College Library News

The Times Educational Supplement (TES) has announced plans for an autumn term relaunch as a full colour paper and new glossy magazine.

Bernard Gray, Chief Executive of TSL Education:

“The new TES will comprise a modern, redesigned newspaper with strong news and features content and a glossy, modern magazine, (plus new, full colour, jobs sections). The new TES will be a trusted source of news, information and advice for teachers and the education community and will provide an unrivalled service in print and online for education professionals and advertisers.
“The new full colour format will enable us to offer full colour to readers and advertisers throughout the paper for the first time.
“The paper will continue to be first with education news and will explain and analyse what matters to teachers and the education community and why. There will be new content relevant to teachers’ careers and professional lives, including incisive columns and dedicated sections, and it will be easier to find. as well as a strengthened online presence.
“The new magazine will combine the personal and professional sides of teachers’ lives and complement the main paper by appealing to those who want more than hard news, with features and insights into teachers’ working lives. There will be new specialist sections that will be relevant without being hard work, upbeat without being unreal.
“Our online presence will be greatly strengthened - with new content and resources, better navigation, an enhanced jobs site and better ease of access for advertisers and for job seekers.

The Times Educational Supplement was launched in 1910 as a free insert in The Times newspaper. In 1914 it began publication as a weekly stand-alone title selling for one penny. In 1971 the then owner, The Thomson Organisation, launched the Times Higher Education Supplement (THES). In 1981, Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation (then already owner of The Sun and News of the World and soon to take a major interest in Satellite Television UK - the precursor of Sky TV) acquired the whole business of Times Newspapers Ltd from Thomson - including TES and THES. In 1989 Times Supplements Ltd changed its name to TSL Education Ltd. In October 2005 a ‘buyout shop’, Exponent Private Equity, acquired the education businesses from News Corporation making TSL Education a stand-alone business. As well as the TES and THES, it also publishes Nursery World.

The Times Educational Supplement is the leading education publication in the UK selling around 70,000 copies per week (source: ABC). It is available in the library, along with the THES.

Matthew D’Ancona has been picked from The Sunday Telegraph to be the new editor of The Spectator.

Andrew Neill, The Spectator’s chief executive, and Aidan Barclay, the chairman of the magazine’s owner Press Holdings, are believed to have chosen D’Ancona ahead of Scotland on Sunday editor Iain Martin and The Economist’s US editor John Micklethwait.

Neill described D’Ancona as one of Britain’s foremost political commentators, and said: “He combines the requisite political gravitas and insight with the wit and originality that the post requires.”

The Spectator’s average weekly sale is 68,415 copies, of which 51,274 are in the UK and Ireland (ABC Jul-Dec 2005).

Also, only a few days later, it has been announced that Bill Emmott, editor-in-chief of The Economist, is to step down from the role after 13 years to focus on writing books.

Emmott has been with The Economist for 26 years in total, working his way up from Brussels correspondent in 1980, becoming financial editor in 1986 then business affairs editor in 1989. He took on his current job in March 1993.

He will stay on at the magazine until a new editor is found, but this could be as soon as March 21, according to reports. The appointment will be approved by four trustees of the Economist Group board. Contenders are likely to include: Emma Duncan, who is deputy editor; John Micklethwait, US editor; and Matthew Bishop, American business editor.

The Economist’s average weekly sale is 514,124 copies per week worldwide excluding the Americas of which 166,286 are in UK and Ireland (ABC Jul-Dec 2005).

The Library subscribes to these magazines. Full online access to both is available using our passwords (search for the titles in our catalogue).

A few of the more substantial articles that have appeared over the last few days about the Guardian’s total redesign on Monday 12 September:

- City of Sound: Assessing the new Guardian, with brief nod to the avant-garde (aka Grazia, Heat and The Sun)
- Mark Boulton (UK typographic designer): New look Guardian
- NewsDesigner.com: A Guardian in hand
- Media Week: Taylor hopes commercial nous will drive The Guardian forward
- Journalism.co.uk: Jilted Doonesbury fans besiege new Guardian
- Journalism.co.uk: The Guardian: my new favourite pygmy paper

The Guardian itself reports Sales of Guardian leap on day of relaunch. The first Berliner issue gained a massive 40% uplift in sales. This shows a high level of initial interest in sampling the new product. No doubt some of this increase is already falling away with time. It will take some weeks to more accurately assess the true level of increased sales. One of my local newsagents reports increased buying of The Guardian amongst young people.

I have bought it every day so far - somehow I cannot resist it. I love the feel of the product - but do not have much time to properly read it through. My opinion of it is improving, but I am still not sure about the headline font or (the need for) the mess of pictures on the front page above the masthead. Remember - it’s free to read the online ‘digital Guardian’ for another week or so - right back to the 1st September issue.

theguardian is offering its online digital Guardian service for free until Monday 26 September. It normally costs £10 per month. You can read the whole issue online every day. Enjoy!

theguardian has posted four video interviews on its change in format , including one with designer Mark Porter [thanks to the commenter at newsdesigner.com].

