I was hoping this article went deeper into the Guardian's somewhat unusual ownership model, because I find it interesting and would love to learn more.
The Guardian is owned by (and I think largely funded by?) a trust that was intentionally set up in a way to ensure no commercial interest could interfere with the paper. How well it achieved that goal is, of course, debatable, but it has survived nearly a century in that form.
The Guardian feels like the last good normal newspaper at this point. Great book and movie reviews, normal detailed circa 2005 coverage, and none of the NYT’s wierd if we didn’t break the story we won’t talk about it.
>The Guardian US expects to hit $44 million in voluntary reader donations in the U.S. and Canada this year, up 33 percent over last year
>"We’re now at a place where our audience is actually bigger in the U.S. than The Wall Street Journal’s audience in the U.S."
That feels like not that much money considering the readership, right? The WSJ has somewhere around 3 million subscribers; they would need to be making only 14 dollars per subscription per year to do that sort of revenue.
Not to say that's necessarily a bad thing, but more that you need a pretty substantial readership to get there.
Put another way, that revenue is like 200k subscribers at 20 bucks a month. That would put you at the level of a newspaper like the Minnesota Star Tribune as far as subscription revenue.
The other day they forced me to give full consent to all advertising cookies in order to read without a subscription. I found this surprising, I do read them a great deal, it might only happen for heavy users.
As a long-standing Guardian reader, I couldn't disagree more. It might be financially solvent, but the business model of the paper under the leadership of Katherine Viner has shifted to high throughput, low quality content vying for clicks in the attention economy. They have gone all-in on volume.
Compare that to the Financial Times, which has a low throughput of very high quality content, enabled by a discerning and high paying subscriber base. I read the Guardian for the lifestyle / cooking sections these days, but the FT is an incomparably better and more serious publication, whatever your politics (mine are the diametric opposite of the financial class).
It's interesting that The Guardian's name itself reflects one of the UK's enduring problems: the extreme dominance of the South East and London in particular.
Originally founded, written, published and printed in Manchester and bearing the name 'The Manchester Guardian' it's now abandoned all of these in favour of London with just a handful of Manchester based journalists.
The contrast with the US and Germany say is stark.
If you are on iOS you can also use the app via TestFlight (in beta). It's free of banners and you get to contribute to its development if you spot a bug.
Their focus on their mission of informing the public, not just a few, is impressive and heartening:
> "... there is a real crisis of access to reliable information for people who don’t want or have the means to subscribe to the New York Times. That is a real problem that we have an answer to.”
It's a bit of a unicorn model - you need massive scale, a global brand, and a steady stream of high-stakes stories to make reader donations work at this level. Smaller outlets probably can't replicate this
I subscribe to the guardian specifically because it is not paywalled - I get to feel like my subscription helps keep it free for everyone to read, which is genuine value for money.
I recently cancelled my Washington Post subscription and would love to replace it with something better. Unfortunately, my impression of The Guardian US so far is that it is still very much a UK paper. It’s not bad, but it doesn’t yet have an inside view of US news.
The Guardian's open access model, supported by reader donations, grants and targeted ads, offers an intriguing alternative to paywalls. It's a bold strategy that seems to be working, but I wonder about its long-term sustainability and whether it could work for publications without The Guardian's brand recognition.
The Guardian used to be considered a serious paper, then a few years ago the quality declined dramatically. Now it's not much better than most tabloids.
From the way they keep asking for donations, I thought they were constantly about to go out of business. Props to them though, good journalism is important
I'm reading Nagourney's The Times now and a point it makes is that the owner's (Sulzberger) decision to institute a paywall, over the objections of his team, made the NYTimes the profitable digital success story it is today.
It sounds like there have been some changes to the Guardian and Observer lately, such as the sale of the Observer to Tortoise Media. [0] Journalists were concerned enough to strike. [1]
Never donated to the guardian, because I only go there occasionally when an agregator punts me there. I do give annually to AP News which also does good work at aren't beholden to billionaires like Musk and Bezos
I am vaguely left, but I find the Guardian's hatred of men so offputting that I cannot bring myself to read it any more.
Similar to how Trump made CNN unwatchable. I mean, I hate the man, but I want an independent, factual slant on the news, not to be continually told how bad Trump is.
I've often wondered what impact the fact that major prominent liberal media outlets are often paywalled while conservatives one are not, has on public discourse. I have to imagine this translates to conservative media dominating online spaces, no?
