Asking here because I think there is probably a lot of overlap and maybe some knowledgeable insiders.<p>I used to visit The Register almost every day up until a few years ago. Back then, it was famous for its punny headlines, tongue-in-cheek reporting style, and all in all being a self-identified IT tabloid.<p>I visited it again a week or two ago, and it seems to have dropped the humourous tone and intentionally-obscure headlines, to become just one more samey IT news page.<p>Does anybody know what caused this transformation? Has it been acquired by a conglomerate or something? The nearest thing I've found is that its original Chief Editor left in May 2019...
Hello, I'm Chris Williams, the editor of The Register. Maybe I can answer some of these Qs.<p>> what caused this transformation?<p>All things have to evolve and move with the times. As you've said, we were known, for example, for "intentionally-obscure headlines." Guess what, that works for some people - and it was fun - but it was holding us back reaching many more people, not just from the headline tone but also aggregation and sharing. And I want our original, technical, and best coverage seen by as many folks as possible.<p>The Reg has been going for 20+ years. We have to keep up with what people want. And yes, some people liked the 2010s era, some missed the 2000s era, but also many more thought we weren't taking journalism seriously. We do take it seriously (we don't take ourselves too seriously) and I'd hate for headlines to hold that back.<p>What's really changed is that we've styled the main headlines to be more accessible in every way, and still keep our sardonic, informed voice in stories and sub-headlines. We have a mix of core IT stories; software and open source; where life meets tech; science; and more, written in a way that gives our tech readers a voice.<p>If you haven't read us in a while, then yes, we've changed visibly. If you've been reading us for more than a year or two, the change will have been fairly gradual as we tune our headlines to match what people expect from an irreverent technical title.<p>> Has it been acquired by a conglomerate?<p>No, it's still independently owned, with owners who give editorial free rein. It's documented in UK Companies House.<p>> its original Chief Editor left in May 2019<p>No, you're thinking of an executive editor who left around then, who wasn't in a management position (think editor-at-large).<p>C.
Personally I have just discovered the Register this year, and I like them a lot.<p>I have seen how the old style was, yes it different, but I wouldn't say its a run of the mill IT website.<p>Its reporting is pretty good, and they have good opinion pieces, like intel optane possible revolution for IT(1), tracking obfuscation by big tech (2) and safari WebKit limiting mobile web (3) articles.<p>1. <a href="https://www.theregister.com/2022/08/01/optane_intel_cancellation/" rel="nofollow">https://www.theregister.com/2022/08/01/optane_intel_cancella...</a><p>2. <a href="https://www.theregister.com/2022/05/23/opinion_column/" rel="nofollow">https://www.theregister.com/2022/05/23/opinion_column/</a><p>3. <a href="https://www.theregister.com/2022/06/06/big_techs_big_privacy_heist/" rel="nofollow">https://www.theregister.com/2022/06/06/big_techs_big_privacy...</a><p>There are other website like InfoWorld, which produced articles like how docker broke in half, however their website is annoying, and in general less focus on FOSS/Linux.<p><a href="https://www.infoworld.com/article/3632142/how-docker-broke-in-half.html" rel="nofollow">https://www.infoworld.com/article/3632142/how-docker-broke-i...</a>
I agree, El Reg is a shadow of its former self.<p>There has been a decline in quality with obvious errors caused by poor research or rushed publishing. There has been an increase in sponsored copy, and also a marked hardening of its already notorious Apple bashing.<p>There have also been a number of occasions where they've simply missed reporting on important topics altogether.<p>Also on their forums, there has been a decline in quality of contributions. For a while it still used to be worth going to El Reg just to read the forums, but even that is becoming increasingly pointless.
I noticed the change right around the time they stopped having a distinct landing page for "theregister.co.uk", which I preferred because of their slightly more provincial bent, and instead started redirecting everyone, everywhere to "theregister.com".<p>It's sad, because much of its appeal was precisely how different they were from common IT coverage that was and still is mostly written for non-IT types.
