| Admin History | The Guardian Weekly, the international edition of the Guardian, was launched a week after the July 1919 Treaty of Versailles concluded the peace agreement between Germany and the Allied powers that ended the first world war. The new paper was intended to extend the reach of the Manchester Guardian, particularly in the United States, and to present what is best and most interesting in the Guardian, what is most distinctive and independent of time, in a compact form. The first issues were created with re-used type already set for the daily paper. The Weeklys initial reception was good, with the majority of sales in the United States.
The Weekly's early editors were typically correspondents who had returned to Manchester from distinguished foreign postings. In 1969, under the editorship of John Perkin, the Guardian Weekly first began to display pictures often a 'chocolate box' English scene on its front page. The paper took on a 12,000-strong subscription list from Le Monde's English edition when it folded in 1971, as well as four pages of Le Monde copy used to augment Guardian articles in the Weekly. In 1975, a content deal was also struck with the Washington Post. During Perkin's editorship the Weekly was able to boast Nelson Mandela, then incarcerated in Pollsmoor prison, as one of its readers. Mandela described the paper in his autobiography as a window on the wider world.
In 1993, Patrick Ensor took over as editor and oversaw the redesign of the Weekly, which then began to include copy from the Observer for the first time. During his editorship the Guardian Weekly offices also moved from Cheadle, South Manchester, to join the rest of the Guardian on London's Farringdon Road.
Under Ensor, huge shifts in technology changed the production of the paper. In 1991, Perkins had overseen the first transmission of pages to the Australian print site by modem, but Ensor, in London, saw a chance to leapfrog over the Guardians first bespoke computer system and employ Quark XPress (desktop publishing software which at that time was used mainly for magazine production). The newspaper, which had been half-broadsheet sized for a large part of its life, became a tabloid. When The Guardian became a 'Berliner' sized paper in 2005, the Guardian Weekly shrunk to a 'half-Berliner'.
Patrick Ensor died in 2007. By this time most subscribers to the Guardian Weekly enjoyed internet access to content. Natalie Bennett was appointed as Ensors successor, and her editorship coincided with the Guardians move to a digital-first publishing strategy. In 2007 a digital edition of the Weekly was created. An editors blog was added to the Weeklys output, direct feedback was encouraged (not just through the letters page), and a presence on social media sites Facebook and Twitter came soon after. Under Bennetts leadership the Weekly upped its coverage of environmental issues and the developing world, while de-emphasising its UK and US coverage.
Abby Deveney edited the Guardian Weekly from 2012 to 2017. Under her, the Weekly embraced long-form journalism, with a greater emphasis on insightful writing, deep analysis and lively features. The launch in 2011 of a Guardian US website edited from New York, followed two years later by a Sydney-based Australia digital presence increased the Weeklys coverage opportunities in those key territories. In 2017, Britain, Australia, the US and Canada were the Weeklys top markets, followed by New Zealand, France and Germany. With a following in more than 170 countries, the Weeklys audience is spread around the world.
In October 2018, under the editorship of Will Dean, the Guardian Weekly was relaunched as a news magazine. |