Guardian Bosses Threaten to Kill Newspaper
Rusbridger Frozen Out as All-Digital Operation Considered
Rusbridger’s broadband poll tax was laughed all the way out of Guardian HQ when it was floated through David Leigh last month, the family silver is being sold off and up to seventy hacks face the sack. Now media analysts are reporting that, for the first time, the paper’s bosses are seriously considering ditching the print edition altogether in favour of an all-digital operation. Rusbridger has been left isolated by the Scott Trust, GNM’s owners, and is reportedly close to becoming the only person left on the company’s board opposed to signing the newspaper’s death warrant. This could be the beginning of the end…
UPDATE: Rusbridger himself says it’s untrue.
Telegraph story abt the Guardian bit.ly/PBQSzq simply untrue. Largely copied from bit.ly/T0dGYZ Also untrue—
alan rusbridger (@arusbridger) October 17, 2012
Never believe anything until it’s officially denied…
Enfin! Seriously what is the point of The Guardian? Circulation dropping like a stone, losing money & no Government advertising! Adieu!
That fucking cocksucker’s toast!
No one cares – the circulation sucks, the reporting is unsustainable, idealistic twaddle
When its over, only offshore tax lawyers and champagne sociopath trustafarians will mourn
unfortunately, it puts Polly at a loose end to infest the BBC (assuming a fat fee and 1st class expenses from Florence are included).
> Seriously what is the point of The Guardian?
To tell the BBC what direction to take.
For the use of BBC staff when the softer, absorbent, perforated paper runs out.
It’s fine – I have accrued a simply enormous pension fund, and our broadcasting arm, the BBC, will want my opinion on absolutely everything, so that will pay for all of the jet charters, and I can do all of the digital stuff kneeling up in front of Alphonse!
Poor bloody Alphonse!
I love to see capitalism at work – that will leave the Beeb isolated on the left-wing, good news for all normal people!
Not good for a balanced media though.
Problem is eeerm, those at the Guardian think ‘centre left’ IS balanced.
What do you suggest? A broadband tax to subsidise left wing papers maybe?
http://www.theatlanticwire.com/business/2011/04/daily-mail-leapfrogs-huffpost-web-traffic/36799/
Looks like they’re wrong. Center Right is the majority.
The facts of life are conservative.
Compelling me to fund leftist propaganda through the broadcasting poll tax is not good either.
Anyway, there’s always those bastion of leftist lies The Daily Mirror and the Limpwristdependant.
One down and the next candidate should be the BBC. Why should we have to subsidise the propaganda of a metropolitan left wing elite which outside Broadcasting House and Westminster bears absolutely no relevance to the lives of the average citizen of this country.
I never thought I’d see the day when people talked about the BBC as ‘paedophile enablers’.
They sent me a new tv licence today, which I’m going to shred and post back to them.
We still need to see the BBC destroyed.
Rusbridger must be shitting it that just the rumour of this will dent future advertising revenue. Who wants to place ads in a paper that is about to be shut down?
Plus, print ad revenue will not automatically be diverted to the digital version, and many advertisers will be less interested in what will basically be a web site rather than a combined ‘newspaper/digital’ operation.
They might end up even deeper in the shit. Oh, happy day. I would love to see this sanctimony dissemination engine closed down for good.
They have fucking GUARANTEED advertising from every local authority in the land plus the BBC.
All paid for by the tax payer directly or indirectly.
+ 1000 trillion. Tee hee hee.
That photo…
Is Rusbridger saying “would you like a ride in my nice shiny little car children?”
If not he ought to be. Creepy little fucker that he is.
“Telegraph story abt the Guardian bit.ly/PBQSzq simply untrue. Largely copied from bit.ly/T0dGYZ Also untrue”
If a story is taken from the same source as one which is wrong you would expect that both would be wrong whereas Alan The Guardian editor feels the need to point this out.
That is why he is Guardian editor and you are not.
“Reportedly close”, eh?
In other words, you just made that up.
No we linked to a report elsewhere. Hence “reportedly”. Not complicated.
Report of a report of a report is akin to a circle jerk HOWEVER:
Rusbridger: “not true” means that it is probably one truth as the trust WILL have done all of the figures taking in all of the options including closing down the print side of things and Rusbridger is fire fighting with a 1kg dry powder extinguisher.
My analysis? Kernel of truth meets wishful thinking.
Nationalise.
Call it the People’s Daily.
or the Truth
Merge with the Morning Star
or the BBC!
Malinvestya?
F_ck off we don’t want that bunch of middle class tossers here at the Daily Worker. Our share holders really do own the paper, they just happen to be Class Warriors who want to see the Ruling Class hanging from a lamp post, nothing wrong with that surely?
Yes smash the ruling classes.
That’s what we always say at our dinner parties in Primrose Hill when we empathise with the proletariat over our bottles of Sangria.
