyone's doing (or, at least, everyone with any sense). The latter is some absurd notion that evil moustache-twiddling Scott Trusters are going "Mwahahahaha! Let's surprise everyone with our evil schemes!"

As the Sunday Times piece points out: they've been looking at this kind of thing for five years now! Sorry, that's hardly "plotting".

As for the rest of your argument: the problem here for both of us, I think, is that we don't actually read The Observer (the last time I saw a copy was on a plane, at least a year ago, and it was dire) so I don't think either of us is best placed to comment. Personally, I think a news magazine would be infinitely preferable ... although publishing on a Thursday seems insane. But I can't in all conscience sit here and go: "Yeh, this thing I never read, I'd rather it was something else," can I?

The bottom line, as always, is: could the existing Observer, with some kind of staff restructuring, be of benefit both as a title and a source of income? There's absolutely nothing else for them to consider. And sure, the staff will moan whatever happens, but if cutting X staff now saves Y jobs further down the line then it's got to be done, no?

fuck :( :( i like the observer much more than the weekend guardian. ill miss the magazines especially. the observer no longer has a tv guide but i still buy it, just cos the tone of a lot of the writing in the guide is irritating.

Eh? I do! I get it every weekend. Much prefer it to the alternatives.

The problem is it's losing £20m a year. We've already seen what cutting £1m of staff does. I'm not sure how big their wage bill is, but surely it can't be as big as £20m. I think there's quite a lot for them to consider. Ie they're supposedly now couching this in terms of "the Graun's at risk in three year's time if we don't do this", which suggests that the luxury of seeing if cuts work might be too expensive for them.

Save the maximum amount of cash asap seems to be the order of the day. If cutting one paper saves the Graun further down the line, then *that's* got to be done, I suspect is the thinking. xp

Eh? I do! I get it every weekend

Fucking hell, do you? Sorry: the impression I got from the way you were writing about it there was that -- like me -- you're a dispassionate observer. In that case: for fuck's sake, if you're a loyal reader and you're basically not that fussed about whether the paper stays or morphs into a mag, that strikes me as very telling indeed. (Then again, sample of one and all that.)

I actually can't quite comprehend the scale of the losses reported. I imagine their wage bill is vast; I'm guessing the various mags must cost an absolute fortune to run, too (and magazines have never been known for keeping their costs down, as I know all too well). But if this is the case:

which suggests that the luxury of seeing if cuts work might be too expensive for them

then my sympathies are kinda small, because it's not like this situation can have snuck up on them, is it? Once again: if they were discussing this back in 2004 and everything got put on hold because the editor got mumpy, what did they expect would happen five years further down the line?

If cutting one paper saves the Graun further down the line, then *that's* got to be done, I suspect is the thinking. xp

― stet, Monday, 3 August 2009 15:16 (6 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

yeah, because the scott trust has a duty to preserve the guardian in perpetuity. not so for the observer.

i quite like doing the observer crossword

Don't understand how they think they can make a weekly news magazine work when, as alluded to upthread, its closest model would be the New Statesmen which has never made a profit in its entire history. Maybe it'd be more mainstream and less political wonk, but still...

I think there's a biggish hole for a weekly newsmag, something like Time or Newsweek The closer model would be somewhere between The Week and The Economist, both of which make money.

its closest model would be the New Statesmen

xpost

Not necessarily: if they're daring with this, they could produce something that was effectively a condensed Sunday newspaper, ie with top-quality analysis but all the shit taken out. Problem is: I have a feeling a lot of people buy these things not for the intellectual weight but because they like drivelsome columnists etc.

In which case the worst-case scenario would be a magazine with no news or analysis content whatsoever but a tonne of half-arsed solipsism, gardening and lifestyle shite. Brr.

(Stet: stop posting here and reply to my e-mail, you gim.)

The Week

I was going to mention this earlier: I can't see the Nobserver going down that kind of route simply because it would involve accepting it wasn't the centre of the universe, and that other writers from other sources had more valuable things to say!

id be happy with something that combined their existing mag with in depth news analysis, and rotating music/womens/food etc content.

Problem is: I have a feeling a lot of people buy these things not for the intellectual weight but because they like drivelsome columnists etc.

i sort of feel that thinking's a little self-defeating, tho. reading a dreadful resto review in the times style section on sunday, which seemed mostly about how the writer's son has just completed tenure at an upscale boarding school, i wondered whether fewer people now read newspapers, etc, because so many of them are gunked up with such facile shit?

