

The next moves in the developing Spooks v. News Cold War - cstross
http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2013/08/the-next-moves-in-the-spooks-v.html

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gruseom
How much of this is "News" in general, and how much is the Guardian in
particular? They seem to be way further out on this than any other
publication. The fact that their corporate structure is so unusual is part of
why their role is so fascinating. I wonder how relevant the latter is to how
they practice journalism—it must be, but to what extent?

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cstross
The Guardian has been pioneering the wikileaks/NSA investigative stuff;
they're also making a _huge_ play to become the #1 left/liberal online news
source of the English-speaking web (nipping at the heels of the much more
staid NY Times).

The existence of the Trust enables them to do stuff that would be toxic to
other newspapers, namely to push agendas that advertisers wouldn't approve of.
But the main thing I think they're doing is that they've recognized the
general decline of investigative journalism in the USA and (to a lesser
extent) the UK, and identified it as _a gap in the market_ that gives them a
niche to expand into.

(Here the USA's lack of genuine national newspapers -- USA Today doesn't count
-- plays against it; it means The Guardian, a national paper from a nation of
61 million people, can punch at or above the weight of any regional US paper.)

