The Guardian’s secret weapon against media’s collapse

ANNA BATESON: One of the most helpful things I was told by a rather informed board member was that even the most sophisticated engineers working at the most extraordinarily frontier level of AI don’t really know what’s going to happen in the next 12 weeks, let alone in the next 12 months. You could spend weeks doing plans for the next five years, which will become irrelevant and redundant. Rather than trying to do long-range forecasting or planning, actually think about how we set ourselves up to be ready to adapt and adjust. That’s what I try to focus on.

BOB SAFIAN: That’s Anna Bateson, CEO of Guardian Media Group, publisher of The Guardian. The Guardian has had remarkable success as a news brand growing globally when other aspirants like The Washington Post have struggled. That’s in part because of The Guardian’s unusual ownership structure under the umbrella of a 90-year-old trust that helps provide stability. But Anna has also embraced the exceedingly modern realities of speed, flexibility, and focus. I wanted to learn how The Guardian is tapping into multiple business models and into the emotional aspects of a brand to differentiate itself. And Anna did not disappoint. So let’s get into it. I’m Bob Safian, and this is Rapid Response.

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I’m Bob Safian. I’m here with Anna Bateson, CEO of Guardian Media Group. Anna, thanks for joining us.

BATESON: Thank you for having me.

Copy LinkWill The Guardian adopt AI like it did digital platforms?

SAFIAN: Today, The Guardian is the fifth-most-trafficked news site in the world. More than 1.4 million subscribers provide regular financial support. It’s an impressive feat for a legacy British newspaper to turn into a global brand, especially when other news outlets are struggling. I’m eager to learn your secret. Is there a single secret that underlies all of this?

BATESON: No, there’s never a single secret. I think there are a number of things that really contributed. The first is that we were very early to embrace digital and to see the opportunities of digital. And that decision, which was, I think, 30 years ago or something, took us from being the ninth-biggest national newspaper in the UK, so inherently parochial to a degree, to building audiences all around the world. The uniqueness of our ownership model, the independence that’s endowed by the Scott Trust, also allows us to think long-term, and that did allow us the opportunity to grow. It didn’t feel as though we were in a good position 10 years ago when you began to realize that, crucially, digital advertising wasn’t going to substitute for print advertising. But actually, that was the basis of our being able to build the reader revenue model.

SAFIAN: The first important thing was embracing digital. Does that make you more aggressive about embracing AI because that’s maybe the next turn in the business?

BATESON: No, I don’t think it makes us more aggressive about embracing AI. I think it means that we are genuinely a deeply digital organization. We look at AI through a particularly informed lens, a quite curious lens. We have aimed to be really cautious and thoughtful in how we endeavor to understand AI, in how we think about its application within our organization, across all aspects of the organization, and the changes it’s going to make to our audiences’ behaviors. It’s incumbent on all of us to truly understand it as a technology, and I think you can only understand it by applying it and by using it.

Copy LinkInside The Guardian’s unique business structure

SAFIAN: You mentioned that The Guardian is owned by a private trust.

BATESON: Yes.

SAFIAN: So that means you don’t necessarily need to pass down all of your profit. The revenue you generate can be reinvested in the content, and you’ve kind of got a backstop in tougher times, if I’m understanding that correctly. Are there any downsides to this structure, any complications? Because you are fairly unusual to have this kind of setup.

BATESON: Yes, it is unusual. I think it’s an enormous strategic advantage for us, a really key point of differentiation. The sole purpose of the Scott Trust is to ensure that The Guardian thrives in perpetuity. So that’s an extraordinarily privileged ownership structure to be the beneficiary of. We have quite a lot of governance as a result, so that’s something that we have to navigate. But no, I think it’s an advantage for us, and it’s definitely something that our audiences understand. It’s a big motivator for them when they choose to support the journalism. They know that the money is going to fund journalism, and it isn’t going to enrich a proprietor or shareholders.

SAFIAN: And you as the CEO, you have limitations maybe that you might not otherwise have because of some of the structural things. But at the same time, you don’t have to worry about shareholders. So there’s a little bit of a trade-off there, right?

