User:Kathybramley/sandbox/History of the Guardian

(I do not endorse the full content of the article, it's just an experiment in starting to improve/shorten the main article on the Guardian by creating a secondary article)

History of the Guardian (newspaper)

The Guardian, known until 1959 as The Manchester Guardian (founded 1821), is a British national daily newspaper. Currently edited by Alan Rusbridger, it has grown from a 19th-century local paper to a national paper associated with a complex organisational structure and international multimedia and web presence. Its sister papers include The Observer (British Sunday paper) and The Guardian Weekly. ts greatest scoop has been the breaking of the News International phone hacking scandal in 2011, particularly with the revelation of the hacking of murdered teenager Milly Dowler's phone. The investigation brought about the closure of one of the highest circulation newspapers in the world, the News of the World.

Founded in 1821 by John Edward Taylor in Manchester with backing from the non-conformist Little Circle group of local businessmen, The Manchester Guardian replaced the radical Manchester Observer, which championed the Peterloo protesters. The paper currently identifies with social liberalism. In the last UK general election in 2010 the paper supported the Liberal Democrats, who went on to form a coalition government with the Conservatives. The paper is influential in the design and publishing arena, sponsoring many awards in these areas.

The Guardian has changed format and design over the years, moving from broadsheet to Berliner. It has become an international media organisation with affiliations to other national papers with similar aims. The Guardian Weekly, which circulates worldwide, contains articles from The Guardian and its sister Sunday paper The Observer, as well as reports, features and book reviews from The Washington Post and articles translated from Le Monde. Other projects include GuardianFilm, the current editorial director of which is Maggie O'Kane.

1821 to 1972

Early years

The Manchester Guardian was founded in Manchester in 1821 by cotton merchant John Edward Taylor with backing from the Little Circle, a group of non-conformist businessmen. They launched their paper after the police closure of the more radical Manchester Observer, the paper that had championed the cause of the Peterloo Massacre protesters. Taylor had been hostile to the radical reformers, writing: "(T)hey have appealed not to the reason but the passions and the suffering of their abused and credulous fellow-countrymen, from whose ill-requited industry they extort for themselves the means of a plentiful and comfortable existence. 'They do not toil, neither do they spin,' but they live better than those that do. When the government closed down the Manchester Observer, the mill-owners' champions had the upper hand.

The influential journalist Jeremiah Garnett joined Taylor during the establishment of the paper, and all of the Little Circle wrote articles for the new paper.

The prospectus announcing the new publication proclaimed that it would "zealously enforce the principles of civil and religious Liberty ... warmly advocate the cause of Reform ... endeavour to assist in the diffusion of just principles of Political Economy and ... support, without reference to the party from which they emanate, all serviceable measures".

The working-class Manchester and Salford Advertiser called the Manchester Guardian "the foul prostitute and dirty parasite of the worst portion of the mill-owners". The Manchester Guardian was generally hostile to labour's claims. Of the 1832 Ten Hours Bill the paper doubted whether in view of the foreign competition "the passing of a law positively enacting a gradual destruction of the cotton manufacture in this kingdom would be a much less rational procedure." The Manchester Guardian dismissed strikes as the work of outside agitators – "... if an accommodation can be effected the occupation of the agents of the Union is gone. They live on strife ..."

The Manchester Guardian was hostile to the Unionist cause in the American Civil War, writing on the news that Abraham Lincoln had been assassinated: "Of his rule, we can never speak except as a series of acts abhorrent to every true notion of constitutional right and human liberty ..."

C. P. Scott

Its most famous editor, C. P. Scott, made the newspaper nationally recognised. He was editor for 57 years from 1872, and became its owner when he bought the paper from the estate of Taylor's son in 1907. Under Scott the paper's moderate editorial line became more radical, supporting Gladstone when the Liberals split in 1886, and opposing the Second Boer War against popular opinion. Scott supported the movement for women's suffrage, but was critical of any tactics by the Suffragettes that involved direct action: "The really ludicrous position is that Mr Lloyd George is fighting to enfranchise seven million women and the militants are smashing unoffending people's windows and breaking up benevolent societies' meetings in a desperate effort to prevent him". Scott thought the Suffragettes' "courage and devotion" was "worthy of a better cause and saner leadership". It has been argued that Scott's criticism reflected a widespread disdain, at the time, for those women who "transgressed the gender expectations of Edwardian society".

