Friday, December 02, 2005

Berliner means Doughnut


Am I alone in hating the new Berliner sized Guardian? I have to admit it's not my everyday newspaper purchase but I do buy it on Mondays for the MediaGuardian and usually take it home from the office to read on the train (yes, shock horror, DD's office has The Guardian every day!). I am sure there is less news in it than there used to be. Maybe I'm unusual but I do buy a newspaper to read news, rather than what the great Simon Jenkins or Jonathan Freedland has to say. And I can never find the Diary column any more. Maybe I'm just too bloody conservative and like what I'm used to. Actually it can't be that becasue I think the Independent on Sunday has benefitted from going tabloid. The trouble is that The Guardian is neither fish nor fowl. PS Berliner means Doughnut in German. Something with a hole in the middle. Indeed so.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

German style "Berliner" doughnuts, especially those made in Berlin, called Krapfen do not usually have any holes in them.

Of course the "Berliner" newspaper i.e. the "Berliner Zeitung", published in Berlin, is not printed in the "Berliner" or Midi" size format.

Is there actually any more real news content in the longer articles of a broadsheet ? Or is it the fewer snippets of "space filler" short paragraph news items which make it seem that there is less news content overall in the Midi or Tabloid format ?

Mike D said...

I once asked a real live German about that famous "I am a doughnut" speech of Kennedy's. He looked at me as if I had gone potty. Turns out that although there is a Berliner doughnut, "Ich bin ein Berliner" is actually perfectly good German for what it was supposed to mean.

How disappointing.

As for the Guardian...er, why are you reading it, again?

Iain Dale said...

Wat, it's called "Know Thine Enemy"!