En Guardian! The British are coming-again. The launch of a U.S. edition of the unabashedly liberal Guardian may be just what the Bush-whacked U.S. press needs.
By Michael Wolff
It was a daylong conference about the media's role in the Iraq war, sponsored by the Guardian newspaper and held in its archive center-a newly refurbished building with café-across the street from the Guardian's main building on Farringdon Road in London.
Everything about the conference seemed foreign-not just the self-critical nature of the conversation, but the bad air-conditioning and stifling temperature of the room. I tried to imagine such an event in New York or Washington-picking at the fresh scab of how we had covered the war-and what news organization would sponsor it. Of course, the real subject here-which so much of the U.S. media had closed ranks around-was the U.S. itself. That most massive of Bigfoots. Indeed, more and more, the foreign media had a distinct journalistic advantage over the U.S. media: Foreigners could go after the central story and openly dispute the Bush-administration message, whereas U.S. journalists were tied to the party line by a complicated emotional, social, political, and corporate etiquette.
In this respect-as a robust counterpoint to the American media-the Guardian (to which I sometimes contribute) had had a very good war. It became an almost-fashionable read on select U.S. campuses and in certain American liberal circles. Traffic on its Website, which has had a steadily growing American audience, climbed dramatically during the war. The electronic Guardian was the alternative press-if you were looking for one.
Still, when, during a coffee break, Alan Rusbridger, the Guardian's editor, said to me, in a most offhanded way, "We're coming to America," I assumed he was talking about a personal visit.
"Well, let's definitely get together," I politely said.
"No," he said. "We're bringing the Guardian to America. We're going to publish an American version."
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