Also, it has reactions to the new format Guardian from rivals, peers and advertisers.

Finally, there is the new editors’ weblog which, last night, gave a blow-by-blow account of producing the first Berliner issue. You can add comments - such as what you think about the new format. Or email whatdoyouthink@guardian.co.uk.

That’s all about theguardian for now. theguardian is available on weekdays in the library during full term - plus one other quality newspaper (either The Daily Telegraph or The Independent).

The Guardian’s conversion to ‘Berliner’ format will happen on Monday 12 September.

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UPDATE: 9 September - An image (left) of the new look has been released by The Guardian - including a last-minute change of masthead.

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The announcement (official PDF here) was issued at 10:40 on 1 September 2005. [Note: you may find that free registration is required to access Guardian web pages] The new so-called ‘Berliner’ page dimensions are, at 470mm by 315mm, about the width of a standard UK tabloid but some 110mm taller. This format is new to the UK, but used by some newspapers in continental Europe (for example France’s Le Monde, Spain’s La Vanguardia, and Italy’s La Repubblica). The move has necessitated massive expenditure on totally new printing presses both in London and Manchester, with the side benefit of being able to print colour on every page.

The Guardian’s change of format - a major event in UK newspaper publishing (let alone for The Guardian) - has been, in part, forced by the recent gradual conversions of its daily rival The Independent, closely followed by The Times, to a standard UK tabloid page size from the autumn of 2003, both being fully tabloid by November 2004. These two tabloid (or ‘compact’ as they like to call it) quality newspapers have been growing their share of sales at the expense of The Guardian. Despite this, in February 2004, The Guardian rejected a move to standard tabloid format. Then rumours of the ‘Berliner’ page size were confirmed end of June 2004. Personally, I am glad that The Guardian has gone for something a bit different and distinctive. Now there are rumours that The Daily Telegraph, the only remaining daily broadsheet, might also go the ‘Berliner’ route.

Originally, April 2006 was pencilled in for the ‘Berliner’ relaunch of The Guardian, so the actual September 2005 date announced is a major triumph (although the original April 2006 date could have been a smokescreen to wrong-foot the opposition). It comes not a moment too soon, as The Guardian’s (latest) July 2005 average daily sales figure of 358,000 (source: Audit Bureau of Circulations) is its lowest July figure since July 1978! Interestingly, although The Guardian’s daily sales number is relatively low for a UK newspaper, its hugely successful GuardianUnlimited website has one of the highest worldwide audiences of any newspaper site on the web, seen by over 11m unique users in July 2005.

The Guardian is being redesigned ‘from scratch’ by an in-house team led by Creative Editor Mark Porter. It will use an exclusive, specially created new typeface, ‘Guardian Egyptian’. The ‘G2′ section, originally standard tabloid in size, will now be a half-’Berliner’ size (slightly larger than A4) stapled magazine - described as the UK’s first daily newsprint magazine. There will be a daily science page, a new economics section, and expanded comment and letters section. Lloyd Shepherd, Head of Development at Guardian Unlimited, says in his weblog:

“I have never for a minute subscribed to the “death of newspapers” theories, and believe me - the redesigned Guardian is beautiful and exciting and will want you to buy newspapers again. Just suspend any prejudices you may have, be they anti-Guardian or anti-paper, on September 12 and get yourself a copy if you’re in the UK or Ireland. You may disagree with what is said in the words, but you won’t be able to argue that the format isn’t spectacular.”

The last time The Guardian was completely redesigned was by David Hillman, whose influential design was introduced 12 February 1988. Despite being refreshed by Simon Esterson a decade later, today’s broadsheet Guardian retains much of the Hillman look (including the distinctive title with the italic serif ‘The’ followed by an extra bold sans-serif ‘Guardian’).

The Guardian’s Sunday sister paper, The Observer, will convert to the ‘Berliner’ format (and presumably also undergo a radical redesign?) ‘early next year’.

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UPDATE: 9 September 2005 - windows media file of Channel 4 News item about the Berliner Guardian with some shots of Berliner pages
UPDATE: 8 September 2005 - An excellent article in Press Gazette: Rusbridger: why I did it the Berliner way interviews Guardian editor Rusbridger and reviews a ‘dry run’ dummy issue of the new Berliner Guardian - in words only (no pictures were allowed!). Looks like the Berliner main section will have a 5-column page which means wider columns than usual - I think this is excellent news: columns have been increasing in number and narrowing over the years (to accomodate advertisers?) which, in my view, does not look so good. Quality = wider columns in my mind. (Take a look at old copies of newspapers - they tend to have less and/or wider columns).

