Your Observer is changing. From nextweek we will appear in a new shape,with a fresh design and with colour onevery page. Britain's oldest weekendnewspaper is about to become Britain'sbrightest Sunday read.

It will still contain all your favouritewriters, as well as the sharpest newscoverage, the finest analysis, the mosttrenchant comment. And it will stillprovide the best in Sunday sports writ-ing, the most incisive businesscoverage, and the full range of itsaward-winning magazines. The paperwill continue to be vivid yet cultured,and to maintain its reputation for spir-ited debate, peerless writing,exuberant presentation, imagination,cheek, humour, indignation, style, eru-dition, provocation and interrogation.

There will be more. Much more. Wewill be introducing new sections, anew monthly magazine, new writersand new illustrators to add to the rangeof our coverage. And the paper will bepackaged in a radically fresh designwhich will make it easier and more funto read, and ensure that the traditionalvalues of The Observer find expressionin a thoroughly modern form.

The issue you buy next week will bethe size you hold in your hands now:shorter and narrower than our currentbroadsheet, yet larger than a tabloidand with more pages than we havenow. It is called a Berliner, a formatnow popular among Europe's mostsuccessful newspapers. Readers of oursister paper, the Guardian, will alreadybe familiar with the shape.

Our news coverage will remain atthe heart of the paper, and the Berlinerformat allows greater opportunity forin-depth analysis as well as powerfulprojection of breaking stories from ourreporting team. Our comment andanalysis section will move to the centreof the main paper, and will beenhanced by the addition of new fea-tures and commentators.

And we will be introducing a sectioncalled 7 Days, examining the personali-ties and issues that have dominated thepast week through profiles, diaries andobservations.

Our award-winning stable ofmonthly magazines – Sport Monthly,

Food Monthly and Music Monthly –will be joined by Observer Woman,which will be as glamorous as it isintelligent, as provocative as it is beau-tiful, as brilliantly entertaining as it isinformative. We'll cover everythingfrom sex and relationships to cosmeticsurgery, from Coleen McCoughlin toCondoleeza Rice, from high street chicto the best skinny jeans for under £20and we'll do it with style, insight, andthe very best in Observer writing.

Sport will play over 24 colourfulpages and Review will still bring youthe best Sunday cultural coverageavailable, while expanding andimproving its CD and DVD section.Escape will continue to give you itchyfeet with its travel ideas and Businessand Cash will stay ahead of the pack indepth and breadth of coverage of allthings financial.

Our brilliant team of writers – fromLynn Barber to Andrew Rawnsley,Barbara Ellen to Nigel Slater, RobertMcCrum to Mariella Frostrup – will beenhanced with the arrival of newcolumnists such as Armando Iannucci,often described as the father of mod-ern British comedy, and whose

acclaimed TV show The Thick of It washonoured at the recent ComedyAwards.

We recognise that our readership ischanging, and that to meet its newneed we have to evolve, too. Size isbecoming an increasingly critical fac-tor in people's decisions about whichnewspaper to read, as the demand for amore efficient and accessible shapegrows. For many the traditionalSunday has gone, replaced by a day ofactivity – whether it be shopping,working, playing sports, travelling orseeing films and visiting museumsor galleries.

So the Berliner offers a perfectopportunity for vibrant design com-bined with an easily handled andconvenient shape, easy to navigate andpacked with useful information. Andreaders – advertisers too – used toeverything the internet and modernTV technology offers, want muchhigher standards of presentation,which is why our state-of-the-artprinting presses are designed to pro-vide perfect colour throughout thepaper, a first on a Sunday.

And readers also want a newspaperthat is changing to reflect the transfor-mation in their lifestyles and interests.We will continue to give voice to thestrong liberal tradition that TheObserver has come to represent in itslong history. But we will extend ourcoverage of areas that reflect thisexpanding agenda – human relation-ships, parenting, new technology, theenvironment, fashion, ageing, food,popular culture, the media, new busi-nesses, sport and leisure. And we willdo so with the warmth, humanity, andwit for which The Observer is justifi-ably acclaimed.

We recognise, too, that our reader-ship is complex and diverse, in itsattitudes as well as its lifestyles. Ouraudience is critical, argumentative andquizzical. So we will use the paper andits website to have a continuous dia-logue with you the reader, about theissues we deal with and what weshould be covering.

We hope you enjoy the newObserver; and if you are a newcomer tothe paper, we hope you will grow tolove it.

OUR STORY

TO RE-SHOOT

www.observer.co.uk

A brighterSundaydawnsnext week

Roger Altonbecame editor ofThe Observer in1998, revitalisingthe title and winning the paperseveral majorawards and many new readers.

1791 The Observer is published forthe first time on Sunday 4 December.Its founder, WS Bourne, states that itwould share ‘the spirit of enlightenedFreedom, decent Toleration and uni-versal Benevolence’.

1812 Observer journalist VincentGeorge Dowling has a real scoopwhen he not only witnesses theassassination of Prime MinisterSpencer Perceval he also seizes theassassin.

1814 William Innell Clement buysThe Observer, adding it to his growingstable of newspapers .

1820 Clement defies a court orderagainst coverage of the trial of theCato Street Conspirators accused ofattempting to murder members ofthe Cabinet. Woodcut illustrationsare used to promote the story.

