Posts Tagged ‘Alan Rusbridger’
How the Guardian works: Alan Rusbridger passes the buck on Julie Burchill
HOW the Guardian newspaper works. Observer editor John Mulholland’s weak decision to censor an article by Julie Burchill reached the attention of Alan Rusbridger, the editor-in-chief of Guardian News & Media. Having deemed the piece by the riling journalistic firebrand fit for publication, the Observer saw a few comments calling it offensive, and erased it. So much for sticking up for your writers. So much for free speech.
But what did the man in charge, the editor-in-chief do an outraged readers told him about the article? He tweeted:
It’s actually an Observer piece.
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Comment is free? Guardian worker writes of executives lavish excess
THE Guardian is heading Down Under to Australia. What do the workers think of the idea? This letter appeared on the Guardian/Observer Weekend section:
”Afternoon Alan – I’m a member of Guardian staff, posting anonymously.
As you know, it’s a tough time for your journalists at the moment – especially for those of us way down the food chain: the production grunts, the desk-bound, the ones who actually produce the content.
We’re working harder and harder (because we love the papers), coping with dwindling resources and morale, we’re badly mismanaged, and trying to cope with the life-changing threat of compulsory redundancies – all a result of the company’s long-term financial illiteracy and lavish excess at the top.
So I just want to say thanks for the series of articles – three now, isn’t it? – about learning to play your Fazioli piano. They’re brilliantly timed, and I know they’ll lift spirits. We always wondered how you filled your days, how you spent your fortune. Now we know.”
Posted: 23rd, January 2013 | In: Money, The Consumer | Comment (1)
How the inconsistent rich and rewarded socialists want us to live
DAVID Thompson nails them:
For some, professions of egalitarianism and socialist belly fire are a kind of rhetorical chaff – a way to elevate oneself as More Compassionate Than Thou, while deflecting envy from below. (“Please don’t hate me for being richer than you. Look, over there – they have even more, or almost as much – let’s all hiss at them!”) Vicarious philanthropy – giving away freely other people’s earnings – is a remarkably effective ruse, so much so it seems to encourage a certain disregard for dissonance, as demonstrated, for example, by the Guardian’s editor Alan Rusbridger in this comical exchange with Piers Morgan. And by the Guardian’s imperious class warrior Polly Toynbee, whose rhetoric was contrasted with her actual lifestyle and was promptly reduced to indignant spluttering on national television. Similar obliviousness is also displayed by the millionaire actor Jeremy Irons, who denounces consumerism and asks, “How many clothes do people need?” All while owning no fewer than seven houses, one of which is a peach-coloured castle. No, you’re not allowed to laugh. Because his wife is also very Green and “deeply socialist.”
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Posted: 14th, January 2013 | In: Celebrities, Money | Comments (2)
Alan Rusbridger On Tesco And The GMG
TIM Worstall spots Alan Rusbridger, editor of The Guardian, writing in the New York Review of Books about the Tesco libel case against The Guardian:
The story over which The Guardian came to grief involved a program launched by Tesco in 2006 to raise $8.5 billion through mainly joint venture sales and leaseback property deals over the following five years. The Stamp Duty Land Tax, assessed on all land transactions, represented a potential $340 million cost to the purchasers on that $8.5 billion (which, if saved, would enhance the price that the third party would be willing to pay).
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