The prominence given to Christopher Hitchens, the Duchess of Cambridge, Fabio Capello and Harry Redknapp irked readers
Some rules of journalism don't change, whatever the medium, whatever the era. Fair, accurate, contemporaneous reporting is a standard that suits any age. However, if that's the unchanging object, how the subjects are chosen is a reflection of a number of factors that are anything but fixed.
It is rarely the choice of issues that draws the ire of readers, but some of the people that the Guardian features in print and online – or at least the prominence given to them – provoke puzzlement at best and intense irritation at worst. As one reader put it: "In three successive issues you have reported, on your front page, the deaths of Christopher Hitchens, Václav Havel, and Kim Jong-il. Might I ask, what criteria were used in the decision to devote more space to the death of a journalist than to two former leaders of their countries who were, in different ways, of significant international importance?"
After the death of Hitchens, the paper of 17 December 2011 ran a half-page article on the front that turned to a double-page spread on page 6, as well as a full-page obituary and a leader. It was also a substantial part of a column.
A picture of the Duchess of Cambridge drinking a smoothie on the front of the Guardian of 15 February 2012 brought forth a regular complaint: too much royalty in the paper. One reader wrote: "We do not need a picture of Kate Middleton on the front page of the Guardian! You are getting as bad as the Telegraph! I have noticed that there is a lot more royal stuff creeping into the paper these last few months. This is a change that I do not welcome."
The Guardian is a republican newspaper, but on that particular point I don't think the use of the photograph was obeisance to royalty; I think it was about celebrity. It sometimes feels that only the Queen and Prince Philip can be considered "proper" royalty any more. All other members of the family are much more firmly entrenched in the firmament of celebrity (surely it can only be a matter of time before we see Fergie in the Big Brother house).
The eerie tracking of comparisons between Princess Diana and the duchess seems only to enforce that sense, especially when it is reported, after public appearances of the former Ms Middleton, that the dress she wore has sold out.
The 18 or so pages the Guardian gave over to the interwoven affairs of Harry Redknapp and Fabio Capello – the former being cleared of a failure to pay tax, and then being considered for the job of the latter after Capello resigned as England football manager over his captain's dismissal by the FA – also led to complaints. One reader made a highly pertinent point for the modern Guardian: "At a time when you are shedding columnists and reducing the coverage of the paper, dedicating six pages of the already reduced edition to a football manager, as you have today [9 February], is likely to result in the dwindling number of those prepared to pay for the paper, one of whom I am (for the moment), diminish even further. Please consider the balance and priorities of the paper more carefully."
In contrast the paper published nearly 20 stories about the death of Whitney Houston, without receiving a single complaint about the coverage.
In fairness to the editors, "balance and priorities" is at the forefront of their every working day. You can't always get it right. One news editor said: "The intrinsic if obvious problem is that 'news value' is so subjective, and so rooted in place and time … And to complicate matters more it's based (for us at the Guardian) on a mixture of what's in the public interest (in our view) and what's of plain old interest (in our view)."
I agree with the reader who thought we gave too much space to Hitchens, and I also don't really think we needed a front-page picture of the duchess when there was an inside photo and piece, but – back to balance – she shared the front page with three other stories: gloomy news about the health reforms and the country's credit rating, plus a special report on torture and kidnap in the Sinai.