1857 Lewis Doxat, Clement's editor,is succeeded by Joseph Snowe.

1861-1865 The Observer sideswith the North during the AmericanCivil War. Readership declines.

1870 Julius Beer, a wealthy busi-nessman, buys the paper.

1880 Frederick Beer inherits TheObserver on the death of his father.Frederick's wife, Rachel, buys theSunday Times in 1893 and edits bothpapers until 1904.

1905 The executors of FrederickBeer sell The Observer to AlfredHarmsworth (later Lord Northcliffe).Circulation is just 5,000 copies.

1908 James Louis Garvin (pic-tured) becomes editor and by 1909circulation has increased to 40,000.

1911 William Waldorf Astor buysThe Observer, subsequently giving it tohis son, Waldorf.

1919 JL Garvin's editorial on theTreaty of Versailles at the end of theFirst World War condemns theTreaty for leaving the Germans ‘noreal hope except in revenge.’

1942 On Garvin's departure, DavidAstor, Waldorf’s son, begins to mod-ernise The Observer.Advertisements areremoved from thefront page in favourof news and pho-tographs andthe Profile, acollective opin-ion of an indi-vidual in thenews, is intro-duced to Britishjournalism. IvorBrown isappointed editorand the paperbegins to moveaway from the con-servatism of theGarvin era.

Observer Womanwill be glamorous,intelligent,provocative andbeautiful

Established 1791

January 2006www.observer.co.uk

CLIVEJAMES

JULIANBARNES

LYNNBARBER

ANDREWRAWNSLEY

GEORGEORWELL

VITASACKVILLE -WEST

KENNETHTYNAN

MICHAELFRAYN

KATHARINEWHITEHORN

WHERE FINE WRITING HAS ALWAYS COME FIRST

Editor Roger Alton introduces the vivid newObserver, full of energy, style and peerlesswriting – and with colour on every page

2|THE NEW OBSERVER |January 2006

For a newspaper to have any chance ofsurvival it must strive to reflect thespirit of the age and to capture the imag-ination of its readers. When TheObserver first emerged one coldDecember morning in 1791 it was aim-ing to do just that, proclaiming that itwould be ‘Unbiased by Prejudice,Uninfluenced by Party’ and that its‘whole object was Truth and the dis-semination of every Species ofKnowledge that may conduce to theHappiness of Society’.

When he wrote those ringing words,the paper’s first owner and editor,WSBourne, was deliberately establishingthe paper’s DNA, the founding princi-ples that have been at its core since theAge of Enlightenment and sustained itthrough the Industrial Revolution, theAge of Empire and the tumult of the20th century.

But Bourne did more than just set outhis paper’s aims: he drew up the blue-print for all future Sunday journalism bypromising that The Observer wouldreport on ‘the fine Arts… Science, theTragic and the Comic Muse, theNational Police, fashion and fashionablefollies’ – topics still liberally covered inthe 21st century.

But founding principles and loftyaims aren’t enough to sell newspapers.Robust reporting, sharp commercialsense and a willingness to grasp the lat-est technical innovations are essentialto stay ahead. WS Bourne quickly lostmoney and turned to his brother forhelp, and, despite a tremendous scoopby the paper’s star reporter VincentGeorge Dowling (he witnessed theassassination of Prime MinisterSpencer Perceval in the House ofCommons and apprehended the killer),they sold to William Innell Clement, anearly press baron who really under-stood Britain’s burgeoning newspaperindustry.

Clement expanded the staff, encour-aged Dowling’s adventurous reporting(he crossed the Channel in a rowingboat to be first with a royal scoop) andinstinctively understood the power ofpictures. Woodcuts appeared and circu-lation rose.

In 1821, a rival paper called The NewObserver was launched in a deliberateattempt to cash in on Clement’s success.Eight months later it changed its nameto The Independent Observer and finally,in 1822, became the Sunday Times, thistime trying to bask in the growing popu-larity of the Times. It had no moreconnection with the Times than it didwith The Observer and had to wait until1969 until it became a bed-fellow with‘The Thunderer’.

Clement’s editor, Lewis Doxat,prided himself on never writing ‘an arti-cle on any subject under anycircumstances whatsoever’. He intro-duced new typography, more woodcutsand improved the content until 1857,when the ownership and editorshippassed to Joseph Snowe. He champi-oned the cause of the North in theAmerican Civil War, heading this leaderfrom October 1861 ‘The Moral Issue’.

All our sympathies are necessarilywith the North. We should deplore, incommon with all friends of humanity,the result of any struggle, long orshort, that would end in leaving fourmillions of our dusky brothers in hope-less and confirmed servitude. We have an early stirring here of the

campaigning zeal that was to becomesuch a feature of The Observer, but itcaused a circulation decline that wasnot to recover until 1870, whenFrankfurt-born Julius Beer bought itand appointed Edward Dicey as editor,who improved the arts coverage andraised the standard of foreign reportingand analysis. Under his editorship thepaper took on a new tone, so that

Unbiased by Prejudice - Uninfluenced by Party: a promotional poster for the new paper proclaims its founding principles and promises that the ‘dissemination of every Species of Knowledge that may conduce to the Happiness of Society’would be delivered ‘in everyPart of Great Britain with the utmost Expedition’.

