This article needs additional citations for verification .(December 2020) |
Type | Sunday newspaper (If Christmas Day falls on Sunday instead of a normal edition a special Christmas edition would be published on Saturday which is Christmas Eve) |
---|---|
Format | Originally broadsheet, Berliner (2006–2018), Compact (since 2018) [1] |
Owner(s) | Guardian Media Group |
Editor | Paul Webster |
Founded | 4 December 1791 |
Political alignment | Centre-left [2] British republicanism [3] |
Language | English |
Headquarters | Kings Place, 90 York Way, London |
Circulation | 136,656(as of July 2021) [4] |
Sister newspapers | The Guardian , The Guardian Weekly |
ISSN | 0029-7712 |
OCLC number | 50230244 |
Website | observer |
ISSN | 9976-1971 |
---|---|
OCLC number | 436604553 |
The Observer is a British newspaper published on Sundays. It is a sister paper to The Guardian and The Guardian Weekly , having been acquired by their parent company, Guardian Media Group Limited, in 1993. First published in 1791, it is the world's oldest Sunday newspaper. [5]
The first issue, published on 4 December 1791 by W.S. Bourne, was the world's first Sunday newspaper. [6] Believing that the paper would be a means of wealth, Bourne instead soon found himself facing debts of nearly £1,600. Though early editions purported editorial independence, Bourne attempted to cut his losses and sell the title to the government. When this failed, Bourne's brother (a wealthy businessman) made an offer to the government, which also refused to buy the paper but agreed to subsidise it in return for influence over its editorial content. As a result, the paper soon took a strong line against radicals such as Thomas Paine, Francis Burdett and Joseph Priestley.[ citation needed ]
In 1807, the brothers decided to relinquish editorial control, naming Lewis Doxat as the new editor. Seven years later, the brothers sold The Observer to William Innell Clement, a newspaper proprietor who owned a number of publications. The paper continued to receive government subsidies during this period; in 1819, of the approximately 23,000 copies of the paper distributed weekly, approximately 10,000 were given away as "specimen copies", distributed by postmen who were paid to deliver them to "lawyers, doctors, and gentlemen of the town." [7]
Clement maintained ownership of The Observer until his death in 1852.[ citation needed ] After Doxat retired in 1857, Clement's heirs sold the paper to Joseph Snowe, who also took over the editor's chair.
In 1870, wealthy businessman Julius Beer bought the paper and appointed Edward Dicey as editor, whose efforts succeeded in reviving circulation. Though Beer's son Frederick became the owner upon Julius's death in 1880, he had little interest in the newspaper and was content to leave Dicey as editor until 1889.[ citation needed ] Henry Duff Traill took over the editorship after Dicey's departure, only to be replaced in 1891 by Frederick's wife, Rachel Beer, [6] of the Sassoon family. She remained as editor for thirteen years, combining it in 1893 with the editorship of The Sunday Times , a newspaper that she had also bought. [8]
Upon Frederick's death in 1903, the paper was purchased by the newspaper magnate Lord Northcliffe. Northcliffe sold the paper to William Waldorf Astor in 1911, who transferred ownership to his son Waldorf Astor, 2nd Viscount Astor four years later. Garvin's departed as editor in 1942.[ citation needed ]
Ownership passed to Waldorf's sons in 1948, with David taking over as editor. He remained in the position for 27 years, during which time he turned it into a trust-owned newspaper employing, among others, George Orwell, Paul Jennings and C. A. Lejeune. In 1977, the Astors sold the ailing newspaper to US oil giant Atlantic Richfield (now called ARCO) who sold it to Lonrho plc in 1981.[ citation needed ]
It became part of the Guardian Media Group in June 1993, after a rival acquisition bid by The Independent was rejected. [9]
Farzad Bazoft, a journalist for The Observer, was executed in Iraq in 1990 on charges of spying. In 2003, The Observer interviewed the Iraqi colonel who had arrested and interrogated Bazoft and who was convinced that Bazoft was not a spy. [10]
On 27 February 2005, The Observer Blog [11] was launched. In addition to the weekly Observer Magazine colour supplement which is still present every Sunday, for several years each issue of The Observer came with a different free monthly magazine. These magazines had the titles Observer Sport Monthly, Observer Music Monthly, Observer Woman and Observer Food Monthly.
Content from The Observer is included in The Guardian Weekly for an international readership.
The Observer followed its daily partner The Guardian and converted to Berliner format on Sunday 8 January 2006. [12] [13]
The Observer was awarded the National Newspaper of the Year at the British Press Awards 2007. [14] Editor Roger Alton stepped down at the end of 2007, and was replaced by his deputy, John Mulholland. [15]
In early 2010, the paper was restyled. An article on the paper's website previewing the new version stated that "The News section, which will incorporate Business and personal finance, will be home to a new section, Seven Days, offering a complete round-up of the previous week's main news from Britain and around the world, and will also focus on more analysis and comment." [16]
In July 2021, Ofcom announced that The Guardian continued to be the UK's most widely used newspaper website and app for news and had increased its audience share by 1% over the preceding year. 23% of consumers, who used websites or apps for news, used The Guardian, which also hosts The Observer online content.[ when? ] This compared to 22% for the Daily Mail website. [17]
After the paper was rejuvenated in early 2010, the main paper came with only a small number of supplements – Sport, The Observer Magazine, The New Review and The New York Times International Weekly, an 8-page supplement of articles selected from The New York Times that has been distributed with the paper since 2007. Every four weeks the paper includes The Observer Food Monthly magazine, and in September 2013 it launched Observer Tech Monthly, [18] a science and technology section which won the Grand Prix at the 2014 Newspaper Awards. [19]
Previously, the main paper had come with a larger range of supplements including Sport, Business & Media, Review, Escape (a travel supplement), The Observer Magazine and various special interest monthlies, such as The Observer Food Monthly, Observer Women monthly which was launched in 2006, [20] Observer Sport Monthly and The Observer Film Magazine.
