Happy Birthday to Media Guardian, 25 years old on May 14. In this week’s supplement we learn what each of the writers were doing in 1984: Emily Bell was doing her A-Levels; Stephen Armstrong was still at school; Peter Wilby was education correspondent for the Sunday Times. And long before Media Monkey was even a twinkle in Mr Monkey’s eye – Monkey Jnr is a youthful nine years old, apparently.
One of the features to mark its anniversary examines the shift in the type of newspaper content:
Peter Wilby asks: ‘How did readers know what to think in 1984?’
“Once you get over the minuscule, blurred pictures and the lack of colour, the first thing that strikes you about the newspapers of that year is the paucity of opinionated columnists. The finger-jabbing, red-faced anger of today’s commentariat, the passionate, omniscient certainty with which they declare opinions, scarcely existed 25 years ago.”