Tag Archives: guardian

Update: Le Carré’s past – as told on the web

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I wrote a post yesterday which looked at how the story of author John le Carré’s alleged temptation to defect to the Russians during his time as a British Intelligence officer (as reported by the Sunday Times) was spreading over the web, despite Le Carré’s lengthy contention with the report.

Hari Kunzru, who wrote a review that referred to the Sunday Times report, in Saturday’s Guardian, has left a comment:

For the record, I wasn’t aware of Le Carré’s objections to Liddle’s interview. My review was filed before the letter was printed in The Times. I’m not surprised. Even from Liddle’s quote the inference that Le Carré ‘almost defected’ is hard to draw.

So either the Guardian Review’s editor didn’t know of Le Carré’s complaint either, or it was a conscious decision to leave it as Kunzru wrote it.

It does seem to suggest that complaints or letters published post-coverage don’t really rectify a situation. It’s lucky that Le Carré aka David J.M. Cornwell enjoyed the Calvados and Liddle’s ‘erudite and perceptive’ conversation, or there could have been rather more costly repercussions for the Sunday Times.

Guardian debuts six-monthly ABCe figures for regional websites

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Guardian News and Media (GNM) has become the second publisher to officially sign up for the Audit Bureau of Circulations Electronic’s (ABCe) six-monthly web traffic audits, according to a release from the bureau.

The new audits will provide detailed daily, weekly and monthly breakdowns of unique user/browser and page impression figures for sites within GNM’s regional portfolio, which have previously reported web traffic stats on an ‘ad hoc’ basis.

Regional GNM sites getreading.co.uk, manchestereveningnews.co.uk and manchesteronline.co.uk , as well as thejobsmine.co.uk will be analysed as part of the new arrangement.

Online traffic data will be presented alongside print circulation figures for the titles, the bureau added.

GNM follows Northcliffe Media, which signed up 10 of its regional websites for the new certificate earlier this month.

In a press statement accompanying the announcement, Northcliffe said it plans to increase the audit to 20 sites by 2009, and to cover ‘all major urban and regional sites’ in the future.

Le Carre-d away: has the author’s alleged desire to defect become fact?

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This, in Saturday’s Guardian, in Hari Kunzru’s review of John Le Carré’s latest book, ‘A Most Wanted Man’:

In a recent interview Le Carré was asked if he ever considered defecting. “Well, I wasn’t tempted ideologically … but when you spy intensively and you get closer and closer to the border … it seems such a small step to jump … and, you know, find out the rest.” Though this has been reported as some sort of tabloid confession (“I was tempted to defect, says spy novelist Le Carré”), it seems primarily interesting as a key to his fiction, whose central concern is the exploration of the metaphorical borderland occupied by the proponents of any polarised conflict.

The Guardian, September 27 2008

Perhaps surprisingly, no mention of the fact that Le Carré says that his quotes were out of context, as this lengthy letter to the Sunday Times pointed out. Le Carré writes that his interviewer, Rod Liddle, chose not to use a tape recorder and  subsequently misrepresented him that he was misrepresented in the interview and this article:

… he [Liddle] failed to encompass or indeed record the general point I was making about the temptations of defection.

Lord Annan, I ventured in our conversation, had declared that four years of Intelligence work were as much as any sane man could stand. I painted for Mr Liddle the plight of professional eavesdroppers who identify so closely with the people they are listening to that they start to share their lives.

It was in this context that I made the point that, in common with other intelligence officers who lived at close quarters with their adversaries, I had from time to time placed myself intellectually in the shoes of those on one side of the Curtain who took the short walk to the other; and that rationally and imaginatively I had understood the magnetic pull of such a step, and empathised with it.

John Le Carré, Times Online, September 20 2008.

Presumably the Guardian Review’s editors and the writer, Hari Kunzru, were aware of Le Carré’s problem with Liddle’s interview and chose not to mention it, although Kunzru does refer to the tabloid-like sensationalisation of the interview.

A Google search for John Le Carré brings back reviews for his latest book, but if you search “john le carre + defect” it’s possible to see how far the Sunday Times reports have spread… The AP reported it as the Sunday Times did, and then it went far and wide of course.

Will Le Carré’s consideration of defection go down in the history books, with no reference to his complaint?

Media Guardian: More than 80 journalists will lose jobs at Express Newspapers

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The Daily Express and Sunday Express will dimiss more than 80 journalists by the end of the year. A new editorial production system Woodwing is also being introduced at the papers, which will allow journalists to write some stories directly onto the page layout – bypassing production staff.

Guardian blogs complete move to new technology platform

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Guardian.co.uk is in the process of moving the rest of its blogs to its new R2 platform, an update from the title’s own insider blog reports.

From tomorrow the site’s remaining 23 blogs will join the first phase of blogs, which made the switch last month, and will sport a new design and improved tools for commenting.

Titles making the change tomorrow include the technology blog, arts blog and PDA, which says comments will be turned off on the moving blogs between 4pm and 9pm (BST).

The key features of the new blog design are:

  • Keywords linking blog posts to related content across the site
  • The relocation of blogs to their relevant sections – e.g. the politics blog in the politics channel
  • Blogs now share features introduced across the rest of the redesigned site, including the option to share posts by Digg, del.icio.us etc, and a widget showing the most-linked to Guardian content
  • Blog posts are included in the site’s search
  • Commenters can have their own user profiles

As previously reported on this blog, the new features were trialled on the site’s Comment Is Free platform and use social media firm Pluck’s commenting technology.

Analysis of the upgrade is already coming in: Shiny Media co-founder Ashley Norris says the move ‘signals the end of the organisation using a traditional blogging approach’.

The new design, says Norris, gives readers only a brief view of the intro to a blog post on a section homepage.

“To read the story users have to click through to the page. The reason the Guardian has done this is that being less generous means more click throughs, more page views per users and subsequently more ad impressions served,” he points out.

Guardian blogger calls for other London bloggers

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One of the Guardian’s newest bloggers, writer Dave Hill, is to use the platform to promote, and interact with, other external blogs.

“Blogging offers the chance to fill the void,” London blogger Dave Hill writes at his new Guardian.co.uk home.  In an attempt to nourish connections with other bloggers, he’s asking for people to send him their favourite London blogs.

Prior to this blog he blogged at London Mayor & More, and his other blogs Clapton Pond and Big Britain are still active.

10 magazine – free in your Guardian today, but £8.86 online

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A funny little magazine fell out of the Guardian onto Journalism.co.uk’s lap this morning: a ‘special mini-edition’ of 10 magazine. So un-Guardian like that Journalism.co.uk had to pop into WH Smith to check another copy, to clarify that it hadn’t in fact dropped out of the sky.

No, it was in the Guardian. One end of the mini-magazine is men’s content, turn it the other way and the other end is women’s, with a feature on ‘Ten looks from the old and wiser’ that tells us ‘all of these handsome folk are 100 years old or more. There are some nice great-grandmas and lovely great-grandpas. With age comes wisdom…’

Is this a new promotion from the Guardian or has it been done before?

Apparently, there have been 15 issues of the men’s and 28 issues of the women’s mag that have been purchased by consumers at £4.95 a pop. We’d like to hear from people who have read it in full.

The magazine’s website is minimalist, but you can subscribe over at the magazine cafe.

Journalism.co.uk is putting an early birthday request in for a single copy: online, the women’s magazine is priced £10.96, and the men’s is £8.86. Type ‘Ten’ in the search box, under the category men’s and women’s interest to find it.