Top left: the first issue, 4 December1791; top right: the paper’s distribution and circulation team,1930; centre: the first ObserverMagazine, 1964; above: the newObserver Magazine.

J Grant, a reporter in the days ofWilliam Innell Clement, was moved toremark that The Observer was now ‘oneof the safest contemporary papers to beput in the hands of ladies’.

Unease at Britain’s imperial behav-iour would become a hallmark of TheObserver in the last half of the 20th cen-tury, but Dicey blazed something of atrail, roundly condemning the declara-tion of Victoria as Empress of India in1877. Beer died in 1880, leaving thepaper to his sickly son Frederick, whomarried a rich heiress, Rachel Sassoon,in 1887. She was far more interested inthe paper than her ailing husband andby 1893 she was to own and edit bothThe Observer and the Sunday Times –something unthinkable today.

By 1905, circulation had plunged to5,000 copies a week and closure loomedagain, but for a second time a pressbaron rode to the rescue. AlfredHarmsworth, later Lord Northcliffe,describing the paper as ‘lying in theFleet ditch’, bought it to add an upmar-ket broadsheet to his popular, mass-market Daily Mail and Evening News.

He installed JL Garvin as editor andset the paper on a meteoric course,sprinkling some of his undoubted skillas a newspaperman on the paper. Here’sa typical letter to Garvin:

‘If we are to get a circulation of 70,000or 100,000 it is essential that weshould interest more people.Remember the women. If we can getthis paper into 70,000 homes everyweek it will become a great power.’But by 1911 Garvin and Northcliffe

were having serious disagreements, andwhen Northcliffe found his own viewsunder attack in his own paper hetelegrammed Garvin ‘EITHER YOU

GET OUT OR I DO!’ and gave Garvinthree weeks to find a buyer.

The editor moved swiftly and thepaper was sold for £45,000 to WWAstor, the American multi-millionaire,who gave it to his son, the ConservativeMP Waldorf Astor. WW had moved toEngland in 1890 (with the famousremark that America was ‘not a fit placefor a gentleman to live’) and boughtHever Castle in Kent and later Clivedenin Buckinghamshire, which he gave toWaldorf as a wedding present when hemarried Nancy in 1906.

Garvin thundered away in lengthyleaders on social reforms, MPs’ pay, and,famously, on the conduct of the FirstWorld War (like so many others, he losthis son in the trenches). Prophetically,he warned that the Treaty of Versaillesleft no real hope for the Germans‘except in revenge’.

The modern quality Sunday newspa-per is a descendant of Garvin’spost-First World War creation, whichsold 200,000 copies. He recast thepaper, making strict divisions betweennews and comment, introducing newlayout and typefaces and, in the spirit ofthe paper’s original address to readers,he nurtured writing on the arts andbooks, theatre and music, and recog-nised film as a potent new force. Heappointed CA Lejeune as film critic in1925; she stayed until 1960. And EPMathers, as Torquemada, devised afiendishly difficult crossword, whichlives on today as Azed.

When war came again, Garvin foundhimself at odds with his proprietor overWinston Churchill. Astor felt he shouldnot be be both Prime Minister andDefence Minister. Garvin disagreed andstood by his friend. At the same time,Astor persuaded Garvin to make roomfor a feature entitled ‘The Forum’, to beedited by his son, David, which was toprovide a leavening of liberal thinkingon pages that had been dominated foryears by the high Tory Garvin.

On 15 February 1942 a Forum pieceheaded ‘What’s Wrong?’ called onChurchill to quit as Defence Minister.The next week Garvin wrote a leaderdenouncing the idea. His contract wasdue to expire the following week andAstor decided not to renew it, so endinga spectacular reign. Garvin, at nearly 74years of age, had had an unparalleled 34years at The Observer.

David Astor was to recall some 40years later that ‘as far as there was aneditor in those dreadful weeks, it wasme in my lunch-hour’. In 1942 he was aCaptain in the Royal Marines, on thestaff of Mountbatten's CombinedOperations Headquarters, and couldfully attend to The Observer only in hisspare time. Nevertheless he took classi-fied advertisements off the front page,replacing them with news and pho-

tographs, and began to nudge the paperaway from Garvin’s conservatism.

In announcing these changes heechoed the paper’s founding principles,and added his own: that the paper muststand FOR something: ‘The Observer isnot a party paper. It is tied to no group,no sect, no interest. Its independence isabsolute. But merely to stand alone,challenging and bracing as that attitudemay be, is not enough. One must alsostand for a system of ideas and for a pat-tern of constructive reform….’

Astor had grown up in the intellec-tual hothouse of Cliveden, where thegreatest minds of the day were oftenentertained and where thinkers, writ-ers, politicians and journalists wouldgather on the terrace to argue away thelong summer afternoons. It was anintoxicating atmosphere for the youngAstor, and one that years later Observerjournalists were to come to recognise, asthe editor ran the paper like a Clivedentalking-shop, shaping the contentthrough a series of conferences with theday’s most interesting minds gatheredround the table.

