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Yes, The Scott Trust.

You can read more about it here:

https://www.theguardian.com/the-scott-trust

This is the same as the Irish Times:

https://www.irishtimes.com/about-us/the-irish-times-trust/

The Scott Trust model is fascinating and doesn't get nearly enough attention, especially given how rare that kind of structure is in modern media

The Guardian is fairly protected from commercial influence but its not that well protected against elitism, which unfortunately still means a lot in the UK today.

This is why the Guardian is simultaneously "progressive", yet also at times openly hostile to the working class. Its "progressive but not working class" stance promotes identity politics, and probably does more to pit left-wing voters against each other than any other UK-publication.

That said, I am a subscribe to the Guardian Weekly which I supplement with the Spectator, a traditionally conservative publication, in order to get a decent balance of UK news.

I never really looked into the details but i believe Le Monde Diplomatique is built a similar way with their foundation Les Amis du Monde Diplomatique

I’m not sure that it’s ownership is the reason for The Guardians success. NYT has also been successful with a more traditional ownership model.

Their success, I suspect, is due to being early to shift from addressing a particular geographic market, to addressing an ideological market, after the internet destroyed the geographical barriers to entry.

I suspect this internet driven incentive to focus on ideological markets is a big part of why politics in most countries has become so partisan. When newspapers focused on a particular geography, but had limited completion, they had an incentive to avoid becoming partisan because that would only serve to limit their addressable market.

Yeah right. And pigs just flew past my window. Because billionaires definitely don't pre-hide their fingerprints in some shady 'independent trust' while we all pretend the article just wrote itself out of the goodness of corporate hearts.

ok ya'll talked me into it, I'll setup a recurring donation

Not journalism but I think Ikea and Rolex are owned by some trusts, too.

yes it's a bit dodgy. the guardian operates as a sort of propaganda magazine although it tends to have fairly high quality stuff scattered in there.

> to ensure no commercial interest could interfere with the paper.

How do they explain their taking ads, then? https://advertising.theguardian.com

There's zero assurance that they could provide that would convince me this doesn't come with influence over editorial matters. It's the same problem NPR has (shoutout to the 'old "National Petroleum Radio" moniker from the invasions of the oughts).

EDIT: you -> they

It is one of the better UK papers but the bar there is extremely low. They're often still painfully "both sides" on things, they're slow on the uptake and they're often quite credulous. Wonderful example that I had scrolled past shortly before I switched tabs and read your comment: https://x.com/Obseyxx/status/1906396387031368067

As I said, they're the best of a bad bunch but that's damning with faint praise.

Not from before 1959 when the paper was renamed. 'The Guardian' name actually appears in the ad.

Simple but effective, I like it. Journalism in the best form is exactly this: trying to give you the whole picture with all the context you need to contextualize the information.

Sadly a lot of what calls itself jouranlism today is the exact opposite: Not showing the whole picture, serving prexisting world views, overly emotional and out to entertain.

Yes the Guardian hits all the bases, and without sounding too self-satisfied about it.

Good sports coverage as well.

> the last good normal newspaper at this point

I guess "in English" was implied.

>that revenue is like 200k subscribers at 20 bucks a month

I suspect donors (as opposed to subscribers) pay much less than $240/year.

I'm surprised at all the love for the Guardian... It's better than nearly all the rest, sure, but it's still often outrage-bait or inaccurate information. Media bias / Fact check give them a rating of 'Mixed' on accuracy: https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/the-guardian/

I had a free subscription to the Financial Times through a weird cookie misshap, and I was impressed by the quality of the reporting and the fact they were happy to shoot down corporations behaving unethically, which I hadn't a priori expected.

It’s “great” if you believe in their ideology.

I wouldn't call the writers excellent. The guardian is famous for its typos.

(Separately the writing style is mostly not to my taste, but that's subjective)

Yeah, me too. I'm definitely more on the side of the Guardian politics wise, but the FT is SO MUCH BETTER.

To be fair though, the FT is both really expensive, sells market data for a large price, and has a tier of subscription that can only be bought by organisations (they didn't even show me a price).

The Guardian has been going downhill massively over the last few years. I think the point at which I lost faith in them was when they trumpeted that 50% of carbon emissions were caused by 10 companies (i.e. the oil majors).

Yeah weird, it's never done that to me. I'm in the EU though. Maybe that is a difference.

NoScript resolved this issue for me.

I haven't seen that - but I recently saw them do a self-advertising segment before one of their videos on their site.

Yes, I had the same. After that I decided to put them in separate firefox container.

Apparently the ICO in the UK has decided that "consent or pay" can be compliant with the UK GDPR, the post-brexit version of the GDPR that's in UK law.

It feels wrong to me, but there we are.

Personally I use an ad-blocker, but I also subscribe for a few bucks a month.

till the UK finally admits London is its fifth country. the UK won't devolve and diversity development.

True, yet above all: integer instigative journalism.

