The Guardian - Live World News 12+

I couldn’t have survived the pandemic without the Guardian by my side. The only minor annoyance is the plea for donations (not too annoying since I LOVE that the weekly mag doesn’t have ads), and the fact that even if you are on a monthly donation plan, the app doesn’t consider this to be equivalent to an online subscription (which, to be fair, it isn’t). So I get most of my reading done via the snail mail paper copy we subscribe to, and just top off at the app.

Room for improvement: pls improve the app search algorithm. If I am searching for an article or book review I’ve already read in the hard copy magazine and I know the key words or names, half the time the article won’t let itself be found via the app search engine no matter what I do. Sometimes this can be resolved by googling the article in question, and sometimes not, but either way it’s very frustrating. Still overall, great app, and I’m glad it’s out there making the world a better place!

Alas, the redesign is a mess. 1️⃣—-> Hiding sections leaves large bolded headings that waste space. They should vanish entirely. 2️⃣ —> Font control is convoluted. It's split between the Control Center for headlines and within articles for their text. 3️⃣ ——> The font size jumps too much — we need finer control. 4️⃣ ——> In addition, if you enlarge the font size for the main page, the organization changes dramatically. It goes from a normal mixed newspaper style to a blocky, uninviting, 2-across rectangular grid — far too uniform and industrial looking. 5️⃣ ——> The Guardian now imposes its own main page organization, and the section order cannot be changed. That is a major step backwards. WE FIND OURSELVES READING FEWER AND FEWER GUARDIAN ARTICLES EVERY DAY! Surely, that's not not what you want! 6️⃣ Your “My Guardian” section is NOT an alternative. It has an enforced layout, blocky and grid-bound, and includes Podcasts for EVERY section even if we don't want them! 7️⃣——> Today, March 26, your Home page displayed photos for a story that blocked the headlines! 8️⃣—-> Which designers thought these changes were a good idea? Which “Engineering Managers” signed off on them? Please listen to your readers and app users and fix these issues, even reverse your actions. Your email on the changes offered no justification. Seriously, you are ruining a wonderful source of news, committed journalism, and skilled reporting.

I have really enjoyed the Guardian until the past few years. Years ago, it was tolerable to see a few young writers offer up a few novel interpretations of history or culture we never knew about, surrounded by a the wealth of objective apolitical news reporting by professionals your loyal readers could readily consume. But now the vast majority of your news articles are opinion-based, political, or racially charged hit-pieces dismantling some part of western culture your writers utterly despise. It is so bad, I now have to scroll through 90% of the articles just to find a single one about something innocent, like the wildlife in the UK, the world economy, etc. ….some world news event that is apolitical and free of ‘victimhood culture’. Your news now is just editorialized, hyper-charged opinion. Activist hate has spread like wildfire through your news org. Its now so biased and jaded against large cross sections of people, races, ages, religions, or genders there is nothing truly objective left that can see the world of good people as worthy. Your news it seems is just not fit to print without hateful interpretations looking through the dark colored lense of identity politics.

I miss the Old Guardian where all people and all news had value as is. Now it is heavily filtered, heavily jaded, and toxic. I just cant listen to the passive agressive rage in so many young writers any longer. I have to say goodbye.