
How the Guardian improbably put itself on the path to profits - room271
https://digiday.com/media/guardian-improbably-put-way-path-profits/
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us0r
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?

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Jedd
> I don't want 15 different subscriptions. I'll pay a premium for 1.

Is the premium you'd pay equal to or greater than the sum of the 15 services
you'd subscribe to? If not,then you've answered your subsequent question (why
haven't they done this) -- between one and all of the 15 would take a hit.

Sure, it may be overall better for each to do this, and obtain your patronage,
but it's a trivial assumption to make that they've collectively run the
numbers and determined it's not that compelling a path.

What's the problem, by the way, of having 15 subscriptions? Is it the 15+
emails a year to renew, the hundreds of spam emails you're likely to get
(you'd still get those with an aggregated subscription model, I suspect), or
some other factor(s)?

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jeamish
Incorrect assumption. www.inkl.com.

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Jedd
> Incorrect assumption. www.inkl.com.

I'm not sure I follow.

Are you assuming that parent's desired 15 resources are included in inkl.com,
or do you think that I'm claiming that they're not?

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icc97
I think jeamish makes a reasonable assumption. The 13 or so sources (it's
annoying to find, see image near the bottom) that inkl.com has are often
sources that are on the front page of HN. So a $15/mth subscription seems like
an acceptable cost for the OP if $10/mth is OK for 1 newspaper.

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faitswulff
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.

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mmsimanga
I too donated after reading an article from the Guardian. I have donated to
Wikipedia too. I have however never paid to access any paywalled article. I
love having the freedom to pay when I can and I don't want to have a
weekly/monthly subscription. I don't read enough news to justify a
subscription.

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Neil44
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.

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scott_Trust_Limited](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scott_Trust_Limited)

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gadders
Did you read your own link? It says right there it was created to avoid death
duties. It was a tax avoidance measure.

>>The Trust was established in 1936 by John Scott, owner of the Manchester
Guardian (as it then was) and the Manchester Evening News. After the deaths in
quick succession of his father C. P. Scott and brother Edward, and consequent
threat of death duties, John Scott wished to prevent future death duties
forcing the closure or sale of the newspapers...

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north_east_dev
The Guardian and tax avoidence goes hand in hand. The Guardian Media Group is
based in the Cayman Islands and notably used the tax haven to avoid paying any
tax on the £302 million in profit it realised from the sale of Auto Trader in
2008.

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calcifer
Over the years, the Guardian has responded (satisfactorily, IMHO) to such
claims many, many times. Here are a few that I personally remember:

[https://www.theguardian.com/help/insideguardian/2008/mar/06/...](https://www.theguardian.com/help/insideguardian/2008/mar/06/isgoingoffshoregoingoffme)

[https://www.theguardian.com/help/insideguardian/2011/feb/22/...](https://www.theguardian.com/help/insideguardian/2011/feb/22/blogpost)

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toyg
The article concentrates on the technical and administrative sides of running
the Guardian, but it completely overlooks the political situation.

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.

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.

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dazc
Title is a bit misleading...

'The Guardian has halved its operating losses compared to two years ago, now
looking at breaking even by 2019.'

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RichieAHB
That sounds like the definition of "path to profit" to me.

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peoplewindow
If "still losing money after years of losses, _might_ break even in a couple
of years or might not" can be defined as on the "path to profit", can any
company _not_ be described that way? Does the phrase mean anything?

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kgwgk
It means that while earnings are negative (i.e. no profits yet), the first
derivative is positive (i.e. it will reach profitability if the trend
continues, it is on the path to profits).

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ggm
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.

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gaius
_but only one is being even remotely honest about it_

It’s funny because if you take an objective look at the Graun - based in a tax
haven, all its writers seem to have double-barrelled names and went to
Oxbridge from an exclusive boarding school - it’s clear that their left-wing
schtick is just an act, a product they sell to a gullible audience. They’re as
establishment as it gets.

I don’t buy any Murdoch products either but don’t kid yourself that the Graun
is any different

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ggm
You think people who go to Eton can't be left wing? Gosh, the Cambridge five..
seriously. If you think it's 'just an act' I don't think you understand
British left politics at all. The establishment has had a left wing since
before the second world war. Even the daily worker had people from Oxbridge
working for it.

It's left wing, not working class. The sun is working class, tits and all.

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gaius
For me the Left is that which fights for The Workers. The Graun may pay
occasional lip service to say the NHS but they literally won’t put their money
where their mouths are. They are as guilty of exploiting The Workers as all
bourgeoisie - worse even.

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ggm
The bourgeoisie are what Lenin called 'Useful idiots' and in that regard, the
Guardian writers perform a role. If your reason to hate the guardian is that
they vest ownership in a non-profit which uses tax minimisation, you've driven
to a very specific corner.

Your root cause argument I suspect is true: because I value the editorial
message I overlook the flaws. In this regard, the News Ltd and Guardian are
the same thing: they are newspapers. But, my root position also remains. I
chose to give one money and not the other. I should just be more open to the
reality behind that decision. The only person I am fooling, is probably
myself.

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gaius
_you 've driven to a very specific corner._

It’s one particularly egregious example but there are plenty more: education
is another, why are state comps good enough for The Workers while Graun types
go private? Or housing.

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ggm
Owen Jones, as a specific example did not attend private school. Polly Toynbee
attended a state school before university. Martin Kettle went to Leeds modern.
This idea that the 'guardian' is packed with public school toffs is reed-thin.
I didn't bother looking harder because I'm pretty confident its not true. Its
just what you want to be true.

Oxford is biassed to private school entry because its competitive. But it is
emphatically not closed to state school pupils, and never has been. But in any
case, whilst a lot of guardian journalists and columnists went there, I doubt
all did by any stretch.

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eoincathal
I wonder if publishers with income from reader subscriptions (voluntary or
paywalled) have a competitive edge post GDPR?

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mikekchar
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 _half_ 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...

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SilkRoadie
I feel you are completely overlooking all of the costs the business incurs.
The cost of premises, printing costs, image licensing, insurance, marketing
budget etc etc.

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mikekchar
I am and I'm not. Normally when I'm looking at financials I break it apart
with external costs and internal costs. For the internal costs, you can get an
estimate of a reasonable cost with the "loaded labour rate". This is the
amount of money it costs to maintain an employee (usually on average). It
includes premises, equipment, insurance, and other costs incurred for the work
they do. External costs are things like costs for maintaining a sales channel,
marketing, etc, etc. In between you often have some capital costs for large
equipment (which you usually account for using a depreciation model). As you
say, there are also some operating costs for running a printing press, etc.

What I did was to divide the total revenue by the number of employees. Then if
we make a reasonable guess for average loaded labour rate, say 70K GBP (which
I think is probably generous for London) that still leaves us 70K per employee
for external costs and various operating costs that are not included in the
loaded labour rate. That seems quite high to me. Like I said, I'm not in the
publishing business, but even when I worked on shrink wrapped software, I
would consider that level to be bleeding money. I could easily be wrong. It
would be interesting to hear from someone in publishing.

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icebraining
I expect a world-class newspaper like the Guardian to have plenty of costs
that don't fit the regular butts-in-seats of a regular office. They have
correspondents living and traveling all over the world, with the associated
costs that implies (plane tickets, rented houses, hired guides, bribes, etc).

