The Guardian
So The Guardian has dropped its broadsheet style in favour of the tabloid format. This is good, because I associate broadsheets with big leather armchairs in gentleman’s clubs in The Strand which is the only place where there is enough room for you to read them, given the wide berth needed to turn the page of an A2 newspaper.
Sorry, it’s not a tabloid. The format is called a “Berliner”. It is slightly bigger than a tabloid. They will be quick to point that out. Like when we say: “Hey, nice apple pie” and the cook says: “Actually, it’s a tarte tatin” and the rest of us are all like: “Whatever, it’s a pie with apples in it.”
It’s really more like a small broadsheet. It’s a fun format, because when you read it you feel really big, like a giant. Try it.
Maybe that’s part of the idea. The Guardian wants to make its readers feel bigger. “Roar. I am a big giant. I read news and know world. I smell the blood of an Englishman and I can read about implications for public sector workers in Society pages.”
I shouldn’t knock The Guardian. They gave me a job for two years where I held the unique and enviable position of having the desk closest to the nearest pub.
I am more disappointed that they have changed their trademark logo on the masthead from “The Guardian” to simply “the guardian”. I liked those italics at the beginning and I used to pronounce them. I thought it gave the paper that little bit of exclusivity. A little thing that the French call a certain - um, er - … I don’t know what. But conversations went like this:
Someone: “I read about that in The Guardian.”
Me: “What, The Guardian?”
Laugh? I did, thank you.
Italics change the whole feel of a title. This is This.
See?
It would be great tomorrow if the traditional tabloids like The Sun and The Mirror changed to a broadsheet format with the headline: “Ha ha.”
And The Guardian could reply with the headline: “Bugger.”
And The Sun and The Mirror could then run the headline: “Actually, it’s slightly bigger than a broadsheet. It’s called a Lyonnaise”
I wonder if the headlines will have to be shorter, given the smaller format of The Guardian:
“It’s A Mess, Says Condo Rice.”*
*Condo Rice sounds like a microwave meal for one person. Or a kind of new food fad where dishes and property names are combined. Condo rice, flat bread, prefab potatoes and house wine. The possibilities are limited, I grant you, but this is an age of passing things where the things pass faster every time.