Welcome to Guardian America.

October 23, 2007 8:35 AM

Welcome to Guardian America"So what is Guardian America, what makes a British newspaper think that Americans will want to imbibe its view of America and the world, and why, having decided to undertake such an improbable project, would the paper place it in my hands? Fine questions. Let's explore."

Well, the paper was founded in 1821 "to promote the liberal interest" in the aftermath of the Peterloo massacre. Now, I confess that I don't know what that was. But it sounds bad, and I've been around the block enough times to know that journals founded in response to events like massacres tend to be pretty reliable, from my point of view, more or less across the board.

Why Guardian America won't use American spellings and punctuation and will follow the Guardian style guide. "Sport" is "sports," though.

posted by kirkaracha (33 comments total)

Fantastic idea. The more the merrier. At least in the political arena, American news outlets just tend to spew back predigested talking points. Hopefully the Guardian will have an independent perspective.
posted by facetious at 8:50 AM on October 23, 2007

Excellent.

But on the other hand, the UK version is reached just as easily as the American version, so if they're not conceding to American grammar and spelling I don't know if it'll play in Peoria.
posted by ardgedee at 8:51 AM on October 23, 2007

The Grauniad is well known for spelling mistakes. Stick around long enough and your spelling of choice will pass by.
posted by vbfg at 8:54 AM on October 23, 2007 [2 favorites has favorites]

It's a great idea, and many of us have been reading the regular Guardian for a while now. I'll have to see what they drop and what they add to this version tho--if it's calculated to compete with CNN and gets dumbed down or ignores intl news, it's useless. We don't need another news website that simply repeats AP stories--and GOP talking points/slurs and Drudge gossip.

BBC just started a wonderful newscast too (on BBC America), geared for here and not dumbed down at all. BBC News' website, tho, is going to start running ads when the viewer is one of us (to get more revenue).
posted by amberglow at 8:57 AM on October 23, 2007

The British are coming! The British are coming!
posted by fearfulsymmetry at 9:01 AM on October 23, 2007

I like having the Guardian around - I applaud the idea. This may help dispel the impression that mainstream American newspapers are left-wing.
posted by Miko at 9:01 AM on October 23, 2007

Print edition, please.

They were talking about it for awhile, we discussed it here, make it happen please.
posted by Keith Talent at 9:02 AM on October 23, 2007

m. tomasky, from link: "Well, the paper was founded in 1821 "to promote the liberal interest" in the aftermath of the Peterloo massacre. Now, I confess that I don't know what that was. But it sounds bad..."

They chose well. This man is clearly very experienced with our method of interpreting past events here in the US of A.
posted by koeselitz at 9:04 AM on October 23, 2007 [1 favorite has favorites]

it is patronizing to us tho--and a bald grab for ads. many of the comments on Tomasky's editor's letter are right.
posted by amberglow at 9:10 AM on October 23, 2007

I'll probably stick with the uk version--i like all the blogs they have--not just comment is free. And their travel, and societal issues/special reports/culture stuff.

and the reason we all read it is precisely because it's not American. Reshaping it to appeal to us is unnecessary. It already did appeal to us.
posted by amberglow at 9:13 AM on October 23, 2007

I'm hoping this will fill the hole I've found in current online media. Sites like CNN and ABC used to be my regular haunts -- well, still are (MSNBC's continued insistence on IE is a major barrier to my using the site, even though I like it better in some ways) -- but increasingly they use the front page to highlight the same blog items and funny videos that every other site on the web touts. CNN front page headlines for subtopics like "Science" stay active for days on end, and are prominently featured on the topic page itself. Can't I have some, you know, news? Both sites put up links to affiliates' visual news items of passing importance such as a woman rescued after driving her car into a lake, but you don't actually see anything except some rescue equipment sitting around, and ABC especially feels the need to have their web anchor introduce these blip clips, so that you get the formal experience of the nightly news wrapped around an airy nothing.

The NYT is as reliable as ever but is not a national news site in the same sense. The WaPo is still good for basic political news but toadies to the Bushies so blatantly I can't stand visiting. FOX, of course, is right out unless I want a hollow laugh. Google News is usable but just doesn't have the sense that an editor does of what's important. All the other good US papers fail simply by having a local orientation that isn't someplace I live.

Getting back around to my point, the BBC website and feeds are really consistently good, but even the BBC Americas page is just too general. I would love a BBC USA landing page with the sensibility of that website, but they seem consciously not to offer that, even though a good chunk of their traffic must come from here (and they have other properties aimed at the US like the cable channel). So I have been waiting for this to arrive to see how well it fills this hole of hard news that passes the 100-year test with some perspective.
posted by dhartung at 9:20 AM on October 23, 2007 [3 favorites has favorites]

I'm a bit confused as to how this is different from just reading their website like I normally do. Less Maddy stories perhaps?
posted by Artw at 9:33 AM on October 23, 2007

If they start doing more U.S. novels as digested reads, I'm for this.
posted by drezdn at 9:49 AM on October 23, 2007

This seems like a ploy by British journalists who would like to get paid in pounds while living and working in America. Bastards!

