Guido has learned that the Sindy‘s political correspondent Matt Chorley is jumping ship to become the first Political Editor of the MailOnline. Chorley has confirmed to Guido that he will start his new job on September 10, just in time for party conference season. The Sindy gets 120,000 odd readers and the MailOnline has some 5.3 million visitors a day. Quite a step up…

The Guardian has come under heavy fire over the last week for running an opinion piece by Joshua Trevino, a journalist who sparked controversy by saying he was “cool” with the idea of the IDF shooting American citizens on a flotilla bound for Gaza:

Dear IDF: If you end up shooting any Americans on the new Gaza flotilla — well, most Americans are cool with that. Including me.—
Joshua Treviño (@jstrevino) June 25, 2011

When Al Jazeera reported on the story and claimed Trevino had been hired as a correspondent, the Guardian contacted them demanding that they issue a correction since apparently he was only a freelance contributor. However, judging by these before and after shots of two press releases from the paper, it looks like some creative editing has been going on at Guardian towers:

Before:

After:

First they announce Trevino as a new member of their editorial team, then demote him to a mere commentator. The Guardian has some nerve asking for a correction when they have had to correct themselves…

Guido understands an email went out to Guardian staff yesterday informing them that there is to be a ‘management restructuring’.. to achieve ‘a renewed focus on protecting and developing our print revenue’. Managing the decline might be more accurate.

Guido’s source thinks this is Rusbridger and the controlling clique on the board realising he’s spent shedloads too much on his over-staffed online folie de grandeur and presages a shift back to basics – the dead tree edition of the Guardian still brings in 75% of the revenue. For now…

UPDATE: Meanwhile the Guardian‘s head of media has been analysing the lads’ mag market.

Nuts down 21%, FHM down 21%, Zoo off 15%…only a matter of time before the lads mags die off. Men's Health easily the market leader.—
Dan Sabbagh (@dansabbagh) August 16, 2012

If he’s using that logic for Nuts and co., he might want to have a look at the figures showing his own paper’s decline. In June the Guardian sold 211,911 copies, a 17.5% drop year-on-year.  Things are not all fine and Dandy… 

A Freedom of Information response obtained by The Commentator website has revealed that the BBC buys more copies of the Guardian than any other national newspaper. Nearly 60,000 copies of Rusbridger’s rag could be found in Beeb buildings between April 2010 and February 2011, over 10,000 more than the Daily Mail. That’s despite the Mail having a circulation approaching ten times that of the Guardian. The FOI response and all the BBC‘s newspaper stats can be seen below:

Guido is interested to hear how those who dismiss accusations of the Beeb‘s left-wing bias will spin the latest revelations. For the rest of us, should we really be surprised?

It might be some 80 years since the Daily Mail ran a leader entitled ”Hurrah for the Blackshirts“, but that hasn’t stopped RightMinds‘ Dominique Jackson from scoring a particularly awkward Nazi-inspired own goal. Dominique wrote:

“The German slogan “Arbeit Macht Frei” is somewhat tainted by its connection with Nazi concentration camps, but its essential message, “work sets you free” still has something serious to commend it. There is dignity to be gained from any job, no matter how menial, and for young people at the start of their careers, there are valuable lessons to be learned from any form of employment, whether that is on the factory floor, on a supermarket till or in the contemporary hard labour camp of a merchant bank or law office.”

The offending paragraph has now been removed without explanation…

Saturday’s Guardian ran a scathing attack piece criticising Oxford and Cambridge universities as representative of everything that is wrong with society. Although apparently Oxbridge “doesn’t matter“, Lucy Mangan reckons it is still “a tangible symbol of the subtle, pernicious, destructive system we live with and, by and large, accept“. Scroll down and online readers can lay their eyes upon perhaps the best comment in the history of the paper:

Take a bow, Emma…

H/T @hightower_uk

Anyone on Twitter at 9am this morning would be forgiven for thinking that the Louise Mensch resignation story was a fantastic scoop for the Sun. That’s what they were claiming, anyway:

EXCLUSIVE: Tory MP Louise Mensch quitting as MP for Corby—
Sun Politics (@Sun_Politics) August 06, 2012

The only problem is that it wasn’t a Sun exclusive at all. Half an hour before that tweet was sent the departing Corby MP telephoned local Northamptonshire Telegraph reporter Katie Cronin to give her the story. Cronin was the first journalist to learn the news, and Mensch confirmed that it was her exclusive. The Northants Telegraph was also first to report that Mensch was considering quitting in October 2011; she told the paper then that being an MP was “a giant strain on family life, so I am going to have to think long and hard about what I do at the next general election“. You’re either in front of the Northants Telegraph…

Sly Bailey might have only been shown the door by Trinity Mirror two weeks ago but there is already reason to celebrate as the newspaper group reported a rise in profits this morning. The Mirror‘s parent company made a pre-tax profit of £35 million in the last six months, up 21% year-on-year. The improvement has been attributed to a wave of cost-cutting measures implemented by Trinity Mirror bosses over the last few months.

No longer having to pay Sly’s huge pay packet might also have something to do with it…

There have been celebrations all round today as Bradley Wiggins won gold in the cycling, but there was one man at Guardian HQ without a smile on his face. Barry Glendenning was in charge of the Wiggins live blog when the internet went down at Hampton Court, provoking a shower of complaints. To say that Glendenning failed to handle the situation in a calm and collected manner would be an understatement:

Now that’s customer service…