Scott commissioned J.M. Synge and his friend Jack Yeats to produce articles and drawings documenting the social conditions of the west of Ireland (pre-First World War), and these pieces were published in 1911 in the collection Travels in Wicklow, West Kerry and Connemara.

Scott's friendship with Chaim Weizmann played a role in the Balfour Declaration of 1917, and in 1948 The Guardian was a supporter of the new State of Israel. Daphna Baram tells the story of The Guardian's relationship with the Zionist movement and Israel in the book Disenchantment: The Guardian and Israel. In June 1936, ownership of the paper passed to the Scott Trust (named after the last owner, John Russell Scott, who was the first chairman of the Trust). This move ensured the paper's independence.

Spanish Civil War

Traditionally affiliated with the centrist to centre-left Liberal Party, and with a northern, non-conformist circulation base, the paper earned a national reputation and the respect of the left during the Spanish Civil War. With the pro-Liberal News Chronicle, the Labour-supporting Daily Herald, the Communist Party's Daily Worker and several Sunday and weekly papers, it supported the Republican government against General Francisco Franco's insurgent nationalists.

Post-war

The paper so loathed Labour's left-wing champion Aneurin Bevan "and the hate-gospellers of his entourage" that it called for Attlee's post-war Labour government to be voted out of office. The newspaper opposed the creation of the National Health Service as it feared the state provision of healthcare would "eliminate selective" and lead to an increase of congenitally deformed and feckless people.

Its anti-establishment stance fell short of opposing military intervention during the 1956 Suez Crisis: "The government is right to be prepared for military action at Suez", because Egyptian control of the canal would be "commercially damaging for the West, and perhaps part of a plan for creating a new Arab Empire based on the Nile."

1972 to 2000

Northern Ireland

When 13 civil rights demonstrators were killed on 30 January 1972, known as Bloody Sunday, by British soldiers in Northern Ireland, The Guardian blamed the protesters, stating, "The organisers of the demonstration, Miss Bernadette Devlin among them, deliberately challenged the ban on marches. They knew that stone throwing and sniping could not be prevented, and that the IRA might use the crowd as a shield." Some Irish Nationalists believed that Lord Widgery's enquiry into the killings was a whitewash, but The Guardian declared that "Lord Widgery's report is not one-sided" (20 April 1972). The paper also supported internment without trial in Northern Ireland: "Internment without trial is hateful, repressive and undemocratic. In the existing Irish situation, most regrettably, it is also inevitable. ... .To remove the ringleaders, in the hope that the atmosphere might calm down, is a step to which there is no obvious alternative." And before then, The Guardian had called for British troops to be sent to the region: British soldiers could "present a more disinterested face of law and order", but only on condition that "Britain takes charge".

Social Democratic Party and New Labour

Three of The Guardian's four leader writers joined the SDP on its foundation in 1981, but the paper was enthusiastic in its support for Tony Blair in his bid to lead the Labour Party, and to become Prime Minister.

Sarah Tisdall

In 1983, the paper was at the centre of a controversy surrounding documents regarding the stationing of cruise missiles in Britain that were leaked to The Guardian by civil servant Sarah Tisdall. The paper eventually complied with a court order to hand over the documents to the authorities, which resulted in a six-month prison sentence for Tisdall, though she served only four. "I still blame myself", said Peter Preston who was the editor of The Guardian at the time, but he went on to argue that the paper had no choice because it "believed in the rule of law".