Wow! That's an incredible real-world impact

My vague understanding is that the Trust has enough interest on its treasury/endowment to keep the paper independent and free from shareholder profit-maximization pressures, but not enough money to fully fund the paper off interest on it's endowment. Hence why they can afford to forgo a paywall, but still have to ask for your subscription/donations.

They revealed the existence of PRISM and afterwards published lots of analysis on the Snowden leaks. I believe they were also involved in the Panama Papers and I believe they broke the news about a UK/US black site and some war crimes after the invasion of Iraq

They have a search tag for it, although it's also used for articles about investigative journalism so you have to scroll a few pages.

If you just want examples, the articles about various journalism awards often list topics from that year.

https://www.theguardian.com/media/investigative-journalism

Thanks for these replies, I may "buy" a subscription!

Yeah, me too and I have never made an account. I don't pay them for me, I pay them for everyone else.

Exactly this. Paywalled news is by definition elitist and works against the democratic principle that the free press exists to inform the public. The way I see it, my choice to subscribe to The Guardian is a choice to invest in society more broadly.

May I suggest that you look at The Economist and the FT. Still an outside view, though.

A number of things can be simultaneously true.

You need funding sources (subscribers, ads, in this case a trust) but it doesn't really matter if you don't have quality content.

Political polarization increases as traditional "newspapers" shift to the Web and get ever more specialized, and don't have to appeal to a broad political audience anymore.

And without its massive trust that funds most of it.

I never felt it. Could you link me the most extreme men hating article you remember, I want to test how fragile I am.

I know, writers and editors not deciding on the business model of the publication.

True. Give us money and we will show you less ads (which is what they literally say for the supporter plan) is really annoying. There doesn't seem to be a truly adfree option.

For me this is very counterproductive. If I still need to use my adblocker why bother to sign up?

I have the same thing with YouTube. Even if I pay for premium I'll still need to mess around with the sponsorblock plugin to get a truly adfree experience. In that case I'll just go the full way and just block everything. Especially on the TV as it means I'll still need to use smarttubenext. Because the official YouTube app doesn't support sponsorblock.

If they offered sponsor free videos to premium subscribers I probably would subscribe.

So, like a traditional print newspaper then.

That seems to be the approach most UK newspapers are taking. Consent or pay.

https://ico.org.uk/for-organisations/uk-gdpr-guidance-and-re...

> extremely-polarized ragebait.

From all the newspapers the Guardian isn't exactly what comes to mind here. Their opinion section might have some content that is very liberal or left from an American perspective but their news reporting is factual and pretty good while succinct in my experience.

(Disclosure: I used to work at the Guardian, a million years ago, and helped with their early entry onto the web, including decisions about not having a paywall.)

What the Guardian has, throughout its editorial, is a political position. This is something that UK national newspapers naturally evolved over time as a differentiator, and is common (but not universal) in many countries. There are various political stable-ish ecological niches -- left, center-left, center-right, upper class, business, popularist right, and various news media that have staked out their territory. That means that they can attract with "ragebait", and also build a reasonably consistent (or self-consistent, at least) factual reportage. Someone who leans right-wing but wishes to be informed might buy the Guardian regardless, because they can disregard and triangulate. You have a core audience, and as long as that audience is loyal -- and needs some connection to reality, you can fund greater than just ragebait.

Ragebait isn't the only business model for supporting honest journalism, and one of the lessons I learned at the Guardian is that the actual business models can be surprising and frequently unrelated to news reporting. For many years, the Guardian was kept solvent through used car sales via Autocar, the most profitable asset in the Scott Trust. (One of the reasons why the Guardian was so early going online is that its editors, in particular Alan Rusbridger, recognised presciently that the Web was going to absolutely gut Autocar's profits, and so they needed to get ahead of the game.) You will be surprised about how many booms and busts in UK media industry have been determined by audience-pullers like crosswords, bingo, photos of naked models, and sudoku.

At one point I began to suspect that, but realized it was just the events themselves, reported in a straightforward fashion, were making me outraged.

Since then, I have a personal filter that I apply to all journalism, which is to avoid articles of the form: "X is outraged by Y" (or horrified, shocked, etc). I don't need meta-outrage. With my filter turned on, I'm quite satisfied with the G's journalism.

It's been a long time since I've been a regular reader of any newspaper, but when I was (admittedly at least 20 years ago!) I don't remember it being that way at all. Can you suggest a good example of a recent Guardian article that's ragebait?

No, it isn’t. Compared to any of the Murdoch news sources it’s even handed and thorough. If anybody feels rage reading it perhaps some introspection is required.

> extremely-polarized ragebait

What’s not then? I’m genuinely curious since Guardian seems to be one of the most balanced major newspapers in their reporting that there is.

Sure it’s slightly left leaning overall and there are some quite unhinged editorials now and then but they are mostly isolated from the rest of the paper.

> sober and honest journalism

Well again.. can you give examples of more sober and honest journalism (besides just fact reporting news services like Reuters)

IMO it’s telling to view something as innocuous as The Guardian as “ragebait”. Yes, it leans mildly left but that’s only notable because so few other outlets do. Most major news outlets lean center to center-right, they just look left wing because they get compared to Murdoch tabloids and FOX News.

