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Why do so few people buy the Independent?
It's put together on a shoestring by a team that also has to produce the ever-growing i, and people who have worked there complain that stuff is shovelled down with barely time to think.
Yet someone must have time to think, because the paper is good, and it has been getting better since Amol Rajan took over as editor.
Today let's hail the work of last night's production team, the subs, picture editors and other backroom staff who are supposed to be unnecessary seat-takers to the modern newsroom.
It's put together on a shoestring by a team that also has to produce the ever-growing i, and people who have worked there complain that stuff is shovelled down with barely time to think.
Yet someone must have time to think, because the paper is good, and it has been getting better since Amol Rajan took over as editor.
Today let's hail the work of last night's production team, the subs, picture editors and other backroom staff who are supposed to be unnecessary seat-takers to the modern newsroom.
The front page is a masterpiece of presentation, starting with the reworking of the IRA's 'bullet and the ballot box' slogan. It would work whatever image was chosen, but the choice of photographs here is exemplary.
The eye is irresistibly drawn back and forth from Asma Assad's pristine white jacket to the bombed girl's crumpled dress, from Assad's starched shirt and perfectly knotted tie to the rescuer's vest and belted jeans, from sanitised polling station to "Wild West" devastation, and, most of all, from the smugness in Damascus to the anguish of Aleppo.
That polling station picture with everyone in the background smiling obsequiously is nothing on its own, coupled with the Aleppo photograph that could have come from a film set it says everything about a cold leader surrounded by sycophants but detached from his people.
Robert Fisk's style of journalism is not to everone's taste, but here SubScribe is praising the presentation, not his despatch.
Moving inside the paper, a number of headings had a nice gentle touch:
The eye is irresistibly drawn back and forth from Asma Assad's pristine white jacket to the bombed girl's crumpled dress, from Assad's starched shirt and perfectly knotted tie to the rescuer's vest and belted jeans, from sanitised polling station to "Wild West" devastation, and, most of all, from the smugness in Damascus to the anguish of Aleppo.
That polling station picture with everyone in the background smiling obsequiously is nothing on its own, coupled with the Aleppo photograph that could have come from a film set it says everything about a cold leader surrounded by sycophants but detached from his people.
Robert Fisk's style of journalism is not to everone's taste, but here SubScribe is praising the presentation, not his despatch.
Moving inside the paper, a number of headings had a nice gentle touch:
And this one tucked in the corner of Andrew Grice's spread on the LibDems trying to put the best gloss on their electoral disaster/botched coup by sending Clegg and Cable out to the pub:
SubScribe has always been a fan (in their right place) of chatty headings and use of appropriate punctuation, which doesn't usually include quote marks, and there are two goodies here. It's just a shame that there are parentheses in both.
The ad doesn't look as intrusive when you see the whole page. I love that the sub sees the irony in the Lonely Planet publishing a book of undiscovered destinations. As to the places with the most single people, you need only read the heading and the panel, since the story (sorry, Jonathan Owen) is an extended version of both. That's the problem with that sort of survey, all you want is a table - but you can't have that without a story. Ho hum.
And finally, here's a jolly picture from the foreign pages. It would have been nice to know who the people in the "floor covering" are, I suspect not the "many great French writers, poets and scientists" buried at the Panthéon.
And finally, here's a jolly picture from the foreign pages. It would have been nice to know who the people in the "floor covering" are, I suspect not the "many great French writers, poets and scientists" buried at the Panthéon.
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