First Gulf war

In the lead up to the first Gulf War, between 1990 and 1991, The Guardian expressed doubts about military action against Iraq: "Frustration in the Gulf leads temptingly to the invocation of task forces and tactical bombing, but the military option is no option at all. The emergence yesterday of a potential hostage problem of vast dimensions only emphasised that this is far too complex a crisis for gunboat diplomacy. Loose talk of 'carpet bombing' Baghdad should be put back in the bottle of theoretical but unacceptable scenarios".

But on the eve of the war, the paper rallied to the war cause: "The simple cause, at the end, is just. An evil regime in Iraq instituted an evil and brutal invasion. Our soldiers and airmen are there, at UN behest, to set that evil to rights. Their duties are clear. ... Let the momentum, and the resolution, be swift." After the event, journalist Maggie O'Kane conceded that she and her colleagues had been a mouthpiece for war propaganda: "...we, the media, were harnessed like 2,000 beach donkeys and led through the sand to see what the British and US military wanted us to see in this nice clean war."

Journalist allegedly working for Russian intelligence services

KGB defector Oleg Gordievsky identified prominent Guardian editor Richard Gott as one of his agents. While Gott denied that he received cash, he confessed taking benefits from the KGB on a visit to the Soviet Union. He continued to write against Soviet policies, most notably by supporting the Khmer Rouge.

Gordievsky commented on the newspaper: "The KGB loved the Guardian. It was deemed highly susceptible to penetration".

Jonathan Aitken

In 1995, both the Granada Television programme World In Action and The Guardian were sued for libel by the then cabinet minister Jonathan Aitken, for their allegation that the Harrods owner Mohamed Al Fayed had paid for Aitken and his wife to stay at the Hôtel Ritz in Paris, which would have amounted to accepting a bribe on Aitken's part. Aitken publicly stated he would fight with "the simple sword of truth and the trusty shield of British fair play". The court case proceeded, and in 1997 The Guardian produced evidence that Aitken's claim of his wife paying for the hotel stay was untrue. In 1999, Aitken was jailed for perjury and perverting the course of justice.

Kosovo

The paper supported NATO's military intervention in the Kosovo War in 1999. Though the United Nations Security Council did not support the action, The Guardian stated that "the only honourable course for Europe and America is to use military force". Mary Kaldor's piece was headlined "Bombs away! But to save civilians we must get in some soldiers too."

Since 2000

In the early 2000s, The Guardian challenged the Act of Settlement 1701 and the Treason Felony Act 1848. In October 2004, The Guardian published a humorous column by Charlie Brooker in its entertainment guide, which appeared to call for the assassination of George W. Bush. This caused some controversy and the paper was forced to issue an apology and remove the article from its website. Following the 7 July 2005 London bombings, The Guardian published an article on its comment pages by Dilpazier Aslam, a 27 year old British Muslim and journalism trainee from Yorkshire. Aslam was a member of Hizb ut-Tahrir, an Islamist group, and had published a number of articles on their website. According to the paper, it did not know that Aslam was a member of Hizb ut-Tahrir when he applied to become a trainee, though several staff members were informed of this once he started at the paper. The Home Office has claimed the group's "ultimate aim is the establishment of an Islamic state (Caliphate), according to Hizb ut-Tahrir via non-violent means". The Guardian asked Aslam to resign his membership of the group and, when he did not do so, terminated his employment. In early 2009, the paper started a tax investigation into a number of major UK companies, including publishing a database of the tax paid by the FTSE 100 companies. Internal documents relating to Barclays Bank's tax avoidance were removed from The Guardian's website after Barclays obtained a gagging order. The paper played a pivotal role in exposing the depth of the News of the World phone hacking affair. The Economist's Intelligent Life magazine opined that,

As Watergate is to the Washington Post, and thalidomide to the Sunday Times, so phone-hacking will surely be to the Guardian: a defining moment in its history.