Yes, they bought the businesses on the Glazer-Man U model, which is what happens when you get into bed with private equity. So the businesses themselves have to use their profits to pay off the debts incurred in buying them. Which is ridiculous (and the Graun management should not have got in bed with private equity, given the paper's stance on those firms). But those deals were done before the collapse of the banks – GMG need not be blamed for failing to see an economic catastrophe that no one else saw coming either. They didn't choose the worst recession in 70 years to do so.

God knows I don't want to sound like a cheerleader for GMG board, who have made some terrible mistakes. But to return to my original point ... the Graun has managed, just, to stand by the Obs, a paper it saved in the first place. It would have closed without the Graun. So it seems unfair to attack the Graun for keeping the Obs alive, and for being willing to make sacrifices there in order to save the paper that is the point of the whole operation.

and the Graun management should not have got in bed with private equity, given the paper's stance on those firms

Yes. That, I think, is the reason all this rankles so much: there's a reek of hypocrisy about it, which might explain why people are being particularly quick/harsh to judge. You're right that nobody could really have seen the economic situation coming; it's just ironic/depressing (delete as applicable) that, of all people, it was GNM who really fucked up when they chose to embrace private equity.

(Er, GMG: sorry. Too many acronyms.)

(They're not even acronyms, are they? Just abbreviations. Although "GNNNNMMMM" and "GMMMMMMMG" are probably not unlike the noises being made by GMG executives right now ...)

Aw, ~I liked the Thursday technology section.

Graun could do better with advertising to foreigners, i.e sporting some web ads i might actually want to click. IT has been wall to wall ads for the Sarah Palin Biography in the last few months.

foreigners -> foreign residents

>Aw, ~I liked the Thursday technology section

Second that - there goes the reason I normally buy the Graun on Thursdays.

It felt a bit depressingly thin without any ads though.

I used to buy the Telegraph on Tuesday for its Connected section, the Times on Wednesday for its ... Network(?) section and the Guardian on Thursdays for Online.

What a loser.

shit buzz about the tech section...I wrote three front page articles for it!

Yes, they bought the businesses on the Glazer-Man U model, which is what happens when you get into bed with private equity. So the businesses themselves have to use their profits to pay off the debts incurred in buying them....But those deals were done before the collapse of the banks – GMG need not be blamed for failing to see an economic catastrophe that no one else saw coming either.

no, it's much worse than that. the guardian sold half of autotrader for £670m in march 2007 and told the independent's business section they would spend it "very wisely and carefully over a long period of time", maybe 50 or 60 years. instead they spent about £500m on a 50 per cent stake of emap's b-to-b publications in december of that year, three months after northern rock was bailed out by the government and a month after will hutton, observer columnist and scott trust board member, said this was the worst financial crisis he had seen for 30 years.

if they had heeded the warnings before the emap purchase, they would have a massive pile of cash and £55m a year profit from their half of autotrader to offset the losses of the guardian and observer. no need for cuts then.

but even if the emap deal was badly timed, at least they didn't have any debt: one sale easily paid for the other purchase, right? which is why it isn't like the glazer model. gmg could pay for its stake in emap out of the autotrader cash easily.

but last year's annual report makes it clear that they don't even get to keep the profits from the half of autotrader and emap that they own outright, without any debt. instead, their share of the money is used to pay private equity firm apax's debts and both companies will share the spoils later. the guardian doesn't see any return until and unless autotrader and emap are sold at a profit.

it's not just that this is a risky thing to do in a recession - which they should have been aware of by the time of the emap purchase - but it's always going to be risky to swap reliable revenue (autotrader) for a completely speculative capital gain, when the aspect of the business that you are supposed to protect - the guardian (and i'd argue the observer, but w/e) - is known to lose money every year.

God knows I don't want to sound like a cheerleader for GMG board

i'm sure the board didn't want to waste a massive amount of money and throw its papers into crisis, but they managed it all the same.

Haven't read the Observer recently but if yesterday's copy was anything to go by it's no wonder no=one reads it. Difficult to pick out a low-point but possibly Alex Blur on being thin?

In fairness, his column in the OFM has *always* been absolute garbage - at least he's not going on and on and on about making fucking cheese any more.

I used to feel buyer's remorse when I actually bought the thing, now I feel it when I steal my office's copy on a Monday.

alex james wrote a great piece on drinking once in about 2001/2002.

