Trivers is out. It will be the last profile I do for the Guardian since that slot is a casualty of the redesign; and I’m glad it was so much fun. It was one of the best jobs, perhaps the very best, that I have ever had as a journalist and I can’t think of any other European paper which would have run those.
List to follow when I feel more organised
I hope this is not an indication of general decline due to the redesign…
How odd that the Graun should be dropping a feature that gets ABs returning to reread. The Times, when it went tabloid, dropped a lot of its cleverer stuff – it dropped a lot of stuff – but the Independent didn’t, and you’d think the trend would be toward more stuff, if only as a distinguishing feature.
Perhaps you were charging too much?
Anyone who suppose I charge too much for anything knows nothing about journalism.
In fact, the profiles are to move upmarket, and to concentrate on the thought of the profilee, rather than having the life interworven. They will still be shorter, though: only about half the current length. I think that’s a shame, simply because you can’t squeeze the life-work of anyone who has had many interesting ideas down into 16 or 1800 words. Or, if you do, you end up with an encyclopaedia entry, which is not much fun to read.
But we will have to see how this works out. All new slots take time to get right. I have done one of the new slots already (John Gray) and can already see ways in which the next one could be improved.
Besides, the new Review section will have two new
fluffylight-hearted featurettes, one of them my idea, which should attract thoese troublesome early letters of the alphabet. No one on the Guardian wishes to follow the ghastly example of the Times in anything.