Wars in Afghanistan and Iraq

During the Afghanistan and Iraq wars, The Guardian attracted a proportion of anti-war readers as one of the mass-media outlets most critical of UK and USA military initiatives. The paper did, however, endorse the argument that Iraq had to be disarmed of 'Weapons of Mass Destruction': "It is not credible to argue, as Iraq did in its initial reaction to Mr Powell [at the Security Council], that it is simply all lies. ... Iraq must disarm."

Accusations of anti-Semitism and bias in coverage of Israel

Despite its early support for the Zionist movement, in recent decades The Guardian has been accused of biased criticism of Israeli government policy. In December 2003 columnist Julie Burchill cited "striking bias against the state of Israel" as one of the reasons she left the paper for The Times. A leaked report from the European Monitoring Centre on Racism cited The Economist's claim that for "many British Jews," the British media's reporting on Israel "is spiced with a tone of animosity, 'as to smell of anti-Semitism'... This is above all the case with the Guardian and The Independent".The EU said the report, dated February 2003 was not published because it was insubstantial in its current state and lacking sufficient evidence. Greville Janner, former president of the Board of Deputies of British Jews, has accused The Guardian of being "viciously and notoriously anti-Israel".

Responding to these accusations, a Guardian editorial in 2002 condemned anti-Semitism and defended the paper's right to criticise the policies and actions of the Israeli government, arguing that those who view such criticism as inherently anti-Jewish are mistaken. Harriet Sherwood, then The Guardian's foreign editor, now its Jerusalem correspondent, has also denied The Guardian has an anti-Israel bias, saying that the paper aims to cover all viewpoints in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

During the height of the 2011 England riots, Guardian journalist Paul Lewis was criticised for singling out Hasidic Jewish residents who were not involved in the rioting. The original content of his report stated: "The make-up of the rioters was racially mixed. Most were men or boys, some apparently as young as 10….But families and other local residents, including some from Tottenham’s Hasidic Jewish community, also gathered to watch and jeer at police.” Following the criticism, the Guardian revised the story to also mention the ethnicity of other residents in the crowd.

On 6 November 2011, Chris Elliott, the Guardian's readers' editor, wrote that "Guardian reporters, writers and editors must be more vigilant about the language they use when writing about Jews or Israel," citing recent cases where The Guardian received complaints regarding language chosen to describe Jews or Israel. Elliott noted that, over nine months, he upheld complaints regarding language in certain articles that were seen as anti-Semitic, revising the language and footnoting this change.

The Guardian's style guide section referred to Tel Aviv as the capital of Israel in 2012, but this claim was later retracted by The Guardian, saying, "We accept that it is wrong to state that Tel Aviv – the country's financial and diplomatic center – is the capital."

Clark County

In August 2004, for the US presidential election, the daily G2 supplement launched an experimental letter-writing campaign in Clark County, Ohio, an average-sized county in a swing state. G2 editor Ian Katz bought a voter list from the county for $25 and asked readers to write to people listed as undecided in the election, giving them an impression of the international view and the importance of voting against US President George W. Bush. The paper scrapped "Operation Clark County" on 21 October 2004 after first publishing a column of complaints from Bush supporters about the campaign under the headline "Dear Limey assholes". The public backlash against the campaign likely contributed to Bush's victory in Clark County.

Guardian America

In 2007, the paper launched a website Guardian America, an attempt to capitalise on its large online readership in the United States, which at the time stood at more than 5.9m. The company hired former American Prospect editor, New York magazine columnist and New York Review of Books writer Michael Tomasky to head up the project and hire a staff of American reporters and web editors. The site featured Guardian news relevant to an American audience: coverage of US news and the Middle East, for example.

Tomasky stepped down from his position as Guardian American editor in February 2009, ceding editing and planning duties to other US and London staff. He retained his position as a columnist and blogger, taking the title editor-at-large.