In 1942 he set out to hire new writersand met George Orwell and ArthurKoestler through Cyril Connolly.Orwell, who proved a distinguished warcorrespondent, was to have a profoundinfluence on Astor and The Observerand they were to remain firm friends.Sebastian Haffner was one of a handfulof brilliant Central Europeans whojoined the paper in the Forties, alongwith Jon Kimche, Isaac Deutscher andEF Schumacher. Astor took the editor’schair permanently from 1948 and ush-ered yet more distinguished writers intothe fold: Patrick O’Donovan, HughMassingham, Cyril Dunn, RobertStephens, Michael Davie, AlistairBuchan, Colin Legum, EdwardCrankshaw, Kenneth Harris and NigelGosling all brought style, authority andwit. Vita Sackville-West wrote on gar-dening; John Davy on science andKenneth Tynan’s dramatic criticismwas required reading. TerenceKilmartin’s literary pages won awardsfor ‘unwavering upholding of quality’.

The paper set new standards inreporting on Europe, on the third worldand on Britain’s colonial interests. Itchallenged readers’ assumptions aboutBritain’s place in the world, its relationswith Africa and the Middle East and itasked hard questions about living in apost-war world dominated by twonuclear superpowers.

Circulation rose as more readersturned to The Observer for a radical,intelligent view of the world; its report-ing on Africa proved prophetic, and, athome, it led the way on penal reform,race relations, education and theemerging health service.

The year 1956 is a special one in

Unravelling the DNA insideBritain’s oldest Sunday paperFor 214 years, The Observer has been seekingafter truth, taking a bold, controversial stance onanything from the US Civil War to Suez andbeyond. Stephen Pritchard opens the archives

Firm foundations

|THE NEW OBSERVER |3January 2006

Observer history. In that year the paperlaunched its long campaign against thedeath penalty; it cleared an entire edi-tion to publish all 26,000 words ofKruschev’s denunciation of Stalin (oneletter-writer thought it ‘a grave mistaketo underestimate your readers and notpublish it in the original Russian’); andit famously stood against the Suez cam-paign, calling the government ‘crooked’.Thousands of readers cancelled theirsubscriptions (including newlyweds Mrand Mrs Denis Thatcher, of Chelsea).More damagingly, several large corpo-rations withdrew their advertising,dealing a severe blow to the already pre-carious financial position of the paper.Yet Suez was probably Astor’s finesthour, and future revelations (and theresignation of Prime Minister AnthonyEden) vindicated the paper’s stance.

Circulation had risen to an all-timehigh of 907,000 by 1967, but papers withdeeper pockets were starting to steal amarch. Yet it continued to make wavespolitically, becoming the principal sup-porter in the British press of NelsonMandela’s African National Congress,and campaigning to establish Amnesty

International. But the increasinglycompetitive nature of the newspapermarket exposed the ‘gentleman ama-teur’ nature of the The Observer, whilethe liberal consensus that the paper haddone so much to form collapsed underthe strain of a strike-bound Britain inthe early Seventies.

Financial crises and labour problemsdogged the paper and in 1975 the chair-man, Lord Goodman, announced that athird of the staff would have to be maderedundant. David Astor decided to stepdown, and, after a ballot of staff, thetrustees appointed his deputy Donald

Trelford as editor, though Goodmanwarned him that the paper might notlast another six months.

The trustees approached RupertMurdoch in 1976, but he soon backedaway after staff mounted a concertedcampaign against the idea, and thepaper was eventually sold to AtlanticRichfield, a US oil company. Its tenurewas short-lived and RW ‘Tiny’Rowland, of Lonrho, bought the paperin 1981, ushering in an uncomfortable 12years, with the editor being threatenedwith the sack several times for runningunfavourable stories about Africanleaders who were personal friends ofthe proprietor.

Rowland’s long-standing feud withthe Fayed brothers over the ownershipof House of Fraser featured promi-nently in the paper and led to a specialmidweek edition, containing the text ofa leaked Department of Trade andIndustry report into the Fayeds’takeover. That report vindicated thepaper’s reporting, but the midweek edi-tion was to damage The Observer and itsreputation.

Rowland began to lose his grip on the

Lonrho board, and in 1993 The Observerwas put on the market. A sale to theIndependent looked inevitable, with thedanger that the paper would disappearinto the fledgling Independent onSunday. However, Rowland was pre-vailed upon to sell to the GuardianMedia Group, and once again the paperwas saved from extinction.

To look back at editions of those daysis to realise how much the paper hasexpanded since it joined the Guardianstable. They have not always been com-fortable times, with several changes ofeditor until the appointment in 1998 ofRoger Alton, who with a strong teamsteadied and then increased circula-tion, and added the popular monthlymagazines.

Now the paper stands at the begin-ning of another chapter in its longhistory, but in some ways it is returningto its roots. The new Berliner format isnot unlike the size of the paper thatemerged onto the streets thatDecember morning in 1791, promisingto be ‘Unbiased by Prejudice,Uninfluenced by Party’. It’s obviously inour DNA.

JANE BOWN : ROCK OF AGES OUR STORY

1945 The Astor family transferownership of the newspaper to aTrust, which ensures that any profitis used to improve the newspaper,promote good journalism or supportcharitable enterprise.