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For useful background reading, see this year’s Hugo Young lecture by Alan Rusbridger (editor of The Guardian) ‘What are newspapers for?’ (March 2005) and The Observer article Will quality sell? Only you have the answer (August 2005).

There is a strange custom amongst newspapers that the newspaper undergoing the change is reluctant to say too much whilst, understandably, rival newspapers are not keen to give their competitors ‘free publicity’. So we find The Guardian itself, apart from a small announcement on Friday, strangely quiet about its imminent transformation with the best article appearing in a rival, The Independent on Sunday: Dateline Berliner: ‘The Guardian’ gets ready to be born again. Annoyingly, this may become pay to view after a few days, so here are a few interesting opinions from the article.

Paul Thomas, managing partner of the media agencyMindShare:”

“I have seen it [the Berliner Guardian] and I think the prospects are good. It has full colour throughout and the layout is refreshing. It is a brave decision to do something different, but the newspaper market in general is not at its most healthy and this will give them stand-out appeal.”

Terry Watson of the international newspaper design consultants Palmer Watson:

“Berliner is a great format. It is definitely the right move for The Guardian. Because of the associations the tabloid shape has in British minds I am sure that if The Times had been able to move directly from broadsheet to Berliner it would have done it. […] There will be several chief executives at other titles desperately hoping the Berliner Guardian is a flop. They know their editors wanted to try this years ago. Conservatism about formats was universal on the commercial side of the newspaper business until The Independent proved how attractive change can be.”

Lynne Anderson, communications director of the Newspaper Society

“The trend towards format change is new to the nationals and has been seen as very innovative, but many regional newspapers changed format years ago. Regional newspapers regularly canvass their readers and respond accordingly - to great effect in newspapers like the Western Mail, the Liverpool Daily Post and The Belfast Telegraph, all of which relaunched and achieved considerable circulation increases. Readers seem to prefer new-look papers.”

Roger Mosey, head of BBC Sport:

“The Guardian has been talking about being more a journal of record and looking at something like the BBC model where we try to get the maximum objectivity into our news coverage. As a consumer, I do sometimes worry that significant areas of the modern media have lost the art of reporting. If The Guardian achieves that and it filters into the wider market it would be a good thing.”

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Backlink: The Guardian to relaunch in smaller form this autumn [June 2005]

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The Guardian newspaper’s planned conversion to a smaller format has been brought forward to this autumn from a previously planned date of April 2006. Its sister sunday paper, The Observer, will make the switch early next year. The announcement was made public on Wednesday 15 June.

Back in February 2004 the The Guardian decided to go ahead with a reduction in page size, a few months after both The Independent (on 30 September 2003) and then The Times (on 26 November 2003) started publishing ‘compact’ (tabloid) sized versions - initially as an alternative or London only edition. However, unlike both those titles, The Guardian has decided to convert to so-called ‘Berliner’ format - a slightly larger page size than the standard UK tabloid. Berliner format is popular in continental Europe, for example France’s Le Monde, Germany’s Die Tageszeitung, Spain’s La Vanguardia, and Italy’s La Repubblica.

Both The Independent and The Times recently completed a phased-in conversion from broadsheet to tabloid format (or ‘compact’ as they preferred to call it) after an experimental period of producing both versions. The Guardian, however, will undergo a major one-off full redesign of whilst both The Times and The Independent simply transferred the same page layout to a smaller size. It has to be remembered that, for The Independent (as it was the first) and The Times (with its long tradional heritage), a size change was a bold move into uncharted territory back in the autumn of 2003 when they emabarked on the venture. For a quality newspaper an all-out compact launch was risky: in the UK, compact (or tabloid) size has traditionally been associated with more downmarket celebrity-based newspapers.

The Independent first published a compact version in London only on 30 September 2003 with a stated aim to go fully compact over a period of time. The Times followed two months later with a compact version on 26 November 2003 but continued with the broadsheet veriosn as well - both being on sale side by side in many areas. The first national compact only issue of The Independent was published on 17 May 2004 when it was finally redesigned to more suit the smaller page format. The Times finally dispensed with its broadsheet version almost six months later on 1 November 2004. At least The Independent underwent a redesign - The Times, seemingly a broadsheet cut up to fit a tabloid page size, looks just awful. The Independent underwent a more recent redesign on 12 April 2005 based, apparently, on Italian newspapers - not much differnt from the previous look, apart from a new style masthead, in my opinion - and dispensing with extra sections making one rather thick and unwieldy tabloid.

The Guardian is very enthusiastic about its Berliner size, believing it to be less constricting than the pure tabloid “where there is always the temptation to go for a single picture and dominant story on each page”. The Guardian’s designers believe the Berliner format will give them a distinctive product, with cooler typography than a tabloid and a serious feel. It will also get round the dominance of the conventional advertisement sizes in the tabloid format.