I hope they can actually deliver much juicier international coverage, which is what I read the Guardian for in the first place. I already read the NYT, so if the Guardian's new bureau is based in New York, I'm not sure that this is really going to change the scope of the news available. We'll see.
posted by oneirodynia at 10:06 AM on October 23, 2007

Grauniad Amrieac?
posted by klangklangston at 10:09 AM on October 23, 2007

The Guardian's saving America again? I'm kind of afraid this will turn out like their 2004 campaign to mail key swing voters in Ohio with glowing pro-Kerry testimonials. (Typical response: "Stay the **** out of our **** business, you **** **** commie **** foreign **********." Made for an interesting letters column for a bit there.)
posted by ormondsacker at 10:32 AM on October 23, 2007

ormondsacker - I was a regular Guardian reader at the time they did that, and I remember, even being the pathetic liberal that I am, that it was one of the most ridiculous and wrong-headed ideas ever to fall out of an editorial meeting.
posted by Jofus at 10:44 AM on October 23, 2007

Yeah, pretty bad. TBH the whole thing of having to fake enthusiasm for someone as unispiring as Kelly was pretty excruciating from start to finish anyway.
posted by Artw at 11:19 AM on October 23, 2007

I got excited at first, thinking they were instituting a U.S. print edition.

And let's not give short shrift, as so often happens on these occasions, to culture.

Announcements of "new" Web sites often give short shrift to culture?
posted by Curry at 11:24 AM on October 23, 2007

In fact the Guardian and Observer must be the only newspapers on the planet that regularly publish articles stating boldly that the bulk of their own readership is complicit with mass murder. I find this somewhat bizarre. Even more bizarre is the fact that the evidence cited for this usually consists of other articles printed in the Guardian and Observer.

From here. Where I was recently reminded of the old lefty saying that the Guardian is "Trots writing for liberals," in our contemptuous ultra-leftie use of liberal to mean a hand-wringing but do-nothing bien-pensant likely to live in Hampstead.
posted by Abiezer at 11:25 AM on October 23, 2007

Is Blood and Treasure your new favorite site or something?
posted by Artw at 11:35 AM on October 23, 2007

I'm on commission.
posted by Abiezer at 11:38 AM on October 23, 2007

Fair enough. I usually suffer from a barely restrained urge to post Charlie Brooker columns up whenever anything vaguely relevant is under discussion.
posted by Artw at 11:56 AM on October 23, 2007

Heh. Truth is they recently unblocked Typepad domains here and that was one I used to read a lot for his China commentary. I was catching up with the archives then I notice his links to other stuff. When I used to read it via proxy the url was too obscure to link easily so I never bothered. Blogspot came back up and went in a blinfing falsh during the Party congress. It's all very tiresome. YouTube's just been blocked too, which really has the party-mouth-breather ex-pat crowd up in arms.
posted by Abiezer at 12:07 PM on October 23, 2007

ahahahah!

Grauniad Emarica!

Ynaone raed ti lateyl??
posted by dash_slot- at 2:35 PM on October 23, 2007

to fake enthusiasm for someone as unispiring as Kelly

OOsp! Catching, isn't it?
posted by dash_slot- at 2:38 PM on October 23, 2007

You can already get the Guardian Weekly in the U.S. in the print edition.
posted by idb at 3:26 PM on October 23, 2007

[this is good], but I'm mildly discombobulated by the use of the verb 'imbibe' with the noun 'view'.

I'll get over it, though.
posted by stavrosthewonderchicken at 7:47 PM on October 23, 2007

Shoot the shit into your eyeball, stav, you'll imbibe it all right.

Or so a little blind birdie told me.
posted by Wolof at 1:07 AM on October 24, 2007

Are they advertising this to the extent that an average American might actually take a look?
posted by Anything at 2:24 AM on October 24, 2007

^That goes for the BBC America thing as well.
posted by Anything at 2:27 AM on October 24, 2007

Well, it's become clear this is not going to meet my needs upthread. It's an American portal of accessibility into the British Guardian and its concerns from over the pond, and that's about it. Nothing like a Guardian sensibility on American news. I'm not actually sure why anyone would read it, but I'll be giving it a few days' more try.
posted by dhartung at 1:11 AM on October 25, 2007

Getting back around to my point, the BBC website and feeds are really consistently good, but even the BBC Americas page is just too general. I would love a BBC USA landing page with the sensibility of that website, but they seem consciously not to offer that, even though a good chunk of their traffic must come from here (and they have other properties aimed at the US like the cable channel). So I have been waiting for this to arrive to see how well it fills this hole of hard news that passes the 100-year test with some perspective.

They're about to start serving ads to BBC Online readers accessing the site from outside the UK (an idea to generate income that came from the latest round of budget cuts for the organization). Whether this helps to drive more attention to improving the site for international users or not, I do not know. Problem is that as a public-funded broadcaster, anything that the BBC does that appears to fall outside of its traditional remit (to cater to public interest broadcasting for UK citizens) is endlessly complained about by ideological dogmatists, even if it's good quality / money making.
posted by bifter at 8:30 AM on October 25, 2007