1948 David Astor becomes editor.He favours writers over traditionaljournalists, bringing in GeorgeOrwell, Vita Sackville-West, ArthurKoestler, Philip Toynbee, KennethTynan and others.

1956 On 10 June The Observerpublishes the 26,000 words ofNikita Kruschev's denunciation ofJoseph Stalin in full. The paper'sposition as the first national news-paper to oppose the government'saction during the Suez Crisis iscostly as thousands of readersdesert it.

1963 Kim Philby, widely accused ofbeing the Third Man (the Soviet spywho had let it be known that DonaldMaclean was about to be exposed),was cleared by the British andAmerican governments. He becameThe Observer's Middle East corre-spondent based in Beirut but wasexpelled and fled to Moscow. He hadbeen the Third Man all along.

1964 The Observer ColourMagazine introduced. Thirty yearslater it was merged with the Life sec-tion to form a new tabloid-sized Lifemagazine.

1975 Donald Trelford is appointededitor and fights to find new ownersand save The Observer from extinc-tion. Between 1977 and 1993 thepaper is owned by two large interna-tional companies: Atlantic Richfieldand, from 1981, Lonrho.

1989 Observer journalist FarzadBazoft arrested on a false charge ofspying while investigating a story inIraq. He was drugged by his captors,subjected to a bogus trial and,despite an international outcry, wasexecuted in Baghdad six monthslater.

1993 Guardian Media Group buysThe Observer, effectively saving itfrom closure; Jonathan Fenby isappointed editor.

1995 Andrew Jaspan becomeseditor, succeeded a year later by WillHutton.

1998 Roger Alton is appointed edi-tor; in 2000 he is named Editor of theYear in the What the Papers Sayawards.

2001 Peter Mandelson resigns inJanuary after it is discovered that hehas given misleading answers to TheObserver over its revelation that hehad made contact with the HomeOffice over a passport application byIndian businessman, SrichandHinduja, following his family's £1million donation to the Faith Zoneat the Millennium Dome.Observer Sport Monthly is launchedto wide acclaim

2002 In June 2002 the Newsroom,the Guardian and Observer Archiveand Visitor Centre, opens to preserveand interpret the histories of the newspapers. Observer FoodMonthly is launched.

2003 Observer Music Monthlymagazine launched.

2004 Digital edition of TheObserver launched. For details, go towww.guardian.co.uk/digital and fol-low the instructions.

2005 The Observer launches thefirst Sunday newspaper weblog atblogs.guardian.co.uk/observer/

2006 8 January. The Observerappears in its new Berliner format,the first all-colour Sunday paper inBritain.

Jane Bown’s definitive portraits have appeared in The Observer for an astonishing 56 years. She says: ‘I've al-ways felt that I love people when I take their photograph.Yes, I do it with love – just for that moment, I'm lovingthem.' Clockwise, from left: Bjork, 1995; Sinéad O’Connor,1992; Mick Jagger 1977; John Lennon and Yoko Ono, 1968;Morrissey, 1995.

Circulation rose asmore turned toThe Observer for aradical, intelligentview of the world

Oscar nominees are often told that justbeing nominated is already an honour.So, when the editors of The Observercalled to invite our firm, Garcia Media,to be one of three graphic design stu-dios to ‘audition’ for the chance toredesign the venerable paper andassist with its transformation to thesmaller Berliner format, I felt hon-oured. After all, we know that TheObserver has a legacy of serious, credi-ble, interesting journalism. It is alsoBritain’s oldest Sunday newspaper.

My team – Rodrigo Fino, ChristianFortanet and Paula Ripoll – put ourbest effort forward: how can onechange a legend? How can oneredesign a newspaper that was alreadyquite well designed, thank you?

We started by sitting down and talk-ing to key people at The Observer, tohear their views about the old and newpaper. Editor Roger Alton outlined hisvision and told us that he wanted thepaper to be look and feel both ‘culturedand vivid'. Armed with his thoughts,we set off to devise a new visual lan-guage for the paper.

Our competition was very tough butwe got the Oscar. And with that camethe enormous responsibility tomobilise all our creative energies andpresent them to The Observer's designteam – one of the best we have everencountered anywhere.

More importantly, the involvementof the editors, led by project leaderJohn Mulholland, gave each page asense of the importance of storytelling,along with the power of visuals. AtGarcia Media we often joke that TheObserver's project spoiled us. We wantMulholland and his team to follow usto every other project.

The Observer, like its sister newspa-per, the Guardian, was making theswitch to the more popular ‘compact’format. But editors of both papers hadmade the decision to go with theslightly larger Berliner size, whichallows for individual sections; so bene-ficial for those who share theirnewspaper with other members of the family.

So we went on to try various typo-graphic fonts and different storystructures for readers who, even onSundays, have less time to read, butstill want good writing and crediblejournalism. How we could amplify therole of the internet for our print read-ers? What colour palette would bestgive continuity to the already colourfulObserver?

