Pass Notes

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Pass Notes is a regular tongue-in-cheek [1] feature in UK newspaper The Guardian , first published in the short-lived Sunday Correspondent newspaper in 1989. It has been published in The Guardian since 1992, with a four-year hiatus between 2005 and 2009. On 28 June 2011, the 3,000th Pass Notes was published.

<i>The Guardian</i> British national daily newspaper

The Guardian is a British daily newspaper. It was founded in 1821 as The Manchester Guardian, and changed its name in 1959. Along with its sister papers The Observer and The Guardian Weekly, the Guardian is part of the Guardian Media Group, owned by the Scott Trust. The trust was created in 1936 to "secure the financial and editorial independence of the Guardian in perpetuity and to safeguard the journalistic freedom and liberal values of the Guardian free from commercial or political interference". The trust was converted into a limited company in 2008, with a constitution written so as to maintain for The Guardian the same protections as were built into the structure of the Scott Trust by its creators. Profits are reinvested in journalism rather than distributed to owners or shareholders.

Contents

Structure

Pass Notes – usually published four times a week on page 3 of The Guardian – was originally billed as "A daily briefing on contemporary people and events which may be of use to those whose commitments do not permit them to immerse themselves in current affairs as fully as they might wish". [2] It follows a question-and-answer pattern between two unidentified persons, one of whom apparently asks (or answers) rather dumb questions about the subject, which can be anything from real people (living or dead) to buildings, countries, food or more abstract entities.

Every Pass Notes begins with "Age" and "Appearance", followed by several questions and answers. It usually ends with "Do say" and "Don't say", followed by witty remarks one should (or in the latter case, should not) say to or about that day's subject.

Pass Notes is written by several Guardian staff writers, but the feature is published anonymously.

Origins

Pass Notes was conceived by UK newspaper The Sunday Correspondent, which had a short-lived existence between September 1989 and November 1990. Henry Porter, who edited the Correspondent's magazine, needed a short regular feature to fill the back page of the magazine and came up with Pass Notes.

After the Correspondent had folded, Pass Notes was taken up by The Guardian in October 1992 for its new G2 supplement, where it remained for many years.

Hiatus

In 2005, Pass Notes was killed off in a major restyling operation at The Guardian, in which several regular features were dropped. But in 2009 it was resurrected [3] and has been a fixed feature in the newspaper and online ever since.

3,000th edition

On 28 June 2011, the 3,000th Pass Notes was featured (the subject was, appropriately, Pass Notes itself), although The Guardian admitted that it wasn't actually sure it was the 3,000th – writer Stephen Moss said that "The numbering has sometimes gone awry, and it is by no means certain we got it back on track. Passnotesologists at the University of Keele have pointed out that in October 1994 two Pass Notes (Robert De Niro and Elizabeth Maxwell) appeared on successive days with the number 511, and that No. 688 was also repeated". [2]

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References

  1. ↑ Simons, Ned (August 15, 2014). "Nicky Morgan Profile: Could An Education Secretary Charged With 'Winning Hearts And Minds' Make It All The Way To Number 10?". Huffington Post .
  2. 1 2 The Guardian , 28 June 2011, "Pass Notes: 3,000 and counting" http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2011/jun/28/pass-notes-hits-3000
  3. ↑ The Guardian , 8 September 2009, Pass Notes no. 2,643: http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2009/sep/08/pass-notes-return-g2
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