The Observer and its sister newspaper The Guardian operate a visitor centre in London called The Newsroom. It contains their archives, including bound copies of old editions, a photographic library and other items such as diaries, letters and notebooks. This material may be consulted by members of the public. The Newsroom also mounts temporary exhibitions and runs an educational programme for schools.
In November 2007, The Observer and The Guardian made their archives available over the Internet. [21] The current extent of the archives available are 1791 to 2000 for The Observer and 1821 to 2000 for The Guardian. They will eventually go up to 2003. In 2023, copies from 2004 onwards and gaps were to be filled to latest edition.
The paper was banned in Egypt in February 2008 for publishing cartoons of the Prophet Muhammed. [22]
The Observer was named the British Press Awards National Newspaper of the Year for 2006. [25] Its supplements have three times won "Regular Supplement of the Year" (Sport Monthly, 2001; Food Monthly, 2006, 2012). [25]
Observer journalists have won a range of British Press Awards, including [25]
Waldorf Astor, 2nd Viscount Astor, DL was an American-born English politician and newspaper proprietor. He was a member of the Astor family. He was active in minor political roles. He was devoted to charitable projects, and with his more famous wife Nancy became a prominent fixture in upper class English society.
Francis David Langhorne Astor, CH was an English newspaper publisher, editor of The Observer at the height of its circulation and influence, and member of the Astor family, "the landlords of New York".
The media in Toronto encompasses a wide range of television and radio stations, as well as digital and print media outlets. These media platforms either service the entire city or are cater to a specific neighbourhood or community within Toronto. Additionally, several media outlets from Toronto extend their services to cover the Greater Toronto Area and the Golden Horseshoe region. While most media outlets in Toronto cater to local or regional audiences, there are also several national media outlets based in the city that distribute their services across Canada and caters to a national audience.
Tes , formerly known as the Times Educational Supplement, is a British weekly trade magazine aimed at education professionals. It was first published in 1910 as a pull-out supplement in The Times newspaper. Such was its popularity that in 1914, the supplement became a separate publication selling for one penny.
Farzad Bazoft was an Iranian journalist who settled in the United Kingdom in the mid-1970s. He worked as a freelance reporter for The Observer. He was arrested by Iraqi authorities and executed in 1990 after being convicted of spying for Israel while working in Iraq.
James Louis Garvin was a British journalist, editor, and author. In 1908, Garvin agreed to take over the editorship of the Sunday newspaper The Observer, revolutionising Sunday journalism and restoring the paper, which was facing financial troubles at the time, to profitability in the process.
The New York Times Magazine is an American Sunday magazine included with the Sunday edition of The New York Times. It features articles longer than those typically in the newspaper and has attracted many notable contributors. The magazine is noted for its photography, especially relating to fashion and style.
The Sunday Times is a British Sunday newspaper whose circulation makes it the largest in Britain's quality press market category. It was founded in 1821 as The New Observer. It is published by Times Newspapers Ltd, a subsidiary of News UK, which is owned by News Corp. Times Newspapers also publishes The Times. The two papers, founded separately and independently, have been under the same ownership since 1966. They were bought by News International in 1981.
Anthony Michell Howard, CBE was a British journalist, broadcaster and writer. He was the editor of the New Statesman and The Listener and the deputy editor of The Observer. He selected the passages used in The Crossman Diaries, a book of entries taken from Richard Crossman's The Diaries of a Cabinet Minister.
The British Press Awards is an annual ceremony that has celebrated the best of British journalism since the 1970s. A financially lucrative part of the Press Gazette's business, they have been described as "the Oscars of British journalism", or less flatteringly, "The Hackademy Awards".
Ivor John Carnegie Brown CBE was a British journalist and man of letters.
Sunday Business was a national Sunday broadsheet financial newspaper published in the United Kingdom, which ran from 1996 to 2006, when it was turned into a magazine called The Business.
The Mail on Sunday is a British conservative newspaper, published in a tabloid format. It is the biggest-selling Sunday newspaper in the UK and was founded in 1982 by Lord Rothermere. Its sister paper, the Daily Mail, was first published in 1896.
Lewis Doxat was an English newspaper editor.
Michael Davie was a British journalist.
John Mulholland is an Irish journalist who was the editor of the British Sunday newspaper The Observer for 10 years and assistant editor of The Guardian. He has worked for most of his career with the Guardian Media Group. In April 2018, he became the editor of Guardian US. He left this post in 2022.
Leah Nora Beloff was an English journalist and political writer. She worked for The Observer for three decades, from 1948 to 1978, and became a political correspondent in 1964, making her the first woman in such a role for a British newspaper.
{{cite web}}
: CS1 maint: bot: original URL status unknown (link)