If you are among those who recently got in touch with your thoughts on the Guardian’s coverage of the Westminster attack, then you may soon become an official part of the paper’s history.
As an archivist, I’ve been trained to take the long view, preserving records that I hope will survive for centuries. But here at the Guardian News & Media archive we’re also constantly striving to keep pace with developments at the paper, so we can ensure we are capturing its activities for researchers down the line.
This is where your voices come in. Since the launch and rapid expansion of the paper’s membership scheme, the archive team has been considering how it might bring members’ voices into the collection. Preserving a sample of the correspondence we receive from requests for feedback, as with the Westminster attack, is just one possible approach. I’ve been looking through our catalogue to see how we have included the paper’s readers to date — and have found traces scattered everywhere.
Everyone thinks they understand who the Guardian’s readers are – the stereotypes, from the angry activist (demonstrator iratus) to the green-minded reader (organicus vegetabilis), were brilliantly illustrated by Posy Simmonds for a 2006 wallchart given away with the paper, and subsequently kept in the archive. But it’s been a long time since the Guardian itself was complacent about knowing its audience.
According to Tim Radford, a journalist who recorded an oral history for us in 2001, it wasn’t until the 1970s that market research really took off at the Guardian. Writers who had happily assumed they were read exclusively by “teachers and social workers who wore leg warmers … drove Volvos … gave lots of money to Oxfam and were inclined to have a son on the dole”, were suddenly faced by a totally different reality, he says on the tape.
But in the 1950s, managers were already collecting data about readers, communicating their discoveries to staff through the Guardian’s annual working reports. These documents, also in the archive, give us brief glimpses into the lives of past readers: in 1953, 17% of Guardian readers owned a refrigerator, for example, while 44% were “regular TV viewers”.
But alongside the anonymised data, it is reassuring to find readers’ letters in the collections too, intertwined with the usual staples of a business archive: editorial correspondence, internal memos and managers’ subject files.
Some are letters of praise and of support, including those sent following the deaths of favourite writers, or during difficult periods of the paper’s history. When in 1966, for example, the paper’s finances were in such dire straits the chairman was considering a merger with the Times, readers wrote to express solidarity with the editor, Alastair Hetherington, to tell him how much they valued the Guardian and wanted it to continue.
Others are less positive. Since the Guardian acquired a readers’ editor in the late 1990s, we have actively collected sample files of readers’ complaints. These capture not only reader reactions to controversial content, but also the paper’s responses and behind-the-scenes ruminations. And littered across the records of editors, managing editors and journalists, we also find letters of complaint from before the readers’ editor, sometimes with copy replies – they cover everything from typos to redesigns to the political bent of editorials.
Which letters were kept and where they were preserved can say a lot about how editors have valued and respected the opinions of their readers. Peter Preston, for example, kept readers’ letters in the subject files used in decision-making during his time as editor. His file on the Guardian’s 1988 redesign includes an analysis of the 1,100 readers’ letters received in the month following the changes, alongside his notes on possible improvements. His file on the jailing of the once anonymous government source Sarah Tisdall contains readers’ letters too, and not just from those sympathetic to his lasting regret over the matter.
Of course, even without all these examples, letters to the editor that appeared in the paper would always be preserved in print at the British Library and elsewhere, but are often truncated at publication to fit the available space. We now collect the original letters and emails in the archive. If you have ever wondered whether one of our letters page correspondents can truly be real, we’ve got the letter to prove it, in full.
Data protection aficionados may be reeling at the idea of all those full names and home addresses lying open to the eyes of archive users in our London reading room. I hasten to add that we do take readers’ privacy seriously. Where they are selected for preservation, letters containing personal details of private individuals are kept closed to researchers for the lifetime of the writer. To be on the safe side, we (rather optimistically) assume that all adult readers are a youthful 16 years old and all will live to be 100.
Why do we believe it is worthwhile to keep hold of these closed letters for so long? You have to take the archivists’ long view: earlier records, held by the University of Manchester library, show readers of the late 1800s and early 1900s writing to CP Scott’s Guardian to air their views on topics of the day, from women’s suffrage to Boer War concentration camps.
Their letters include both the voices of well-known correspondents such as suffragette Emmeline Pankhurst and former prime minister Henry Campbell-Bannerman, and those of everyday readers. Records capturing members’ views today will hopefully provide a similar treasure trove of evidence for students of 21st-century history.
For those interested in the history of the Guardian itself they will be essential. Keeping only the newspapers and the records of those who produce them would be a little like saving just one side of a set of correspondence – to capture the whole conversation we need the voices of those who read the Guardian too.
- Philippa Mole is head of archive at Guardian News & Media Archive
Readers in the Guardian News & Media archive
Readers’ editor’s records
The papers of the Guardian readers’ editors contain examples of letters and complaints relating to significant issues.
Readers’ letters in collections of personal papers
The archive holds the papers of journalists, designers and photographers who have played a role in the history of the Guardian or Observer. These sometimes include letters from members of the public, such as notes of condolence from fans of the cricket writer and music critic Neville Cardus following his death in 1975, or comments on Hugo Young’s biography of Margaret Thatcher, One of Us, when it was published in 1987.
Readers’ responses to call-outs and competitions
The diary pages under Martin Wainwright hosted many informal reader competitions and requests for readers’ opinions on diverse subjects including bowler hat wearers and loofah growing. A small sample of the resulting correspondence has been kept as a record of the tone and feel of the section, much loved in its time.
Oral history recordings
We don’t currently hold any oral histories from readers (a thought for the future?) but many of the staff members interviewed, from the former Scott Trust chair Liz Forgan to designer David Hillman, have talked about readers they had contact with, or received letters from.
Readership data
Often during its recent history, the Guardian has collected survey data and statistics to try to get to know its readers better. For example, one externally commissioned report from 1987 compares the opinions of Guardian and other newspaper readers on voting and public services.
Working reports
These were produced from the 1940s to the 1980s as a way for managers to share information about the company with staff. They include easily digestible tidbits of information about readers, designed to give employees a better idea of who they were writing for or selling to.
TV adverts
One series of adverts from the early 1980s promoted the Guardian by using vox pops from readers explaining why they chose the paper.
Members can visit the Guardian archives at our office in Kings Cross, London, by signing up for one of our organised tours. The next one will be held on 6 June. You can find out more details here.
