Co-conspirators may remember that back in 2022 James Harding’s Tortoise Media launched a judicial review against the Tory Party for its refusal to reveal membership figures in the Truss/Sunak leadership contest. Fought all the way to the Court of Appeal and the latest judgement is now in…
“The Court of Appeal Civil Division has today dismissed a claim for judicial review brought by Tortoise Media Limited (“Tortoise”) against the Conservative and Unionist Party.”
The key point here is that the Tory party was not “exercising a public function when it conducted the process for election of its leader in 2022” and so cannot be JRd for its refusal to supply what Tortoise thought was enough information about the process. It was always barmy to threaten a private organisation with Judicial Review…
A Tory source tells Guido:
“This deranged legal action was always doomed to fail. but not before Tortoise’s James Harding had burned plenty of his reader’s hard earned cash in a giant egotistical bonfire. Now loon Tortoise has joined the ranks of Jolyon, the Good Law Project and other campaigners who gum up the legal system with nonsense attempts at lawfare. No wonder their ‘journalists’ are getting ratty about the whole thing and many are asking whether they should run The Observer.”
UPDATE: A Conservative Party spokesman said:
“Once again, this publicity stunt has been a waste of time and ultimately a waste of Tortoise’s, and now the Observer’s, subscribers’ money. It is clear that the courts should not be used to conduct gesture politics and Tortoise’s ongoing failure with this claim is the latest in a line of welcome judgments against half-baked attempts at activism made by campaigners.”
Oops…
Read the full judgement below:
Chaos continues at James Harding’s new media empire following the launch of the under-new-ownership Observer. Tortoise Media suffering as well…
After technical, print, and staffing issues Guido hears from insiders that a lack of trained journalists means editors, commercial crew, and producers are writing copy for the paper. They are padding out pages. Probably achieves the same quality…
Live events can now be attended for free which has removed another membership benefit for Tortoise. The assured money-maker is currently the audio offering which Observer sources complain has been neglected by Harding since he took on his “new shiny toy.” One newsroom insider says: “No one is able to come up with a marketing idea that works, or makes sense.” The work flow is said to have degenerated despite staff having now been forced into the office five days a week and remote working strongly discouraged. Another week doing the opposite of what Hitler would have done…
The Observer has deployed another stinker in its second Sunday print outing. A blurred front page…
The wraparound front page picture of women with Farage was extremely low resolution and the focal point – Farage – is extended onto the back page. This was followed by strange multicolouration inside the paper itself. Did all the layout and photo editors quit?
Guido hears from Observer insiders that print subscriptions are so far significantly lower than expected – the plan is to give physical Observer editions to the fewer-than-10,000 Tortoise Media subscribers. Expect to see the Observer and Tortoise come even closer together. Tie two sinking ships to one another…
An Observer source tells Guido: “No one with any marketing nous remains. No one with any digital experience.” Is the lefty new media activist site Tortoise about to sink the 200 year old observer?
Guido hears from insiders at the Observer that it is far from happy families at the sunday paper, now owned by slow-news leftists at Tortoise. Even the BBC had a laugh at James Harding’s expense…
Internal sources leaking from the newsroom say the sign up to emails hasn’t been working and live events can be signed up to for free when they should be paid. And even then there is no sign up email…
Sources say there is no working archive function for the website’s content and no subscription plans for digital content. Guido hears that somewhere in the region of £250,000 was spent on developing a mobile app which is so far so dysfunctional it just links back to the Observer’s website. Scrambling to sort out the print has delayed audiovisual products, some of which should have gone out weeks ago. Teething problems…
An inside source tells Guido:
“Internal work flows are a mess and people have been working late into the night to get basic stuff done – some very unhappy people inside.”
Meanwhile Harding’s slow news venture Tortoise Media is tanking viewers at a hare’s rate. Double trouble…
The Observer has sent out its first email to subscribers this morning promising “a range of expanded newsletters from the Observer” before listing two: a daily news one and a food review one. James Harding’s new vanity project getting off to a slow start…
A portion of the new paper’s website, launched on Friday, is dedicated to advertising “podcasts from the team behind The Observer” at Tortoise Media. Which has lost half of its readers this year so far…
On BBC Radio 4’s Broadcasting House programme yesterday the usually emollient host Paddy O’Connell ripped into the new operation with Harding present in the studio:
“The cover price of The Observer – £4.20! Many people according to the BBC news are turning off the news, describing it as depressing relentless and boring. The Observer hasn’t published circulation figures for years because they’ve been plummeting. Is anyone buying these things – is it just us banging on on Sunday?”
Harding’s response was to waffle that “when The Observer was launched in 1791 actually one of the things that is special about it was it committed itself it had some principles independence and truth but it committed itself to the dissemination of every species of knowledge.” Paddy furiously interjected – “It’s no good taking me back, I’ve never been taken back so far in one Sunday morning. People are not buying papers James”…
Harding says his pet paper will be “liberal, “progressive” and “internationalist,” it is “trying to do the opposite of what Hitler would have done” and its unofficial motto is that “dignity is as important as good.” When the cash burn runway expires, will the Observer go down with the Tortoise ship?
James Harding’s slow news outlet Tortoise Media reported a loss of £3.8 million for 2023, down a bit from a loss of £4.6 million the year before. It looks like things might be getting worse…
Analysis of internet traffic on SimilarWeb shows a massive drop in Tortoise readership from 465,560 in January to 242,328 in March. A 48% decline…
A newsroom insider tells Guido that senior staff are taking their “eye off the ball” and internal numbers also show a circa 50% reduction in podcast listenership. Observer staff who haven’t resigned will have thoughts on that…
20% of the site’s traffic already comes from Guardian URLs. Once the takeover is complete The Observer will no doubt be aggressively plugging Tortoise articles. Not just slow news, low traffic news…
Speaking on the Labour chaos over the last few weeks, Culture Secretary Lisa Nandy told The Guardian:
“You call it a sh*tshow, I say it’s unforgivable…It does look to people outside that we’re more interested in ourselves and less interested in preventing chaos. […] We’ve not done enough, and this has got to be the moment of reckoning where we say not just what are we here for, but who are we here for?”