In October 2009, the company abandoned the Guardian America homepage, instead directing users to a US news index page on the main website. The next month, the company laid off six American employees, including a reporter, a multimedia producer and four web editors. The move came as Guardian News and Media opted to reconsider its US strategy amid a massive effort to cut costs across the company. In subsequent years, however, the Guardian has hired various commentators on US affairs including Ana Marie Cox, Michael Wolff, Naomi Wolf, Glenn Greenwald and former George W. Bush speechwriter Josh Treviño. Treviño's first blog post was an apology for a controversial tweet posted in June 2011 over the second Gaza flotilla, the controversy over which had been revived by the appointment.

Gagged from reporting Parliament

In October 2009, The Guardian reported that it was forbidden to report on a parliamentary matter, namely a question recorded in a Commons order paper, to be answered by a minister later that week. The paper noted that it was being "forbidden from telling its readers why the paper is prevented—for the first time in memory—from reporting parliament. Legal obstacles, which cannot be identified, involve proceedings, which cannot be mentioned, on behalf of a client who must remain secret. The only fact the Guardian can report is that the case involves the London solicitors Carter-Ruck." The paper further claimed that this case appears "to call into question privileges guaranteeing free speech established under the 1688 Bill of Rights". The only parliamentary question mentioning Carter Ruck in the relevant period was by Paul Farrelly MP, in reference to legal action by Barclays and Trafigura. The part of the question referencing Carter-Ruck relates to the latter company's September 2009 gagging order on the publication of a 2006 internal report into the 2006 Côte d'Ivoire toxic waste dump scandal, which involved a class action case that the company only settled in September 2009 after The Guardian published some of the commodity trader's internal emails. The reporting injunction was lifted the next day, as Carter Ruck withdrew it before The Guardian could challenge it in the High Court. Alan Rusbridger credited the rapid back-down of Carter-Ruck to Twitter, as did a BBC article.

Ownership

The Guardian is part of the GMG Guardian Media Group of newspapers, radio stations, print media including The Observer Sunday newspaper, The Guardian Weekly international newspaper, and new media—Guardian Abroad website, and guardian.co.uk. All the aforementioned were owned by The Scott Trust, a charitable foundation existing between 1936 and 2008, which aimed to ensure the paper's editorial independence in perpetuity, maintaining its financial health to ensure it did not become vulnerable to take overs by for-profit media groups. At the beginning of October 2008, the Scott Trusts assets were transferred to a new limited company, The Scott Trust Limited, with the intention being that the original trust would be wound up. Dame Liz Forgan, chair of the Scott Trust, reassured staff that the purposes of the new company remained as under the previous arrangements.

The Guardian has been consistently loss-making. The National Newspaper division of GMG, which also includes The Observer, reported operating losses of £49.9m in 2006, up from £18.6m in 2005. The paper is therefore heavily dependent on cross-subsidisation from profitable companies within the group, including Auto Trader.

The Guardian's ownership by the Scott Trust is probably a factor in its being the only British national daily to conduct (since 2003) an annual social, ethical and environmental audit in which it examines, under the scrutiny of an independent external auditor, its own behaviour as a company. It is also the only British daily national newspaper to employ an internal ombudsman (called the "readers' editor") to handle complaints and corrections.

The Guardian and its parent groups participate in Project Syndicate, established by George Soros, and intervened in 1995 to save the Mail & Guardian in South Africa, but Guardian Media Group sold the majority of its shares in the Mail & Guardian in 2002.

The continual losses made by the National Newspaper division of the Guardian Media Group caused the group to dispose of its Regional Media division by selling titles to competitor Trinity Mirror in March 2010. This included the flagship Manchester Evening News, and severed the historic link between that paper and The Guardian. The sale was in order to safeguard the future of The Guardian newspaper as is the intended purpose of the Scott Trust.

In June 2011 Guardian News and Media revealed increased annual losses of £33m and announced that it was looking to focus on its online edition for news coverage, leaving a physical newspaper that was to contain more comment and features. It was also speculated that the Guardian may become the first British national daily paper to go solely online.

For the three years up to June 2012, its parent lost £100,000 a day, which prompted Intelligent Life to question whether The Guardian can survive.

