UFO Info Week-End

He informed them that the owners Lonrho had agreed to sell the title to the Guardian for a reported pounds 27m

He informed them that the owners, Lonrho, had agreed to sell the title to the Guardian for a reported pounds 27m. Which is when the paper’s problems really began.After years of gossip, rumour and speculation, Donald Trelford called a meeting of staff at the newspaper’s headquarters at Chelsea Bridge on 29 April 1993. The London-only Section 5 came and went, as did another consumer-style magazine launched in 1992. The magazine was killed off altogether in 1994, when the paper was bought by the Guardian.

It had been tampered with before, but it wasn’t until the magazine was relaunched as M in the mid-Eighties that the cracks began to show. This incarnation attempted to get to grips with the changing mood of the times (youth, consumerism etc) only to be replaced by a larger format magazine when it proved to be unpopular. During the Sixties and Seventies it rivalled the Sunday Times Magazine as a window to the world, offering reportage photography, discursive essays and 101 ways with a wok in equal measure, but during the Eighties and Nineties the magazine has had mixed fortunes. While the Sunday Times continued to appeal to a growing middle market, the liberal young intelligentsia were persuaded by the Independent on Sunday’s grasp on modern culture. The Observer lacked clear definition.As for the Observer Magazine, it has attempted more comebacks than Gary Glitter. Under the 18-year editorship of Donald Trelford the paper went through many incarnations, some inspired, some lamentable, but none that were enough to save it during the Eighties, when the paper’s already decreasing market share was chipped away even more – due largely to the Sunday Times’ profit-driven expansion into a multi-sectioned paper, coupled with the launch of first the Sunday Correspondent and then the Independent on Sunday.

Fashion editor Lucinda Alford is also leaving.By common consensus, it is time for a change, but at the Observer it is always time for a change. Mimi Spencer, who edited the Observer’s monthly fashion supplement Madame Figaro, has become fashion editor of the Evening Standard, while last week the paper’s chief designer, Graham Black, who masterminded last autumn’s redesign, handed in his notice. It’s a completely different newspaper from the one I joined five years ago.”"This penny-pinching just shows a lack of love and respect for the title and its traditions,” says another long-serving Observer journalist. “People will continue to leave if this goes on, which is maybe what the Guardian wants. As for Jaspan, we would be prepared to work for him if the paper was improving, but as it isn’t there is incredible reluctance to do anything at all He has the will but not the touch.”Staff continue to leave. Barclay has since decided to take up the post on another Sunday paper, a serious loss for the paper. “People are beginning to wonder why the Guardian bought the paper in the first place,” says Barclay, “as they seem unable to make the right decisions.