Changing from broadsheet to tabloid is a fairly easy conversion: the tabloid page size being exactly half of a broadsheet. But the unusual (for the UK) dimensions of Berliner size means The Guardian has had to purchase new printing presses, at a cost of £50m, now being installed by Germany’s MAN Roland, to print the 470 x 315 millimetres (~ 18.5″ x 12.5″) page size. The picture below shows the relative sizes of broadsheet, Berliner, and tabloid with images of today’s actual front pages (whenever you might be reading this - except on Sundays!) thanks to Newseum which displays over 400 newspaper front pages from around the world every day.

The Berliner has around 65% (approx two-thirds) area of a broadsheet page, a tabloid has 77% (around three-quarters) area of a Berliner page.

Carolyn McCall, chief executive of Guardian Newspapers Ltd (GNL), said the early move was testament to the remarkable progress the newspaper group and its press and printing partners had made:

“Just over a year ago we made one of the most important decisions in the 184-year history of The Guardian, and the 213-year history of The Observer. To design both papers again completely from scratch. To launch them in a new format never before seen in the UK. To build our own print centre and install the most modern presses in the newspaper industry. To position our papers as the first of a new generation of full-colour national newspapers. The remarkable progress we have made is testament to the professionalism and commitment of our staff, our press partner, MAN Roland, and our print partners, Trafford Park and Newsfax International.”

An important factor in The Guardian’s decision to change size has been its continued loss in sales compared to The Independent and The Times which seem to have picked up market share since going compact. The sales figures for December 2002-May 2003 (pre any changes) compared with the latest December 2004-May 2005 figures (after The Independent and Times went fully compact) show both The Independent and Times gaining between 8 and 9% extra share of daily newspaper sales, whilst The Guardian lost around 7% share. Note that because the market as a whole is declining, this means that actual sales figures remained roughly the same for The Independent and The Times. The Daily Telegraph, the only general broadsheet not to have made any commitment to resizing, maintained its share and may decide to remain as a broadsheet for now. The latest 6-monthly sales figures are Daily Telegraph 862,000 (7.5% share of general daily sales), The Times 636,000 (5.5%), The Guardian 342,000 (3.0%), and The Independent 224,000 (1.9%). The Guardian does a good analysis of newspaper circulation trends on its excellent website (free registration required).

Newspaper size change is happening everywhere: more than 50 newspapers worldwide have made the shift to a smaller format, according to the World Association of Newspapers.

The editor of the New Statesman, Peter Wilby, has resigned his post. The Guardian was one of the first with the news in this article on its website. Mr Wilby has released a brief statement which includes the following:

“Peter Wilby has resigned as New Statesman editor after seven years in the chair. His successor is John Kampfner, the magazine’s political editor […] I have had seven exciting and wonderful years, working with brilliant staff. Geoffrey Robinson, the chairman, gave me as much in dependence as any editor could wish for. John Kampfner has been an excellent political editor, and I know he will also be a fine editor. I wish him and the New Statesman every success in the future.”

It is reported that John Kampfner will be the new editor of the New Statesman, or ‘The Staggers’ as it is affectionately known. Britain’s best known left-wing weekly, in its heydays was edited by such literary big names as Martin Amis, and was well known for its literary reviews now no longer so prominent.
Just six months ago the magazine’s deputy editor, Christine Odone, resigned after reports of ‘heated rows’ with Wilby. Both Odone and Wilby denied this reason, Wilby claiming: “…she felt that the time was right to leave to work on the religious series and spend more time with her baby”.
The New Statesman has a small weekly average sale of around 23,000 (ABC July-December 2004). Its larger ‘rival’, the right-wing The Spectator, has a weekly sale of 66,000.
By the way, one of those copies is purchased by the library - we get both the New Statesman and The Spectator, as well as other high quality ‘general weeklies’ such as The Economist and The Times Literary Supplement (TLS) plus, of course the TES and the THES. We also get The Guardian and The Daily Telegraph on weekdays.
Addendum [Mon 16 May]: article by Christine Odone in The Guardian: “Why Wilby was pushed”.

From Patricia Killiard, Head of Electronic Services and Systems, Cambridge University Library:

The Times Digital Archive 1785-1985 online is now available via Gale Infotrac through a University Library subscription. No passwords are require and it may be used by staff, students and walk-in library users.

The Archive contains the full text of The Times, including advertising, letters, and illustrations.

Please note that this URL may be subject to change when off-campus access is set up with ATHENS passwording. The URL will be added shortly to the University Library’s list of electronic resources.

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Fantastic stuff! If you are on campus, try it out now. Do a search of the archive or - and this is really amazing - browse through any issue 1785-1985 page by page!