Evening Standard

[Richard James]

I've just received an email from Ray Cannon telling me that Leonard Barden's chess column in the Evening Standard has been axed. He picked up a copy this afternoon and discovered there was no chess column there.

Can Leonard or anyone else tell us what's happened. Bad news if it's true.

[JustinHorton]

For some years that column has been the only reason for reading that paper.

[James Coleman]

There is a note on the games page to say that the chess and bridge sections are online. It doesn't say if that's a permanent thing.

[John Saunders]

I've put up a link to Leonard's Evening Standard online column on BCM's Links page - it is http://standard.co.uk/chess

[isaac wallis]

Apparently they've replaced it with Battleships. Oh great.

[Gavin Strachan]

Its because it is owned by the ownly Russian who doesn't understand chess. The chess was very good.

[John Saunders]

For ease of reference, I repeat the link to the column, which is http://standard.co.uk/chess

I urge people who care about this to visit the page and make a comment in the box provided. To add insult to injury, whoever is putting the chess column on the web page is making a total hash of it, placing the solution before the diagram (which is dumped any old how at the bottom of the page so that you can't tell to which puzzle it refers). It is galling to think that some numbskull web techie is probably being paid money to do this.

As well as placing a comment in the box provided, we should write letters to the ES about this. Here is what Stewart Reuben wrote the last time there was a problem, when the ES cut Leonard's printed column to one a week (13 May 2009)...

...This is a crime against humanity for what is the longest-running chess column in the world.
The contact details are: Editor Geordie Greig, [email protected]; Evening Standard, PO Box 2309, London W8 5EE.

All chess publicity must be defended fiercely at all times.

Stewart was absolutely right and the 2009 campaign to restore Leonard's column to the printed page was 100% successful. We should all be writing to the ES about this again. It only takes a moment or two to dash off an email.

[JustinHorton]

Additionally, I'd advise as many people who can to write letters, on paper, asking for responses. From experience, this gives you a much better chance of getting an actual reply.

[John Saunders]

I've just had a look at today's puzzle in the ES. The good news is that they have tidied up presentation so that the puzzle precedes the solution. However, they have chosen to get rid of the comments facility and the various comments that had already accumulated there.

[JustinHorton]

I think the fact that they shifted it during the actual British Championship speaks volumes.

[JustinHorton]

I note from Wikipedia that this was the oldest-running daily chess column in the world. One wonders whether the Standard even knew this.

[Stewart Reuben]

This time they also dropped the Bridge column. I have tried to enlist their support, but have received no response from the EBU to my email. Possibly of course they had already leaped into action.
Please, please write in. But don't knock our competition such as Battleships, Su Duko or Crosswords. That may alienate their supporters.
Stewart Reuben

[David Sedgwick]

I think the fact that they shifted it during the actual British Championship speaks volumes.

This time they also dropped the Bridge column. I have tried to enlist their support, but have received no response from the EBU to my email.

Whether by accident or design, the Evening Standard have timed their action for a period when leading organisers in both Chess and Bridge are otherwise occupied. The EBU Summer Meeting in Brighton, their biggest event of the year, starts tomorrow. I imagine that at this precise moment their organisers and staff are concentrating on the preparations.

However, once the Summer Meeting actually starts they'll be hundreds of players there who can be asked to write in. I would hope that the EBU are alive to that.

[Adam Raoof]

Tanks to Stewart for this;

A CALL TO ARMS

On Monday Leonard Barden’s chess column was discontinued in the London Evening Standard. It had appeared daily virtually continuously for over 50 years. Now it has been relegated to the online version of the newspaper.

Even if you never see the column, you should be able to appreciate that this is a serious blow to chess in this country. We get little enough publicity as it is and Leonard has been one of our greatest popularisers of the game. He deserves our support.

On previous occasions, when faced by such threats, we have mounted successful campaigns to reinstate columns. Please write to the Evening Standard in your own words decrying their act of vandalism. The contact details are:

Editor Geordie Greig,

[email protected];
[email protected]
Evening Standard, PO Box 2309, London W8 5EE

[Alex Holowczak]

Tanks to Stewart for this;

A CALL TO ARMS

No pun intended.