Yeah, really the Alex James piece was like the icing on the cake (a big fat buttery cake with cream and chocolate spread all over it). The whole paper seemed really..erm...thin on content and just, well, dull. I find all Sunday papers disappointing these days.

sunday papers have always been pretty shit though haven't they? nothing happens on saturday.

But they have a week to come up with something, anything, worth reading and they seem incapable of doing even that these days. Sunday papers priority isn't, and shouldn't be, to provide us with actual news.

xp I dunno, I used to look forward to sitting around with them scattered around the place, but the Telegraph has really gone off too. Last week I bought the bloody Times!

Yours sincerely,

Col Blimp (retired)

Alex james provided us with facts about fat people never getting old and news about him taking up running. Seriously, how much does he get paid?

Sunday papers priority isn't, and shouldn't be, to provide us with actual news.

well, quite - hence why i have never cottoned to them

> The whole paper seemed really..erm...thin on content

and some of that (graffiti on the tory campaign posters) was a repeat of friday's guardian

saturday, sorry

http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2010/jan/30/david-cameron-graffiti

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/jan/31/barbara-ellen-teenagers-jd-salinger

there's nothing sexy or saleable about alienated parents

orly? Hasn't Tony Parsons written this book?

If not, I'm on it.

My impression is that, relative to dailies and in the UK at least, Sunday papers have traditional had more of a mandate for lengthy investigative journalism.

They're all total dogshit though obviously.

Sunday papers have traditional had more of a mandate for lengthy investigative journalism. sitting around on their bollocks til Friday and then pissing out a story they've ripped off some science journal from six months ago.

The Sunday Times used to do Insight didn't it? I thought I remembered some of the front pages in fact, but I see, looking it up, that most of the big scoops would have been done before I'd reached the age of four, so that's probably not the case, since I can barely remember five years ago.

i think of sunday papers as the place for lengthy cafe interviews with the casting director who decided to use robert deniro for some movie that's coming out this week

Watch the television ad promoting the redesign, featuring The Thick of It actor Justin Edwards and sending up the shallowness of 24-hour news culture.

Shouldn't they have got Charlie Brooker to make that?

Anyway, any decent freebies?

So what's the deal with this new Observer?

http://deckchairs.net/images/deck_idea5.gif

It actually looks pretty good fwiw - one big in-depth story per page gives it a feeling of weight and the arts/review section has a nice feel to it. There's a good selection of heavyweight stories - as you'd expect for a relaunch.

But yes, what Noodle said basically. And the Sunday papers have always filled me with boredom anyway.

i think i prefer there only being 2 big sections (plus sport (usually recycled without reading) + magazine (no 'roasted')). the actual paper is a higher grade than usual too. crossword is still the same. same price too.

the magazine was terrible, i mean sunday supplements all are but it was so thin you could see that they've got no money to spend.

Yeah, main paper actually seemed better as a result of this - Review much improved.

I agree, Joe, the magazine felt pretty underpowered, I'm not going to do an a-to-b comparison with the old version but some pages and coverage have definitely gone. I did whoop with delight when K@thryn Fl3tt revealed it was her final column last week.

It's a small detail, but the magazine columnist photos have now been put through some kind of "cartoon you" filter and are very irritating to look at.

I did whoop with delight when K@thryn Fl3tt revealed it was her final column last week.

huzzah. I did enjoy hearing her on the radio the other day. Apparently she does not understand percentages.

Really liked the new review; much better design as well. Mag awful.

I mean, the mag was always awful, but it was comfortable awful, like old jeans.

otm - it seems odd that it's so bad, esp. since (imo) the Graun saturday magazine is much better than it used to be, although this might just be because T1m D0wling consistently brings the morning lols as I enjoy a late breakfast and ruminate on which household chores I can put off for another weekend.

note to mods -- the suggest ban was for this portion of the post: "T1m D0wling consistently brings the morning lols"

dude tim is awesome. i used to hate his stuff but then fell in to his groove, and he now never fails to bring L*O*L*Z

really liked the new obs, anyway, even the mag (though i may just be heady from joy of no more flett nuttiness, her column has been unreadable for a good coupla years)

I hope they went the whole hog and got rid of Barbara Ellen too.

was there a freebie with today's observer?

ownership

Mulholland Drive dvd.

cheers, that clears up a conversation i eavesdropped on today.