Just because it makes you angry doesn’t make it “ragebait”.

> The Guardian is extremely-polarized ragebait.

Errr, nah. It's mostly very high quality, sober and honest journalism.

Yes, a lot of the opinion and editorial is very obviously politically biased, and they do publish some absolute lefty tripe occasionally, but the news coverage is generally high quality and the longer form stuff thought provoking.

For ragebait in a British publication see "The Daily Mail".

It is in no way "extremely polarized ragebait".

It has a mild bent to its reporting, and that's about it. The world isn't "ragebait" just because you happen to disagree.

I agree, don’t really see as much quality journalism on the guardian as the thread implies.

I donated for the longest time until they succumbed to rage bait journalism.

For a while I started avoiding it entirely, especially during the worst of the Trump and C19 years sanity and objective information seemed to have left everyone.

Also HN remember this is NOT reddit, downvote only if the comment brings nothing to the discussion. The above comment is simply disgreeing with the current blind guardian admiration.

They do not deserve all that praise, and those who point it out are not breaking HN rules and thus should not be removed from the discussion with mindless downvotes.

Read the rules ppl !!!

( wish reddit users could just stay in their own ruined toxic echo chamber and leave the still relatively healthy forums alone. Dont you people have a Tesla somewhere to scratch??)

> The Guardian is extremely-polarized ragebait.

Doesn't that describe your comment? I don't meant that as an attack or dismissal.

I was a fan of the Guardian back during the Snowden leaks. Ive had to dodge them in recent months for what you described. Since people are doubting you, let's look at the headlines on the front page of a newspaper they is mostly factual despite having some bias. Here we go:

Musk is evil, most scientists warning about Trump, Trump takes over Chips Act, and Trump is a "dictator."

Then, Trump cuts Planned Parenthood, Trump reviews Harvard for antisemitism claims, and Trump pardons "Jan 6 loyalist."

Also, Israel are killers and woke people were right per someone on TV. Then, a few, normal pieces of news if the articles themselves had no slant.

Most of the front page would make those considering source integrity wonder if the paper was funded by a top opponent of Trump or Musk specifically to attack them. I'm not saying there's any data for that. I'm saying that, as a former liberal who used to want high-quality news with a range of views, I'd have thought the Guardian today was as extremely polarized as CNN or Fox.

Then, a popup that billionaires control the media with only two, right-wing ones mentioned. No mention that richest oligarchs funding or controlling education, media, and political campaigns are leftist:

https://youtu.be/fwZPrgcSRaw

Such papers are highly misleading with much drama following the games they play.

It's unfortunate given that the Guardian's ownership model might let it be a politically neutral paper with a range of views. They could be independent with quality, non-extreme writing from many sides. We could see a range of views. If one side, reporting with data representing many perspectives where we know they aren't cherry picking.

I want more news like that. Even the reliable sources that write in endless attacks or pour gas on the fire are draining to read. I'd rather it just be a little work or even pleasant. I dread reading the news these days.

AI Slop. s/The Guardian/The Telegraph/ and the result is the same.

From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_newspapers_in_the_Neth... it looks like the newspaper industry in the Netherlands is having similar problems to that industry in other countries:

> The number of national daily newspapers in the Netherlands was 108 in 1950, 38 in 1965, 10 in the 2010s, 9 since March 2020, and 8 since March 2021.

Are you sure they’ve always been funded by subscribers? Things like classified ads used to be a core money maker for newspapers and the internet destroyed that market. Then the ad market got turned upside down by the internet too (though interestingly paper ads still attract higher rates!). Very few newspapers have actually thrived directly from subscriber revenue.

Not exactly they've always been co-funded by ads too. We've even had free newspapers in the Netherlands that were given it for free purely funded by ads. They tended to be light though. Like the spits and metro papers that are handed out at train stations. I don't think either exists anymore, I don't live there anymore but I didn't see them last time. Probably because everyone now has a smartphone.

Social media is not journalism. It’s an algorithm driven click-bait echo chamber full of 5s long “hot takes”.

Anyone who builds their model of the world primarily from social media without grounding it in actual journalism is doing themselves (but mostly the wider society) a huge disservice.

Who on social media, and paid to do investigations how? And with whose algorithm recommending it with what incentives?

It's not journalism to only read the primary sources you have time to read. That's not proper research, it's narrow and limited. By definition nobody has time to do their own journalism, any more than they have time to write their phones operating system themselves.

Maybe, but the opposite might also be true. There is value in aggregating sources and filtering signal from noise. The value of such should increase with the growth of social media. Maybe you won’t reach everyone with such a business (see the decline in newspaper) but some will always pay for this

I think you are thinking of other businesses here? A certain electronic car manufacturer for example.

In France the figures are public and funilly enough, two of the three receiving the most public funding are conservative titles. With one of them (Le Figaro) being famous for complaining about how much help the progressives/left titles are getting.

https://www.culture.gouv.fr/thematiques/presse-ecrite/tablea...

Revenue is broken down in the fourth paragraph of the article.