The Guardian (otherwise known as the Grauniad because of its love affair with the typo and malapropism, decided a few years ago that it had to change its format from broadsheet (quite large by US standards…larger than the NY Times) to something else. The tabloid format didn’t appeal because to carry all the job ads they needed to carry in order to survive (its Wednesday edition carries almost every social service and public sector job advertised in the United Kingdom) they’d have to print 250 pages in tabloid format (about the same size as the NY Daily News). So they settled on the so-called “Berliner” size, named after the fact that newspapers in Berlin first used the size. If you can get European newspapers such as Le Monde or El Pais in your area, they are printed in Berliner size.
The first Berliner-sized Grauniad was published Monday. I bought it, as I normally do, and discovered that in the magazine section G2 the daily Doonesbury cartoon had disappeared. Shock! Horror! While I value the Grauniad for other reasons, I figured I’d have to venture onto the ‘net to get my daily fix, just as I do with For Better or for Worse.
Today, the third day into the new format, a notice appeared on the back page next to the other cartoon (Steve Bell, who does most of the Grauniad’s political cartoons and is a genius.) It reads:
“Where’s Doonesbury? Thanks to an outcry by fans of Garry Trudeau, his cartoon strip is making a return. There will be a catch-up omnibus of this week’s Doonesbury in G2 on Friday and the strip will return daily from Monday. For a full explanation by the fool who dropped it, see page 3.”
Truer words were never printed.
HWMBO does not like the new Grauniad. I told him, “If you can find a broadsheet version of the Grauniad, go ahead and buy it. Right now, this is the only newspaper going and I don’t want to have to get used to another one. I had to get used to the Grauniad after dropping the Times because it censored Chris Patten’s book on Hong Kong. One newspaper change in a city is enough.”
I read “Berliner sized” and all I could think of was, “it looks like a doughnut”?
Oh, well, I’m not supposed to be eating doughnuts nowadays so I’ll just read my Grauniad and think of some.