I used to visit it everyday from the early 2000's, but I don't think I have really visited in the last 3-4 years. I can't put a finger on it, but the writing and then subsequently the comments (which were always fun) kinda started falling off.<p>I still have it in my bookmark bar, but as I still cant get the favicon to load properly in Firefox, I forget to click on it :)
Example of the previous editorial style: <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20190410065314/https://www.theregister.co.uk/" rel="nofollow">https://web.archive.org/web/20190410065314/https://www.there...</a>
Yeap, I agree. I've been reading technological news from El Reg since around 2000 and their writing style has changed a lot, it's not as humorous as it used to be.<p>Once of the only reasons to visit them nowadays is for the BOFH (new episode every Friday): <a href="https://www.theregister.com/offbeat/bofh/" rel="nofollow">https://www.theregister.com/offbeat/bofh/</a>
It certainly had an unconventional approach, which was considered a tabloid style (similar to the 'red top' newspapers in the UK, the sun, the mirror etc)<p>I believe Mike Magee who was one of the founders was responsible for this, and he was involved until he fell out with the direction it was going in the early 2000s, and went on to form The Inquirer, which was a similar publication (although long gone).<p><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mike_Magee_(journalist)" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mike_Magee_(journalist)</a><p>I guess over time The Register has morphed to try and be taken more seriously (in I imagine a rather competitive market), it hides it's original tagline - biting the hand that feeds IT
Not sure, but my theory is that Google SEO had to do with it after Google tried to remove false or misleading headlines around the election and afterwards. At the time (and still somewhat now), satire was/is often quite lost on Google. This presumably hurt ad revenues.
Weirder is what happened to its successor theinquirer.net? It was bought and then erased. Who does that? Was it a copyright thing?<p>Otherwise theregister hit that brief window between professional magazine publishing and every teenager with a phone becoming a tech blogger, the brief window when website publishing was cheap but not yet overcrowded.
The Register used to be required reading for BOFH. More oriented to folks in the UK, but I used to enjoy this series. If you have some time to kill check out some of the articles.
Churnalism as an industry is very broken sadly T_T. Advertisers want to see engagement and the easiest way to do that is to suck up to Google SEO and pump more articles on the daily. Original and accurate reporting is expensive to produce. Only the biggest publishers or ones that are well funded can afford to do this. So in order to get the reader's eyeballs and clicks, the guys in the middle and bottom tiers have to crank out news and end up rehashing what has already been broken by bigger orgs. That's why The Register mostly looks like any other mediocre tech site now. I know someone who used to be a reporter and they got tired of having to rewrite stories for little pay.
> Does anybody know what caused this transformation?<p>Maybe this?<p>> I used to visit The Register almost every day up until a few years ago.<p>Years of not going<p>> I visited it again a week or two ago,
While Vulture Classic's (the old style's) sardonic 'tude was not always implemented well, it was a very welcome alternative to the mainstream's Sisyphean treadmill of "$VendorName $ProductName $NewVersionNumber Is New And Improved Yet Again!". Their 'tude let you at least pretend that their journalists weren't sock puppets for the industry heavyweights, and the headlines certainly made reading the news a bit more fun.<p>Looking for some upside - Vulture Classic was pretty alcoholic and misogynistic - two features which I found rather unattractive.
In 20 years el Reg has had several, well incarnations is too strong a word, but let's just say its nature has evolved. I think this is is pretty much the nature of any organization. The Lester Haines era (<a href="https://www.theregister.com/2016/06/16/lester_haines_obituary/" rel="nofollow">https://www.theregister.com/2016/06/16/lester_haines_obituar...</a> ) was quite good -- I think his presence must have inspired others to creativity and lunacy in their prose. Orlowski was really really good but you can't do the same thing forever.<p>FWIW, lately I feel like it's been on an uptick.<p>Let's compare it to google which had a burst of activity and even inspiration at first and then lost its way after Schmidt stopped being CEO. OK, El Reg isn't one of the largest corporations in the world (well, at least they won't admit it and hide it well) but on this dimension I think it's done better than Google.
They had a great formula. Used to get some good scoop, a humorous spin whilst having a decent level of factual accuracy.
Sadly, they now need to compete with social media and memes, the newer generations of internet user treat websites as a secondary source of news and entertainment.
Oh, interesting, I might have to start reading it. I used to read it back in the late 90s and early 00s but the tabloid style put me off<p>(I assume this is the .com is the same as theregister.co.uk -- the place that bought BOFH etc)
It hasn't been the same since around the time Andrew Orlowski left.<p>The politics (identity and anti-Trump reddit-style) stuff crept in too, especially from its San Fran office, but you could obviously just choose to ignore those articles. It's not something I want from a tech site though.<p>It's a shame, ElReg and Slashdot used be my go-to site for tech content.
Theguardian and bbc also redirect me to their US .com these days when I explicitly go to their .co.uk looking for news tailored to the UK because of my geoip.
It probably certainly doesn't help that they hire editors that feel the need to compare people's chosen professional names to mercenary groups.
When I saw this, I thought "probably about the changing of the header to black instead of red" (presumably due to Queen Elizabeth's death?).
Didn't they make some grand announcement about shutting down a few years ago?<p>I can see how someone might not allow that to happen and then just milk the thing.