I really wish the web would have adopted micropayments at the HTTP level as has been talked about since the late 1990s. I would be far more willing to toss a website a dime or quarter to read a single article than I am to buy a full subscription to your stupid regional newspaper I've never heard of before or since. Paywalls as they exist now are just dumb and kind of geo-lock news.
Beyond that, I personally take issue with Google not SEO banishing news companies for providing different results to Google than the average user. It's been over a decade since I've worked in the SEO industry but at the time that was a mortal SEO sin.
The Guardian is extremely-polarized ragebait. I don't mean that as an attack or dismissal-- they do have good reporting sometimes-- but you have to keep that in mind when talking about their business model and what it implies for the broader industry. Any doofus on Substack or YouTube can make a living posting ragebait because it keeps engagement high. The question is whether the same business model (no paywall, unobtrusive ads) can work for sober and honest journalism, and IMO the answer sadly appears to be no, because not enough people value that to pay for it.
maybe also the major paper you can rely on for the truth. yeah it's left leaning but it won't spew lies and spread propaganda like the NYT / Washington Post.
In the Netherlands newspapers have traditionally been funded by subscribers. Running a newspaper is not that expensive- most of the news is after all happening in the third world were a few thousand euro can get you far.
Have your journalists fly economy- or worse Southwest lol.
People who cannot afford your product are not your audience, it is okay to be elitist.
The Guardian flourishes without a paywall
(nymag.com)614 points by bookofjoe 29 March 2025 | 513 comments
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The Guardian is owned by (and I think largely funded by?) a trust that was intentionally set up in a way to ensure no commercial interest could interfere with the paper. How well it achieved that goal is, of course, debatable, but it has survived nearly a century in that form.
Back when it was The Manchester Guardian, they produced one of the most remarkable TV commercials in history, "Points of View":
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_SsccRkLLzU
I first saw this commercial when Will Hearst (yes, of that Hearst family) screened it at a Software Development Forum meeting in the late 1980s.
I wish this were a better transfer, but it is what we have. Does anyone have a link to a higher resolution transfer?
>"We’re now at a place where our audience is actually bigger in the U.S. than The Wall Street Journal’s audience in the U.S."
That feels like not that much money considering the readership, right? The WSJ has somewhere around 3 million subscribers; they would need to be making only 14 dollars per subscription per year to do that sort of revenue.
Not to say that's necessarily a bad thing, but more that you need a pretty substantial readership to get there.
Put another way, that revenue is like 200k subscribers at 20 bucks a month. That would put you at the level of a newspaper like the Minnesota Star Tribune as far as subscription revenue.
Compare that to the Financial Times, which has a low throughput of very high quality content, enabled by a discerning and high paying subscriber base. I read the Guardian for the lifestyle / cooking sections these days, but the FT is an incomparably better and more serious publication, whatever your politics (mine are the diametric opposite of the financial class).
Originally founded, written, published and printed in Manchester and bearing the name 'The Manchester Guardian' it's now abandoned all of these in favour of London with just a handful of Manchester based journalists.
The contrast with the US and Germany say is stark.
> "... there is a real crisis of access to reliable information for people who don’t want or have the means to subscribe to the New York Times. That is a real problem that we have an answer to.”
I recently went back to the guardian after 10yrs as NYT and even WSJ just got crappier in every way.
The Guardian podcast ‘long reads’ is so good. I hope they continue to thrive
(This is better than most US news organizations I've checked, who seem to sell out the news-reading behavior to numerous third-party trackers.)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scott_Trust_Limited
[0] https://broligarchy.substack.com/p/who-is-the-money-behind-t... [1] (PDF) https://www.nuj.org.uk/asset/18CD4D84-FD26-4CDB-AF43E11F6A6C...
The default has always been no friction, especially no paywall.
Anything less is supposed to raise an eyebrow.
If you've got significant visitors to your website, the default is flourishing also.
Paywalls or other obstacles are just a sign that you're not flourishing as well as others in the same environment.
Similar to how Trump made CNN unwatchable. I mean, I hate the man, but I want an independent, factual slant on the news, not to be continually told how bad Trump is.
Not going to lie, I was really hoping that this would be much more like the 99% of articles on NYMag that is fully paywalled, for irony's sake.
Breaking news whenever it feels like breaking.
Beyond that, I personally take issue with Google not SEO banishing news companies for providing different results to Google than the average user. It's been over a decade since I've worked in the SEO industry but at the time that was a mortal SEO sin.
Quite possibly the most obnoxious route to take
Social media is the new journalism.
People who cannot afford your product are not your audience, it is okay to be elitist.