Corcaoich, that is true. While I was in charge GT became the first paper in Qatar to report a car accident (! it really was that bad under the old regime), the first to report workers' going on strike, we repeatedly named the companies involved until I was specifically ordered to stop, we were the first to report domestic abuse cases, we campaigned for foreign universities to be invited to Qatar, we were the first to introduce criminal court reports and, of course, we were instrumental in ending the camel jockey scandal. It is very difficult to imagine most of those things being tackled today. Sure, there were plenty of things we were forced to leave alone - often because of comercial pressure, rather than government pressure, the government intervened hardly at all - but at least we were trying to do something and (I thought) laying the groundwork to build on. There is only so much you can do in any situation - and who is even to say that I, with my foreign opinions - was doing the right thing, anyway?
@ The-birdie: They dropped me like a hot brick, giving me five months' gardening leave rather than have me infecting the brave new era with old ideas. So there was no lucrative consultancy, I'm afraid. I now amuse myself doing stuff that is free from moral dilemmas and stress.
The new design seems to have picked a bunch of different ideas from different places, part magazine, part tabloid. They are clearly trying to create a visual illusion of shortening the pages by using strong horizontal lines, while also trying to create frames for strongly vertical - and large - pictures. This is a follow-on from the ideas introduced with The Independent almost 25 years ago; the trouble is that if you are going to have a fantastic display of pix, you need fantastic pix to display, and you won't get that without having, at least, a dedicated picture editor to hunt out the best wire pix every day. I'll lay odds GT won't pay for that. If you look at the old design, I also used horizontal stress to limit the page depth, often by having horizontal story blocks across between five and seven columns top and/or bottom of the page.
Saif - not all change is welcome, only change that is for the better. If that is what this is, well and good. If anything, it looks to me as if more space is being given to corporate press releases (Vodafone, WDoha Hotel, Ahlibank, Qtel) than in the past, because the design demands that "stories" (as distinct from the fillers along the top of the pages) get a massive display.
Corcaoich, that is true. While I was in charge GT became the first paper in Qatar to report a car accident (! it really was that bad under the old regime), the first to report workers' going on strike, we repeatedly named the companies involved until I was specifically ordered to stop, we were the first to report domestic abuse cases, we campaigned for foreign universities to be invited to Qatar, we were the first to introduce criminal court reports and, of course, we were instrumental in ending the camel jockey scandal. It is very difficult to imagine most of those things being tackled today. Sure, there were plenty of things we were forced to leave alone - often because of comercial pressure, rather than government pressure, the government intervened hardly at all - but at least we were trying to do something and (I thought) laying the groundwork to build on. There is only so much you can do in any situation - and who is even to say that I, with my foreign opinions - was doing the right thing, anyway?
@ The-birdie: They dropped me like a hot brick, giving me five months' gardening leave rather than have me infecting the brave new era with old ideas. So there was no lucrative consultancy, I'm afraid. I now amuse myself doing stuff that is free from moral dilemmas and stress.
The new design seems to have picked a bunch of different ideas from different places, part magazine, part tabloid. They are clearly trying to create a visual illusion of shortening the pages by using strong horizontal lines, while also trying to create frames for strongly vertical - and large - pictures. This is a follow-on from the ideas introduced with The Independent almost 25 years ago; the trouble is that if you are going to have a fantastic display of pix, you need fantastic pix to display, and you won't get that without having, at least, a dedicated picture editor to hunt out the best wire pix every day. I'll lay odds GT won't pay for that. If you look at the old design, I also used horizontal stress to limit the page depth, often by having horizontal story blocks across between five and seven columns top and/or bottom of the page.
Saif - not all change is welcome, only change that is for the better. If that is what this is, well and good. If anything, it looks to me as if more space is being given to corporate press releases (Vodafone, WDoha Hotel, Ahlibank, Qtel) than in the past, because the design demands that "stories" (as distinct from the fillers along the top of the pages) get a massive display.