We working class people are all in it together.
Quite
The workers’ paint is deepest red, or as Farrow and Ball would say “Rectory Red”
What does ISLOATED mean?
It means aolne. Like you are when you’re holding a fizzling bmob.
It means the Grauniad’s subbies didn’t check it first.
No it means they did.
It’s a misspelling. It should read “IS LOADED”.
It means Guido’s smelling pistakes are as carp as the Guarniads
Its a funney joke about, The Grauniads history of typographical errosr and poor prooofing .
Chicken and egg situation.
With Auntie’s name being mud and soon no Beebbc sales and advertising to swell the coffers, something has to give.
Polly Gone?
But she only has a left side. Will she be given a Möbius pink slip?
Or a Möbius Inversion into complex hyperspace!
you spend ages waiting for a mobius and then one comes along at once
Ha ha ha.
Once again, an illustration that the edifices of the Left are unsustainable without massive subsidy from the productive.
I though they were having trouble monetising the digital side of things? Mind you, I doubt advertisers will be that interested in the print edition once its (artificially bloated) circulation dips into 5 figures.
Payback for your little phone hacking leveraging stunt, you sanctimonious little Gramsciian fuckers.
I knew Old Rupe would be having the last laugh…
The last laugh would be for Rupe to but it.
grrr. BUY it
No more jobs in the public sector = no more advertising revenue = no more Guardian.
Sounds pretty isloated to me.
Sounds pretty good, as well, if it actually happens. If the Graun goes to the wall, there’ll be a fair bit less bigotry around.
I started reading the Grauniad, after Charles and Di’s wedding. Then, one day, it was out of stock, so I bought the Indy instead, and never went back, ’til Marr stiffed me on the video collection*. Couldn’t return to the Gaurdian, though, it just felt so insufferably, smugly, leftwing.
*actually, that would be a silly reason. I just couldn’t afford it anymore, as I recall.
And the Indy didn’t feel so insufferably, smugly left wing?
Not so much. Thing about the Indy was that it did make a point of having differing opinions. I think Nigel Lawson wrote for it at one point, chuntering on about climate change being rubbish (and I’m on the fence, but he made me want to jump off it and on to his head).
Actually, if I was contemplating reading the Guardian again, cost must have not been the only issue. I did start reading my local (slightly cheaper) paper, The Citizen, and that’s an Express sockpuppet, as it turns out, running now on a skeleton staff.
And the Indy didn’t feel so insufferably, smugly 72 point font left wing?
Smugly wasn’t something the Independent did.
Where will they hire for the BBC and the public sector?
They’ll have to get reall jobs
“Real” as well!
Good idea – then when no-one buys the weekend edition, they will only lose 1/5th of the money they are at the moment.
1/6.
Saving them money already.
Change the name to Pravda and pay for it via the BBC licence fee. They could share the cost of reporters. They already share the same editorial bias anyway
the chair of the BBC inquiries report to the person in the firing line, the DG.
There is no news in ‘Pravda’, and no truth in ‘Izvestiya.
Fuck them both.
Ah, the usual incisive comments from our thicker Tory Brethren…
Yawn….. PARP!
Yawn………PARP! ZZZZZZzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz….
Do fuck off there’s a good chap.
Now all we need to do is to stop the BBC getting access for all their stories to the Guardian website. A job for Gary Mckinnon?
The only job he needs is prison gimp.
Time for Toinpee to find out what it is like in the real world, out of the Tuscany champagne national socialist sunshine.
Polly need not worry. The BBC lifeboat is launched and pulling up alongside the sinking Graun as we speak.
Polly will be rescued and and ensconced at the BBC along with any other Graun hack who can cling on to the outside of the boat without drowning or freezing to death.
This is unacceptable.
How am I to project my superior left-wing sensibilities when in public spaces if I can’t sweep open a copy of the Guardian and smile wryly at the ramblings of middle class Champagne socialists? Where else am I to source jobs where in which someone will be given over £100’000 pounds of other peoples money every year for doing something of questionable observable value?
Meanwhile, oiks will be able to buy the Daily Mail and other ‘commercially successful’ (ugh!) papers. How vulgar. OK, I could look at the Guardian web site on the latest iPad, but it just doesn’t have the same caché.
I really can’t see how people can justify not giving this paper £50 million pounds a year. I really don’t.
I wholeheartedly agree.
My morning able to my local Primrose Hill coffee shop would just not be the same without being able to flaunt my copy of this splendid organ of liberal progressiveness.
I suppose I’ll just have to sit there sipping my fairtrade frappuccino and look gloomily down at my Birkenstocks and picking remnants of last nights lentil and aubergine bake out of my beard.
Fuck!
Tips on ways to reduce debt and increase circulation.
Sack Rusbridger and save £6/700,000 pa.
Huge tits on page 3. And I don’t mean Miliband.
Problem solved.
