Georgina, did you lose your nerve?
Dear Georgina,
I read your piece in the Guardian today on the Guardian comment website, and it made me want to chip in.
In my opinion, with the exception of CIF Belief, CIF lost its nerve. It needed intellectual leadership and instead got the cycling editor, Matt Seaton. As a result, CIF now reads like a tabloid agony column. CIF has drifted into the shallows and unless you and Emily Bell alter its course CIF will soon be beached and it will require an expensive re-launch or binning.
Opinion writing from CIF's regular stable of sanitised, unscintillating, middle-of-the-roaders now sounds arch, insincere and even ridiculous. Again, with the exception of some of the writers on CIF Belief.
How can writers who dedicate themselves to trying not to rock the boat come up with forthright and uncompromised opinions. Can't be done. And of course the last refuge of the insipid is going to be identity politics, ecology, religion and civil liberties.
On CIF now complex issues are constantly over-simplified to attract "customers". The CIF blogs are written more to attract clickage than co-creation. They are aimed at satisfying the "consumer needs of your online audience for content", rather than at encouraging Guaradian readers to be participants and co-creators. But doesn't clickage, on its own as measurement of success, often torpedo informed opinion?
One twee and inconsequential blog is comissioned after another on CIF these days by two of your comissioning editors. Meanwhile, the Tory viral campaigners seem to have been given free reign; perhaps because they brush up nice, perhaps their Ashcroft sponsored clickage is so valued by your marketing department.
The first versions of CiF were superior to the present one. You should have held a steady course. You were doing the right thing and going in the right direction. But you didn't and your article was not celebratory at all. It was a small and uncertain little thing tucked away inside the paper. The Guardian sent in the marketeers and you took the decision to to "sanitise" and market CIF and so you hired a couple of hacks to do so: Matt Seaton and Ros Taylor.
Georgina, look at the result. Hasn't CIF turned into an irrelevant mess? The lesson we should all learn from the CIF experience is that the bland and the fatuous can be poison.
And it will all have been Swri ya Alan Rushbridger, Shwri yangu and Swri ya Matt Seaton.
All the same.
My best wishes to you.
Phil Hall
(I've added to the open letter I sent Georgina. CIF editors are free to comment if they dare.)
__________________________________________
Phil
Sorry - but I don't accept your analysis or your conclusion. I've no idea what you mean about "sending in the marketeers", or "sanitising Cif". Of course it's developed, and I'm sorry that you don't like it any more because you were an early reader and poster.
But I suppose that's the thing about the internet - we may have lost you as a contributor, but hopefully you've found somewhere else that's more to your taste.
Best wishes
Georgina
_____________________________________________
Georgina,
Well, thank you for answering.
Of course, though I met you briefly, I do recall the meet up with Linda and I remember you and your kindnesses with regards to my parents. For that thank you again and thank you and Linda. I remember.
However, I brought my energy to CIF and creativity to CIF, and I am sorry to say, with a few exceptions I think I wasted it.
And that does annoy me rather a lot.
Phil
_________________________________
And another thing:
And by the way, it seems that the former Ambassador Craig Murray agrees with me. He's thinking of suing the Guardian over CIF's treatment of him. I am not making these comments out of a naive sense of what should happen. These criticisms are supported by those of an expert in the medium of Internet publishing.
As I commented to another friend, and former Editor himself:
"I think Matt Seaton probably got the job at CIF because he was a workaday journalist and a seemingly balanced, hardworking and pleasant creature, who knew how to tout his fairness to Georgina et al. He probably also waxed on eloquently about identity politics. In other words, he was the wrong man for the Job. How can someone who is essentially just a hack and a wet blanket be in charge of fomenting debate?"
"Of course it's (Comment is Free) developed", Picture by Taramarsden
Dear Georgina,
I read your piece in the Guardian today on the Guardian comment website, and it made me want to chip in.
In my opinion, with the exception of CIF Belief, CIF lost its nerve. It needed intellectual leadership and instead got the cycling editor, Matt Seaton. As a result, CIF now reads like a tabloid agony column. CIF has drifted into the shallows and unless you and Emily Bell alter its course CIF will soon be beached and it will require an expensive re-launch or binning.
Opinion writing from CIF's regular stable of sanitised, unscintillating, middle-of-the-roaders now sounds arch, insincere and even ridiculous. Again, with the exception of some of the writers on CIF Belief.
How can writers who dedicate themselves to trying not to rock the boat come up with forthright and uncompromised opinions. Can't be done. And of course the last refuge of the insipid is going to be identity politics, ecology, religion and civil liberties.
On CIF now complex issues are constantly over-simplified to attract "customers". The CIF blogs are written more to attract clickage than co-creation. They are aimed at satisfying the "consumer needs of your online audience for content", rather than at encouraging Guaradian readers to be participants and co-creators. But doesn't clickage, on its own as measurement of success, often torpedo informed opinion?
One twee and inconsequential blog is comissioned after another on CIF these days by two of your comissioning editors. Meanwhile, the Tory viral campaigners seem to have been given free reign; perhaps because they brush up nice, perhaps their Ashcroft sponsored clickage is so valued by your marketing department.
The first versions of CiF were superior to the present one. You should have held a steady course. You were doing the right thing and going in the right direction. But you didn't and your article was not celebratory at all. It was a small and uncertain little thing tucked away inside the paper. The Guardian sent in the marketeers and you took the decision to to "sanitise" and market CIF and so you hired a couple of hacks to do so: Matt Seaton and Ros Taylor.
Georgina, look at the result. Hasn't CIF turned into an irrelevant mess? The lesson we should all learn from the CIF experience is that the bland and the fatuous can be poison.
And it will all have been Swri ya Alan Rushbridger, Shwri yangu and Swri ya Matt Seaton.
All the same.
My best wishes to you.
Phil Hall
(I've added to the open letter I sent Georgina. CIF editors are free to comment if they dare.)
__________________________________________
Phil
Sorry - but I don't accept your analysis or your conclusion. I've no idea what you mean about "sending in the marketeers", or "sanitising Cif". Of course it's developed, and I'm sorry that you don't like it any more because you were an early reader and poster.
But I suppose that's the thing about the internet - we may have lost you as a contributor, but hopefully you've found somewhere else that's more to your taste.
Best wishes
Georgina
_____________________________________________
Georgina,
Well, thank you for answering.
Of course, though I met you briefly, I do recall the meet up with Linda and I remember you and your kindnesses with regards to my parents. For that thank you again and thank you and Linda. I remember.
However, I brought my energy to CIF and creativity to CIF, and I am sorry to say, with a few exceptions I think I wasted it.
And that does annoy me rather a lot.
Phil
_________________________________
And another thing:
And by the way, it seems that the former Ambassador Craig Murray agrees with me. He's thinking of suing the Guardian over CIF's treatment of him. I am not making these comments out of a naive sense of what should happen. These criticisms are supported by those of an expert in the medium of Internet publishing.
As I commented to another friend, and former Editor himself:
"I think Matt Seaton probably got the job at CIF because he was a workaday journalist and a seemingly balanced, hardworking and pleasant creature, who knew how to tout his fairness to Georgina et al. He probably also waxed on eloquently about identity politics. In other words, he was the wrong man for the Job. How can someone who is essentially just a hack and a wet blanket be in charge of fomenting debate?"
Comments
CIF has lost its bite, probably because The Guardian has become an anodyne rag peddling politics lite- carefully sticking to the middle of the road and not rocking any boats.
Shame.