Political stance and editorial opinion

Founded by textile traders and merchants, The Guardian had a reputation as "an organ of the middle class", or in the words of C.P. Scott's son Ted "a paper that will remain bourgeois to the last". "I write for the Guardian," said Sir Max Hastings in 2005, "because it is read by the new establishment", reflecting the paper's then growing influence.

The paper's readership is generally on the mainstream left of British political opinion: a MORI poll taken between April and June 2000 showed that 80% of Guardian readers were Labour Party voters; according to another MORI poll taken in 2005, 48% of Guardian readers were Labour voters and 34% Liberal Democrat voters. The newspaper's reputation as a platform for liberal and left-wing opinions has led to the use of the epithet "Guardian reader" as a label for people holding such views.

Guardian features editor Ian Katz stated in 2004 that "...  it is no secret we are a centre-left newspaper ...". In 2008, Guardian columnist Jackie Ashley said that editorial contributors were a mix of "right-of-centre libertarians, greens, Blairites, Brownites, Labourite but less enthusiastic Brownites, etc" and that the newspaper was "clearly left of centre and vaguely progressive". She also said that "you can be absolutely certain that come the next general election, The Guardian's stance will not be dictated by the editor, still less any foreign proprietor (it helps that there isn't one) but will be the result of vigorous debate within the paper." The paper's comment and opinion pages, though often written by centre-left contributors such as Polly Toynbee, have allowed some space for right-of-centre voices such as Simon Jenkins, Max Hastings and Michael Gove.

In the run-up to the 2010 general election, following a meeting of the editorial staff, the paper declared its support for the Liberal Democrats, in particular due to the party's stance on electoral reform. The paper suggested tactical voting to prevent a Conservative victory, given Britain's first-past-the-post electoral system.

Assistant Editor Michael White, in discussing media self-censorship in March 2011, says, "I have always sensed liberal, middle class ill-ease in going after stories about immigration, legal or otherwise, about welfare fraud or the less attractive tribal habits of the working class, which is more easily ignored altogether. Toffs, including royal ones, Christians, especially popes, governments of Israel, and US Republicans are more straightforward targets."

Circulation and format

The Guardian had a certified average daily circulation of 358,844 copies in January 2009—a drop of 5.17% on January 2008—as compared to sales of 842,912 for The Daily Telegraph, 617,483 for The Times, and 215,504 for The Independent.

Publication history

The Guardian's Newsroom visitor centre and archive (No 60), with an old sign with the name The Manchester Guardian

The first edition was published on 5 May 1821, at which time The Guardian was a weekly, published on Saturdays and costing 7d.; the stamp duty on newspapers (4d. per sheet) forced the price up so high that it was uneconomic to publish more frequently. When the stamp duty was cut in 1836 The Guardian added a Wednesday edition; with the abolition of the tax in 1855 it became a daily paper costing 2d.

In 1952 the paper took the step of printing news on the front page, replacing the adverts that had hitherto filled that space. Then-editor A. P. Wadsworth wrote: "It is not a thing I like myself, but it seems to be accepted by all the newspaper pundits that it is preferable to be in fashion."

In 1959 the paper dropped "Manchester" from its title, becoming simply The Guardian, and in 1964 it moved to London, losing some of its regional agenda but continuing to be heavily subsidised by sales of the less intellectual but much more profitable Manchester Evening News. The financial position remained extremely poor into the 1970s; at one time it was in merger talks with The Times. The paper consolidated its centre-left stance during the 1970s and 1980s but was both shocked and revitalised by the launch of The Independent in 1986 which competed for a similar readership and provoked the entire broadsheet industry into a fight for circulation.

On 12 February 1988 The Guardian had a significant redesign; as well as improving the quality of its printers' ink, it also changed its masthead to a juxtaposition of an italic Garamond "The", with a bold Helvetica "Guardian", that remained in use until the 2005 redesign.

