Many readers who responded to the Guardian’s recent transformation into a tabloid had highly specific reservations, including about the redesigned weather page. A selection: “The new format Guardian is pretty successful but, oh please, please can we have back the sunrise and set and moonrise and set and phasing.”
“The south coast weather is no longer represented.”
“Do we need a quarter of the page given over to the Atlantic weather map and jet stream? I am not a meteorologist.”
“Worst of all, no tides and timetables – the absence makes my coastal walks round the [illegible] bay very hit and miss!”
The Guardian’s editor-in-chief, Katharine Viner, listened when I summarised the detailed points readers had made. Noting that her job was “to cater for all readers, which inevitably means disappointing some”, she was nevertheless flexible.
I can report that weight of reader sentiment will lead to some adjustments, to be introduced in the coming weeks. Details are still being determined, but expect the sun and moon to return, along with tides information and lighting-up times. The winds of change may move the jet stream.
In the Guardian’s previous Berliner format there had been space for the previous day’s weather from 64 locations around the UK. The tabloid initially reduced that to eight, but none were south of Bristol. In future, Brighton will be added, and various other locations are likely to be rotated in and out. Belfast will return.
The feedback was a reminder that in this era of transition in the provision and consumption of media, not everyone looks up the forecast on an app. And newspapers have other longstanding, humble and practical roles as artefacts.
News-on-paper serves functions beyond the journalism it initially conveys. Unfurled on trains or strewn on tables, a newspaper used to be thought to flag the reader’s politics or education. The smartphones people commune with on the train tell you nothing of what they are reading, only whether they are Apple or non-Apple users.
Two readers had Berliner pangs because its pages were the perfect size to line, respectively, the woodbox and the recycling bin. But they were adjusting, they said. Why, asked another, are scrunched pages of the tabloid less effective at cleaning the windows. One man said the Berliner had been just right for holding across his fireplace to create the draught that encouraged his (smokeless) fuel to blaze.
Viner responded with diplomat’s agility: “I like the Guardian being part of people’s lives, however it is useful to them.”
• Many thanks to all readers who sent feedback, and to Anna Clarke and Sarah Dear, among others, who helped me to absorb it.
• Paul Chadwick is the Guardian’s readers’ editor
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