International perspective is a trait that runs through the history of the Guardian, disproportionate to its northern English origins. As leaders of the UK and US pursue a new isolationism in a globalised world, the benefit of connectedness has its modest symbol in the Guardian Weekly, which celebrates its centenary next year. I call it GW.
Americans may have noticed that the first issue of the Manchester Guardian Weekly Edition (twopence) appeared on 4 July 1919. It reported the signing of the Treaty of Versailles, but also the US law that prefigured Prohibition. The date, said some, was the “thirsty‑first”. In the 1930s – when Hitler’s government banned the Guardian, and by extension GW, for truth‑telling – refugees to the US took the GW habit with them, and that country retains a strong base of subscribers today. So does Germany, where GW was able in the late 1940s to print in Hamburg and so supply two scarce commodities: news and wrapping paper.
As it has become better understood that environmental pressures do not acknowledge the borders set by humans, GW’s steady focus on that issue over many years is being vindicated. Its column, Nature watch, routinely makes the point in micro. GW was a precursor in other ways too, perhaps. A GW staff photo from 1921 shows three men and two women. Two of the four GW editors since 1993 have been women.
GW can select from the print and digital journalism of the daily Guardian, weekly Observer, Guardian US and Guardian Australia. Examining the GWs since its redesign as a weekly news magazine in October, I was struck by the range and quality of coverage that GW distils each week. In future, for instance, it will surely give an overview of English-language arts in our times.
Like many, I remain wistful about GWs printed on light bright white airmail paper, an onion skin of nourishment. But I am converted to the new product – less than A4 size, sharper looking on better paper, a superior setting for informative graphics and some superb photojournalism.
The GW editor, Will Dean, tells me subscriptions are up by 10%, more than half of that from mainland Europe – to me, the Don’tBrexiteers. In the UK, Dean says, readers aged 25-45 have taken notice, as the small GW team try to attract to a print product “people who may not have the time for a daily newspaper and/or read most of their news online – but still like the feel of print and having something they can keep in their bags all week to dive in and out of”.
As with the Guardian and Observer resizing last January to tabloid, some GW readers have been unsettled by the new look, but Dean says most tell him they will stick so long as they get the same quality Guardian and Observer content.
The Guardian’s first biographer, David Ayerst, the source for most historical data given here, noted that although UK expatriates were among the GW readership, from its beginning a large part of its audience had never lived in England. “What its readers had in common was not a community of blood but a community of political faith,” he wrote.
• Paul Chadwick is the Guardian readers’ editor. Open door will return on 14 January, fortnightly on Mondays