In 1992 it relaunched its features section as G2, a tabloid-format supplement. This innovation was widely copied by the other "quality" broadsheets, and ultimately led to the rise of "compact" papers and The Guardian's move to the Berliner format. In 1993 the paper declined to participate in the broadsheet price war started by Rupert Murdoch's The Times. In June 1993, The Guardian bought The Observer from Lonrho, thus gaining a serious Sunday newspaper partner with similar political views.

Its international weekly edition is now titled The Guardian Weekly, though it retained the title Manchester Guardian Weekly for some years after the home edition had moved to London. It includes sections from a number of other internationally significant newspapers of a somewhat left-of-centre inclination, including Le Monde and The Washington Post. The Guardian Weekly is also linked to a website for expatriates, Guardian Abroad, which was launched in 2007 but had been taken offline by 2012.

g24 is a constantly updated electronic newspaper available free of charge. It is downloadable as a PDF file. The contents come from The Guardian and its Sunday sibling The Observer.

Moving to the Berliner paper format

The Guardian is printed in full colour, and was the first newspaper in the UK to use the Berliner format for its main section, with producing sections and supplements in a range of page sizes including tabloid, approximately A4, and pocket-size (approximately A5).

In 2004, The Guardian announced plans to change to a "Berliner" or "midi" format similar to that used by Die Tageszeitung in Germany, Le Monde in France and many other European papers; at 470×315 mm, this is slightly larger than a traditional tabloid. Planned for the autumn of 2005, this change followed the moves by The Independent and The Times to start publishing in tabloid (or compact) format. On Thursday 1 September 2005 The Guardian announced that it would launch the new format on Monday 12 September 2005. Sister Sunday newspaper The Observer went over to the same format on 8 January 2006.

The advantage that The Guardian saw in the Berliner format was that though it is only a little wider than a tabloid, and is thus equally easy to read on public transport, its greater height gives more flexibility in page design. The new presses mean that printing can go right across the "gutter", the strip down the middle of the centre page, allowing the paper to print striking double page pictures. The new presses also made the paper the first UK national able to print in full colour on every page.

The format switch was accompanied by a comprehensive redesign of the paper's look. On Friday 9 September 2005, the newspaper unveiled its new-look front page, which débuted on Monday 12 September 2005. Designed by Mark Porter, the new look includes a new masthead for the newspaper, its first since 1988. A typeface family designed by Paul Barnes and Christian Schwartz was created for the new design. With just over 200 fonts, it is "one of the most ambitious custom type programs ever commissioned by a newspaper." Especially notable is Guardian Egyptian, a highly legible slab serif that is used in various weights for both text and headlines and is central to the redesign.

The switch cost Guardian Newspapers £80 million and involved setting up new printing presses in east London and Manchester. This was because, before The Guardian′s move, no printing presses in Britain could produce newspapers in the Berliner format. There were additional complications as one of the paper's presses was part-owned by Telegraph Newspapers and Express Newspapers, and it was contracted to use the plant until 2009. Another press was shared with the Guardian Media Group's north-western tabloid local papers, which did not wish to switch to the Berliner format.

Reception

The new format was generally well received by Guardian readers, who were encouraged to provide feedback on the changes. The only controversy was over the dropping of the Doonesbury cartoon strip. The paper reported thousands of calls and emails complaining about its loss; within 24 hours the decision was reversed and the strip was reinstated the following week. G2 supplement editor Ian Katz, who was responsible for dropping it, apologised in the editors' blog saying, "I'm sorry, once again, that I made you—and the hundreds of fellow fans who have called our helpline or mailed our comments' address—so cross". Some readers were, however, dissatisfied as the earlier deadline needed for the all-colour sports section meant that coverage of late-finishing evening football matches became less satisfactory in the editions supplied to some parts of the country.

The investment was rewarded with a circulation rise. In December 2005, the average daily sale stood at 380,693, nearly 6% higher than the figure for December 2004. In 2006, the US-based Society for News Design chose The Guardian and Polish daily Rzeczpospolita as the world's best-designed newspapers—from among 389 entries from 44 countries.