The Guardian is close to dropping its Thursday Technology supplement, we have learned and confirmed. The online counterpart, which is updated through the day, will continue, however, and Technology may yet be merged with MediaGuardian. The move is thought to be due to worsening tech ad spend but also the fact that many readers, naturally, are online natives with a voracious appetite for tech news throughout the week. Now that @guardiantech has over 615,000 Twitter followers hanging on its every tweet, one school of thought has it that a weekly dead-tree edition seems like anachronism.
The paper first wants to decide on a new section to replace Technology, one of its daily so-called “G3” supplements, before axing the section. Guardian News & Media recently said it would shave 50 staff from its books to respond to the downturn – it’s not known whether any layoffs will come with the Technology move. The Graun’s tech section has a long and rich heritage – Victor Keegan Nick Passmore launched the Online supplement in May 1994 but, with new editor Charles Arthur, it was rebadged Technology, and its science sister supplement Life was folded in to the paper, when The Guardian redesigned as a berliner edition in September 2005.
Guardian News & Media told paidContent:UK: “We are reviewing our technology offering to readers and one idea is that we might merge the printed section with Media on a Monday; this is still under consideration. We are, however, committed to expanding our technology coverage online to better meet the needs of the technology audience.”
(Full disclosure: paidContent:UK’s publisher ContentNext Media is a wholly owned subsidiary of Guardian News & Media)