I don't want 15 different subscriptions. I'll pay a premium for 1. I think a lot of people would do the same. Why haven't they figured this out yet and formed some kind of group/alliance?
Funny, I recently donated to the Guardian. I thought there was something refreshingly honest, open, and unobtrusive about their call to action at the end of the article. I'm glad it seems to be working out for them.
The article doesn’t mention the trust that owns The Guardian, now a limited company, which is quite interesting because it was set up to own The Guardian for purely philanthropic reasons.<p><a href="https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scott_Trust_Limited" rel="nofollow">https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scott_Trust_Limited</a>
The article concentrates on the technical and administrative sides of running the Guardian, but it completely overlooks the political situation.<p>The Guardian benefited from two very politically-charged years where left-leaning groups were dramatically beaten. This sort of event traditionally results in increased attention for left-leaning media in the aftermath. They've also reigned in their all-out campaign against the current UK Labour leader, under pressure from their own readership.<p>These factors are pretty big on their own. I'm sure the internal reorganisations and wikipedia-style appeals helped, but going where the readers actually want to go likely helped as well.
Title is a bit misleading...<p>'The Guardian has halved its operating losses compared to two years ago, now looking at breaking even by 2019.'
I'd rather pay the guardian (and I do) for content than pay any news limited (murdoch) for the same (I don't) both have a bias, but only one is being even remotely honest about it. News ltd try hard to claim centrist positions but are both far more rightward than they want to admit, and much less open about advertorial and content which materially advances Rupert Murdoch's personal causes. The guardian wears its heart on its shirt. Many comments in the guardian are vituperation but if you break the paywall to read news ltd comments they are racist, and worse. They have editorial control on comments and chose not to apply them which I feel speaks volumes to their readerships expectations and their own.
Interesting that 214 million GBP revenue with 1500 employees works out to just under 143K GBP per employee. Obviously, I'm not in publishing, but it seems to me that there is still quite a lot of fat they can cut. I'm guessing that their sales channels are horrendously expensive. However, their digital revenue is now approaching <i>half</i> of their overall revenue, so perhaps those sales channels are not so necessary as they may seem. And maybe the print infrastructure is expensive to maintain. Still... if this was a software house, you'd be expecting to be making pretty hefty profits with that kind of revenue...