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…

Mea culpas all round at Guardian towers this weekend. The paper has had to apologise after coincidence-happy tech hack Charles Arthur was accused of plagiarising a Reuters story. Again.

Arthur’s report on a Cisco telecoms deal looked remarkably similar to Steve Stecklow’s Reuters exclusive from a day earlier. When accused of lifting the story by an American journalism school Arthur went on the defensive, insisting that he had second-sourced the original story.  That didn’t satisfy his boss.

Guardian comms chief Richard Lindsay said in a statement that Arthur’s name only appeared in the byline in error, again, and that it had now been corrected to “staff and agencies”. The paper admits that “the original byline did not reflect that the article was substantially based on a Reuters story”, and has issued a grovelling apology to Reuters. This is becoming a regular occurrence…

Via Staff and The Baron.

It looks like an Independent on Sunday journalist is set for an acrimonious departure from the struggling paper. Last month music hack Simon Price was left strapped for cash after the Sindy, clearly feeling the effects of a 19% drop in circulation year-on-year, failed to pay him on time. MediaGuido understands that the money eventually came through, but last night Price was told he had to accept a 25% pay cut or face the axe. Price himself is refusing to comment. Watch this space…

Meanwhile over at Guardian towers Alan Rusbridger’s economy drive has hit a stumbling block.

Guardian bosses had hoped around 100 hacks would accept voluntary redundancy, but only a mere 30 came forwards.

Meaning 70 face the sack…

“Goodbye comprehensive healthcare, hello private insurance”, was how the Guardian spun the Coalition’s health reforms. Apparently that evil mastermind masquerading as Andrew Lansley was implementing “the biggest ever act of NHS privatisation”, and the private healthcare market is an anti-competitive oligopoly. Sir Michael White certainly doesn’t like private firms “sniffing around” – there’s even a whole section of their website devoted to their beloved NHS.

Funny then that every single full-time Guardian employee is offered a private healthcare scheme paid for by Guardian News & Media. Guido has got hold of documents showing that Guardian journalists are offered a generous £733-a-year per person AXA health plan, all costs covered by GNM:

Employees can decide to opt out, but Guido would be very interested to hear whether any Guardian hacks put principle before their own health. Private schools, private healthcare – Guido thinks Rusbridger’s hypocrites deserve a tax rebate…

The papers are all going with Millionaire Miliband this morning, as the fine details of Tuesday’s speech begin to unravel. It’s also worth noting how Ed pledged to “crack down” on unpaid internships in Manchester. Just who are these evil predators who don’t pay their exploited young staff?

Guido is sure an upstanding paragon of virtue such as the New Statesman would never offer unpaid positions, and with all that union gold Political Scrapbook can surely afford to fork out for more than the odd lunch. It would be pretty bad if, say, the Guardian offered ethnic minority kids work without pay, and Intern Aware-backing Left Foot Forward would have to pay their own interns, right? And what about two-faced Chuka? Guido is still waiting to hear whether Labour HQ pay their interns. Ed needs to look a bit closer to home…

Troubling times for the children of Kings Place, the pain is being inflicted at the bottom not the top. Not only are swathes of hacks getting the chop, prices are being hiked for the hungry piggies in the staff canteen as the subsidy on food and drink is removed. Writing to all staff, John Cornby, the Guardian’s Finance Director claims to “appreciate these changes come at a time when pockets are being squeezed” – the move will save the troubled paper £200,000 – on the plus side “healthy options such as muesli and toast will be served in the restaurant as usual”.

£200,000 is around a third of the editor’s pay package…

On the train to Manchester Guido turned his attention to tonight’s fun and games: mainly crashing the Guardian party again and worshipping at the alter of Alan. Sadly, upon inquiring when and where the shindig was going down, he was informed that this year’s party had been cancelled due to staff cuts. Apparently it was “thought it would look bad so not doing any conference receptions this year”. Troubled times…

With News International still licking their wounds, it looks like the Sky News party is going to be the place to be.

This week’s commentariat death match is brought to you courtesy of old enemies. In the money-making redtop corner we have the Sun, in the loss-making blue corner we have the Guardian. Following David Leigh’s crazy poll tax proposal earlier this week, the Sun‘s editorial today took no prisoners:

“Those deluded and arrogant hand-wringers at The Guardian have come up with a bonkers scheme to impose a tax on broadband users to fund money-haemorrhaging publications like their own. We have a more sensible proposal. Why not simply put together a product that excites and engages the British public.”

Touché…

Yesterday the Guardian‘s very own ‘public-interest’ phone-hacker David Leigh announced a salvation plan for the beleaguered paper: a £2-a-month levy on every household broadband bill to bail out bankrupt newspapers. That’s right, they aren’t making money because people are not buying their papers, so they are now demanding a bailout. Leigh’s proposal argues:

“A small levy on UK broadband providers – no more than £2 a month on each subscriber’s bill – could be distributed to news providers in proportion to their UK online readership. This would solve the financial problems of quality newspapers, whose readers are not disappearing, but simply migrating online. There are almost 20m UK households that are paying upwards of £15 a month for a good broadband connection, plus another 5m mobile internet subscriptions. People willingly pay this money to a handful of telecommunications companies, but pay nothing for the news content they receive as a result, whose continued survival is generally agreed to be a fundamental plank of democracy. A £2 levy on top – collected easily from the small number of UK service providers (BT, Virgin, Sky, TalkTalk etc) who would add it on to consumers’ bills – would raise more than £500 million annually. It could be collected by a freestanding agency, on the lines of the BBC licence fee, and redistributed automatically to “news providers” according to their share of UK online readership.”

The irony of this suggestion coming from inside Guardian towers has not been lost on media commentators across the spectrum. Regular readers will be well-versed in the hypocrisy of the editor Alan Rusbridger, who is also a director of Guardian Media Group, overseeing editorials on tax avoidance, high pay and spending cuts whilst sitting on the parent company board which shelters assets and cash in the Caymans. Rusbridger trousers half-a-million pounds per year while staff are fired by the dozen. Now they want a bailout, a £2-a-month levy on every broadband user in the country is a tax that would be as regressive as they come. This is the Guardian’s poll tax moment.

Guido has been saying it for years, this is yet further evidence that the less popular newspapers are thrashing about in their final death throes. Under threat from an ever-stronger online industry much of the print media can no longer sustain itself. Paywalls kill readership, news content is almost always available for free and – in the age of Twitter – papers are reporting yesterday’s news. This year the Guardian made losses of £75.6 million. Roy Greenslade asks “has David Leigh cracked it?” A more appropriate question would be whether Leigh, and his paper, have finally cracked up.

Two top Guardian executives have left the company as part of a “restructure of senior management” announced last night. Commercial executive director Adam Freeman will move on after a decade at the paper to be replaced by David Pemsel, the man behind the “Three Little Pigs” ad campaign. Meanwhile 20-year Guardian veteran Chris Pelekanou will leave the company after overseeing the paper’s ill-fated US operation. Rusbridger wields the axe…