How will I wipe my arse?
I think we should have a Guardian tax to keep this great British institution going, you can still buy any newspaper you like but 5 pence of every copy will go to Polly Toynbee.
so how long before its officially re-christened (ooops sorry filthy word to commie
luvers) online edition as Pravda UK……..????
as recommended & supported by Al-Beeb……..
WTF
You have to sign on next Tuesday at 10am dear.
It means The Guardian will no longer be a Newspaper.
It will be a web site.
Doesn’t sound as impressive, does it? Not the sort of place Clarissa will want to do her work experience in between years out.
Sorry about Clarissa……but all newspapers will eventually be digital.
Murdoch should buy it
Sell it to Murdoch. Make James Delingpole the editor.
Think of all the trees they’ll save by not printing a budgie cage liner– more carbon dioxide capable of being taken out of the environment– a welcome development in the fight against global warming, for which all Lefties should give thanks! (Like I really give a toss, but hey, call it what it is!) ‘Tis an ill wind indeed that blows NO good, innit?
Monbiot might agree to differ on that one, somebodies got to pay for his air miles.
Hahahahahaha… fuck ‘em!
I’d known Alan for many years, he often asked my advice on editorial decisions. I had never seen him so angry.
“Telegraph story abt the Guardian bit.ly/PBQSzq simply untrue. Largely copied from bit.ly/T0dGYZ Also untrue” he said, thumping the table in time to the words. I stayed calm, not for myself, but for him.
He needed me more than ever. But I knew I was equal to this task.
Is it me, or does Rusbridger look a bit like a P D File, as well as off-the-chart smug? You certainly wouldn’t want him minding your kids, would you?
depends…can I watch?
If we can’t buy the Guardian to tell us what to think, then we’ll have to buy the Independent instead.
And as the Independent has been described as “the Guardian when it has forgotten to take its medication”, that is going to cause a lot of trouble in places like Salford and Islington.
Do you really want that to happen ?
Surely there is a case here for a Newspaper Licence Fee of — ooh, I don’t know — say £145.50 per annum, to be paid by everyone who reads a newspaper, all of which money will be handed over to the Guardian Media Group and none to any other press-organization.
Surely that is what a caring society is all about ? It works for us, anyhow.
Yes. Yes. Yes. Let’s have a brainstorming session.
I think we should replace the outmoded ‘TV license’ with an annual ‘Progressive media’ license set at £1000 a year per household. This can pay for special people to have jobs and allow them to tell lots of other people what to do and how to think. Anyone not agreeing will obviously be a bigot and an evil Tory.
Some of the proceeds could also be channelled to the Labour party to facilitate union facility time and encourage sound legislation, or something. I’m going to now write some template letters to send to any household not paying for this invaluable service.
Good riddance to the rubbish!
+9999999999 E
Why aren’t the Hefty Looney Lefties building tents and camping in protest outside the Guardian offices?
Hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha…..
the guardian despite its losses is not about to go under as it has money in the bank. It can sell its second hand car site autotrader. However in the longer term is does face decline and cutting journalist to rely on interns or second rate hacks will not enable it to stand out. Given that the most talked about item yeserday was about middle class mommies clogging up coffee shops then the decline is clear to see.
However, the problem with going all digital is getting subsribers and not being able to pad out numbers by free copies or the BBC or NGO’s ordering copies. I reckon by going all digital you will able to identify how many readers the guardian which despite its american version, i would say it would be less than 100,000 which would reduce it advertising revenues even further.
If you could get the same content free from other sources how many would bother paying for the guardian at all. Either way it does not look good for it in the longer term as other news organisations have deeper pockets and are part of large companies who can cross subsidised theri newspaper operations.
Auto Trader is owned by the Guardian Media Group, not by The Guardian paper.
Do you actually believe they will sell off Auto Trader, about the only thing they have that actually makes money, to subsidise a few more years existence for the massively loss-making left wing vanity sheet known as The Guardian?
I know the GMG don’t pay taxes or anything, but it’s still a lot to ask.
Bollocks.
Has it occured to you that the board of GMG (being businessmen afterall) might actually NOT want to sell the very profitle Autotrader to prop up a decreptit leftwing rag whose only readers are the BBC and snooty c unts from North London.
I read the Guardian every day.
I have paid for one copy in the last year.
They’re toast.
Presumably the taxpayer paid for the other 364 ?
Shame. When Teh Graun has gone there will be one paper in the world for me not to read.
Sorry. I meant one less paper in the world to read. My subbing duties here at Polly Villas can mean I sometimes make mitsakes.
Who locked Rusbridger in that tin can?
Please please please close the appalling, dishonest, pile of ordure that is the Guardian and send that sack of hypocritical shit Rushbridger back to some local freesheet which is where he belongs.
Then let’s see the back of that equally dreadful and failing pice of crap The, absolutely not, Independent.
Happy Days!!