As spring led to summer, we createdpages, analysed them and tossed manyinto graphic limbo until by August wehad a prototype that we were all quiteproud of. And the readers with whomit tested thought the same. Since then anew art director, Carolyn Roberts, hasjoined and has continued to work atthe design during a series of dummyruns. She has developed and refinedmy team's design, working in keendetail on every aspect of the new look.And the fine tuning will not stop whenthat first copy of the new paper rollsoff the press.

The Observer, which first appearedin December 1791, has an incrediblyrich history; covering the news,analysing it, illustrating it and servingit like hot croissants and steaming coffee to eagerly awaiting readers eachSunday.

With a new format, The Observer’seditors have had a chance to rethinktheir newspaper. Classic as ever, but ina more compact and easier to navigatepackage.

A winner, for sure. And for me per-sonally, and for our team. We feel likethe Oscar winners, trophy in hand,proud of a job that was, indeed, theultimate collaboration.

PREMIERSHIPREPORTS

FOOTBALLLEAGUE

ENGLAND SLUMPIN PAKISTAN

LEAGUE AND UNION ACTION

WORLD CUP SPECIAL

FOOTBALLRESULTS

WILL BUCKLEY ON BBC XMAS

KEVIN MITCHELLON BOXING

The Observer

FAN FESTWorld Cup special PAGES 11-15

SIMON JORDANTaking on the FA PAGE 5

MORIENTESMAKES HIS MARK

Paul WilsonLower down the age scale, more than10,000 schools are making the WorldCup a special project and aiming foranother prize – providing the ballboysand girls for Germany’s opening game.Others will be chosen as mascots to walkout with the teams.

More than 200 towns and cities acrossthe country will be staging their ownWorld Cup, screening matches in marketsquares, local stadiums and parks. Also,there are 2,600 sports halls, communitycentres and church halls throughoutGermany that have been given the rights,free, to televise matches on big screens.The only condition is that the buildingmust be run by a non-profit-making

organisation mention somewhere. The12 host cities will cater for those withouta ticket, too, by providing a secondaryvenue called the Fanfest. Head along andyou will still get a taste of a big crowd,big-match mention somewhere to watchthe game atmosphere, not to mentionsomewhere to watch the game for noth-ing. In Munich, the Fanfest venue is theold Olympic Stadium, Bayern’s formerground. In Gelsenkirchen, it is the won-derfully atmospheric original home ofSchalke – arguably the country’s mostpopular team. In Berlin, they are erect-ing screens and a mini Olympiastadion ina park in the middle of town.

Every school, every village, everyhamlet can be part of the 226 WORDS

CONTINUED ON PAGE 2

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INSIDE

4|THE NEW OBSERVER |January 2006

A classicnewspaperrethinksitself

Comment movesto the centre of thenews section, signalling itsimportance in thenew-look Observer,while a new fea-tures elementcalled 7 Days –profiles, columns,diairies – appearsat the back.

NEWS

SPORT

REVIEW

OBSERVER MAGAZINE

MONTHLIES …OUR NEW MONTHLY

OBSERVER WOMAN

ESCAPE

WWW.OBSERVER.CO.UK

BUSINESS+MEDIAA refashioned sports section

boasts dramatic use of colour onlive reports and bold visual treat-ment on features. There is a newback section of readers’ queriesand interactive features. Footballreports will include a new fans’feedback forum, The Verdict.

Continuing to be home tothe best writing and writersin British journalism,Review’s elegant new designwill enhance the critics’pages. Look out, too, for newcolumns and fixtures.

With full colour and atremendously vivid newlook our travel supplementwill be more appealingthan ever. New elements,including The £200 Challenge, where we huntdown bargain holidays, willfurther enliven a sectionalready reknowned for itsaward-winning journalism.

Dylan Jones, award-winning editor ofGQ said recently: 'The ObserverMagazine is now one of the most lively,comprehensive Sunday supplementsof them all, with great investigativefeatures and stunning photography,while Mariella Frostrup has become agreat agony aunt.' The ObserverMagazine – alongside features andinterviews – will sport a new enlargedstyle, interiors and fashion section,plus a series of brilliant new columns.

We will be following production ofthe new Observer on our blogwww.observer.co.uk/blog. There willbe despatches from the newsroomthroughout the launch weekend,which will capture the mood in thenewsroom at what promises to be anexciting time for the paper.

Your favourite monthly magazines will be joined by our newexciting Observer Woman. Make sure you don’t miss SportMonthly on 8 January, Observer Woman on 15 January, MusicMonthly on 22 January, and Food Monthly on 29 January.

Observer Woman will be as glamorous asit is intelligent, as provocative as it is beau-tiful, as brilliantly entertaining as it is infor-mative. We'll cover everything from sexand relationships to cosmetic surgery,from Coleen McCoughlin to CondoleezaRice, from High Street chic to the bestskinny jeans for under £20 and we'll do itwith style, insight, and the very best inObserver writing.

A new easy-to-navigateBusiness, Media and Cashsection where we combineour peerless business andpersonal finance supplements.

Brown stillfaces £11bnblack holeItem Club verdict will spoil Chancellor’s party

by Heather Stewart

Economics Correspondent

As Gordon Brown prepares to deliver anupbeat verdict on Britain's economichealth in his pre-Budget report nextweek, the Ernst and Young Item Clubwarns today that there is still a yawning£11 billion hole in the public finances.

Echoing the judgment of otherexperts, including the InternationalMonetary Fund, Item's Peter Spencersays tax increases or spending cutsworth £11bn a year will be necessary inthe next two years if Brown is to meet hisself-imposed spending rules.

He predicts that the Chancellor's bud-get deficit will be £11bn this year,instead of the £6bn forecast by theTreasury.

After strong public finance figures forOctober, released last week, and achange in the Treasury's dating of theeconomic cycle, the Chancellor faces lit-tle pressure for immediate tax rises. ButSpencer said Brown's ↘golden rule' of

meeting the cost of day-to-day expendi-ture with tax revenues will be bust by2007: ↘He's got another two years torun, without having to'fess up to any-thing. Then he moves next door andchanges his letterhead.'

He said Brown was already using acrackdown on tax avoidance to↘squeeze' businesses for extra cash.↘He can make quite a lot of money thatway: there's no question about it.'

The Chancellor is keen to present hispre-Budget report as pro-business, andwill use a speech to the CBI conferencetomorrow to announce a £300 millionpackage of money-saving measures forindustry. He will promise that the Rev-enue will save firms up to £300m a yearin form-filling costs, as the first stage inthe bonfire of red tape promised in theMarch Budget.

This latest overture to business comesas the CBI warns the government is fail-ing to back ↘innovation' by Britishfirms. Digby Jones, its director-general,said a CBI survey showed the govern-ment's support for science and R&D left

Now Stock Exchange seeksalliance with Scandinaviaby Richard Wachman

City Editor

The LondonStock Exchange is consider-ing merging with OMX, formerly OMGroup of Sweden, to create a companywith a market value of £2.5 billion.LSE's chief executive Clara Furse andchairman Christopher Gibson-Smith areunderstood to have examined plans forcloser ties with OMX if ↓ as theyexpect ↓ the LSE retains its indepen-dence into the new year.

The LSE has been under siege for ayear after expressions of interest fromcontinental exchanges such as Euronextand Deutsche Borse, and more recentlyfrom Macquarie, the Australian invest-ment group. But the LSE's soarawayshare price has probably put it out ofrange of predators for the time being.

OMX was formed out of the merger in2003 between the Stockholm andHelsinki exchanges, but the company'soperations also include a technologydivision that develops trading platforms

for exchanges around the world. OMXalso runs exchanges in Baltic countriessuch as Lithuania and Latvia.

A tie-up between London and OMXwould give the British exchange accessto OMX's technological know-how andtogether they could jointly develop↘cutting edge trading technology', saida City source. The LSE has alreadyembarked on building a new platformthat is expected to be completed in2007/8, but analysts say that the Swedescould give the project extra momentum.

OMX and London have alreadystarted working together on a number ofprojects, which included the launch in2003 of a jointly run derivativesexchange. Six months later, the two sidesagreed to co-operate in forming a pan-Nordic cash and derivatives exchange.

Gibson-Smith is considering optionsto cement ties with OMX, which rangefrom joint ventures to cross sharehold-ings, but a full-scale merger is also on thecards. OMX is valued on the Stockholmmarket at £900 million. In its earlierguise as OM Group, the firm launched a

Murder trial of ‘God’s Banker’set to come to Londonby Nick Mathiason

The murder trial of Roberto Calvi ↓known as ↘God's Banker' ↓ will cometo London in March. Up to 30 witnesseswill be questioned by Italian magis-trates, prosecutors and legal teams rep-resenting the five people charged withhis murder.

The venue has not been decided, butthe Old Bailey is a possibility. Calvi'sbody was found hanging under London'sBlackfriars Bridge after the bank he ran,the Vatican-controlled BancoAmbrosiano, went bankrupt in 1982owing more than £800 million. Thepolice initially said that Calvi had killedhimself, but most assumed it was murderand recent evidence has shed new lighton the case.

The trial could reveal the inner work-ings and financing of the Mafia. Prose-cutors say Calvi's bank was at the centreof a web that included the Mafia, drug-money laundering and the Vatican.

The trial opened last week in a courtbunker on the outskirts of Rome. Policeinvestigators said the problems of flyingup to 30 witnesses to Rome were too dif-ficult, so the trial would be moved forseveral weeks, although this could pre-

sent security risks. Prosecutor LucaTescaroli has received death threats.Jailed mobster Giuseppe ↘Pippo' Calo↓ thought to be the Mafia's treasurer↓ Ernesto Diotallevi and three othersare charged with murder. They deny allcharges.

The investigation saw Italian prosecu-tors team up with City of London police.Jeff Katz, chief executive of investiga-tions firm Bishop International, whosethree-year inquiry was the first to proveCalvi's death was a murder and not a sui-cide, said: ↘Taking evidence in Londonwill be key to the prosecution of the Ital-

ECCLESTONE SELLS OUT Bernie Ecclestone has given upownership of Formula One after25 years in the driving seat of thegrand prix business. The 75 yearold entrepreneur, and his partrnerBayerische Landesbank, have soldtheir controlling stake in the busi-ness to venture capitalists CVC for around $1 though he retainsoperational control.

TESCO TAILS OFF Tesco, the supermarket giantunder pressure over its domi-nance of the British high street,saw its first domestic slowdown intwo years, as consumer weaknessdented sales growth.

EIRCOM BID STUMBLESThe fate of Eircom, the Irishmobile phone company, is in thebalance after Swiss regulatorsappeared to put a halt to atakeover from their national giantSwisscom. The Irish company,whose shares fell dramatically onnews of the Swiss setback, nowappears to have no options for amerger partner.

TESCO TAILS OFF AGAINTesco, the supermarket giantunder pressure over its domi-nance of the British high street,saw its first domesticslowdooperations are still expanding.wn in two years, as consumerweakness dented growth. Butinternational operations are still

Briefing

ECB prepares for rate hikeby Heather Stewart Jean-ClaudeTrichet, the president of theEuropean Central Bank, is preparing torisk the wrath of eurozone governmentsthis week by raising interest rates in the12-country currency bloc for the firsttime in five years.

After two years with interest rates

stuck at 2 per cent, the ECB is keen toestablish its inflation-fighting creden-tials, and Trichet has clearly signalledthat rates will go up on Thursday.↘They've got monetary pins and nee-dles,' said David Brown, chief europeaneconomist at Bear Stearns. ↘They'vebeen sitting on their hands for 29 con-secutive months.'

He believes the ECB could even raiserates by half a percentage point insteadof the quarter point the market is expect-ing, and then ↘batten down thehatches against the political backlash'.

French finance minister Thierry Bre-ton last week became the latest politi-cian to question the ECB's anti-inflationzeal. ↘I remain, like my Europeancounterparts, not very convinced.

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Calvi: five charged with his murder

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ESCAPE

My privatepiece ofparadise

Oh no, not an English country househotel! Some of the worst weekends of mylife have been spent in English countryhouse hotels - to me, they reek of failedhopes, exposed delusions, and induce asort of existential gloom never encoun-tered at home.

The gloom begins the minute I walk inand crack my head on the first of manylow beams, and then survey the horsebrasses, the 'interesting' collections ofthatching implements, the coachingprints, the cathedral prints, the Oxford CONTINUED ON PAGE 2

Mariella Frostrup met absolutely no one in theSeychelles. Once, we went on holiday to meetnew people - now we try to avoid them. Havinglapped up a week of luxury, she did finally talk to

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CAPE TOWN COOLA guide to South Africa’s hippest city. Pages 8-9

HELISKIING IN RUSSIAIn search of the ultimate powder Page 7

THE £200 CHALLENGEFind a week’s winter sun holiday in the Med. Page 5

college prints, the framed notice onpseudo-parchment in the hall telling youthe history of the house, the tragic'library' with its battered Punches andthree Len Deightons, the dead flowerarrangements, the sour old dragon incharge of the dining room who takes suchdelight in telling you (after a four- hourdrive) that dinner finished at 8.30. Andthen, upstairs, the musty four-poster bed,the eye-grazing chintz, the dusty laven-der sachets, the Corby trouser press, theterrible bathroom with its dribbling

shower.But most of all, I hate the sad,embittered proprietors in their Bodenclothes who tell you that they used towork in advertising but gave it all up to'follow their dream'. I always want to say:'You mean you have no hotel training atall?' But instead, I listen patiently whilethey say they want everyone to feelrelaxed 'as if at a house party' while alsoexplaining the basic rules, starting withno smok ing anywhere, no drunkenness,no loud laughter, preferably no talking,door locked at 10 - which is not like anyhouse party I have ever attended, orwould want to go to.

So you can imagine I was none toothrilled when the travel editor told meshe wanted me to visit a new Englishcountry house hotel, Endsleigh, nearTavistock in Devon. This one is different,she assured me. But having suffered for

An envelope with your name written neatly on the front doesn’t sit quietly and patiently on your doormat. It screams and shouts. It demands, “Me! Me!Me! Look at me! Look at me!” And you will. You can’t ignore it. We’ll give you half an hour before you succumb to your curiosity. With us it’s personal®

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From next week

Mrs President?

REVIEWKate Bush ‘ I HAD A LITTLEBREAK - DID YOU MISS ME?’P6

Cannes Festival IS IRANIAN FILMREALLY THE NEW HOLLYWOOD? P6

Pop KITTY EMPIRE: TIME TOLAY OFF ROD STEWART P6

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HARD DISK TECHNOLOGY. BEST FOR YOUR TV PROGRAMMES.BEST FOR YOUR MUSIC.WHY WOULDN’T IT BE BEST FOR YOUR MOVIES?Using a built-in Hard Disk, in just the same way that MP3 players and HDD/DVD Recorders do,Everio™ HDD camcorders can store over 30* hours of video, right there on the camcorder itself.Allowing you to decide which bits you want to keep; and to delete the ‘wasted’ filming, therebyfreeing up the memory space to start all over again.

Everio™ HDD Camcorders. NO TAPE. NO DISC. NO FUSS.*storage capacity varies with individual models.

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Mario Garcia, theinternational designconsultant, explainshis vision for the paper

Maintaining its exceptionalinvestigations and foreignreporting, our News sectionwill be colour coded for easeof navigation and will sportlarge features, interviewsand columns.