BATESON: Completely. Yes. The editor-in-chief and I report to the GMG board. She ultimately reports to the Scott Trust, which is a structural way of guaranteeing editorial independence and integrity. And the relationship is one that’s described as a happy partnership, a happy marriage. We are meant to be arm in arm. The commercial and editorial strategies and ambitions are symbiotically intertwined.

When you see the challenges of The Washington Post, I think it has never seemed more clear how significant that structural guarantee around editorial independence really is. It’s a very important thing.

Copy LinkHow The Guardian makes money

SAFIAN: Most legacy news organizations depend on ad dollars, even in the digital age. The Guardian has leaned on support from readers and supporters, although The Guardian is free. How do you get people to pay for something that’s free?

BATESON: First of all, we also have advertising. Advertising is very important to us. However, you are right, we have the stability of having built this now really quite significant global supporter base. One of the things that our ownership structure enables us to do is to be open about our publishing and available to all. So when we first started to build out our reader revenue model, it was optional. You’re correct. It wasn’t forced by being gated around a paywall. It was all about unlocking the words, the routes, and the messages to explain what reader support could give us, and then to make it incredibly easy and frictionless.

We do have some paid products, so it’s not completely true that we are just entirely free. If you subscribe to our app, we ask you to pay after you’ve used it a certain amount. We have a cooking product that we ask you to pay for. But we are committed to the principle of being open and freely available on the web.

SAFIAN: I talked on the show with your counterpart at The New York Times, Meredith Kopit Levien, who is also one of a handful of legacy print leaders who have managed to thrive. And she talked a lot about lifestyle verticals. You mentioned cooking; she talked about cooking and games and other things. When you think about your business plan, do you track that similarly, or how much is your model more like a donation-based resource like Wikipedia? You’re sort of straddling those two things.

BATESON: Yes. I have nothing but admiration for The New York Times and, indeed, for Meredith, and I have nothing but admiration for Wikipedia. And you’re completely correct that I think we probably drew inspiration from both of those august institutions.

If you think about it, newspapers were the original bundle, a bundle of different verticals put together in a beautifully designed, elegantly delivered product. And we’ve always been good at cooking. We’ve always been good at cultural content. We’ve long been great at lifestyle. We’ve always had games. It’s a very important piece of a newspaper to have crosswords. So, in a sense, as you think about taking the areas that are defining of us and transitioning those into a digital world, it’s not really surprising that we end up consolidating in the same sorts of areas. Puzzles are wonderful things. They’re all about driving habit. They’re something that you want to do every day. It’s really about how you best unlock your strengths and use that to reach audiences and unlock the most value from those audiences around the world.

SAFIAN: You’re also sort of leaning into that mission of the organization, enabled, I guess, by your structure, which allows you to emulate Wikipedia, as we were talking about, and to have that loyalty be part of the appeal in supporting The Guardian.

BATESON: Whenever we do audience research, that sense of the emotional desire to support journalism is common. People believe that the mission is important. They believe in the significance of the independent ownership model. There’s a real sense of, I’m supporting something that I value, but other people value, too. Also, ultimately, it allows those people who can’t afford to pay to still be able to consume it and have access to it, which is really important in this modern world.

SAFIAN: In terms of business model, several high-profile media outlets have turned to billionaires for support: the L.A. Times, The Washington Post, Time magazine. The tone that you mentioned earlier made me think that you may not feel this benefactor model is necessarily good. I’m curious about that. The magazine where I worked as editor-in-chief, Fast Company, was owned by a single business leader who was quite supportive. But as you say, certainly The Washington Post is embroiled in questions around Jeff Bezos’ commitment and pressure.

BATESON: I’m not sure it’s for me to judge whether a benefactor model is good or bad. I think it has risks. And I think that for a long time, perhaps media organizations saw benefactors as saviors, that hope and belief that you could have benign benefactors. I just think there are moments when the personal interests of a benefactor may or may not come into conflict with those of a genuinely independent editorial organization.

Copy LinkWhen editorial and commercial teams collaborate

SAFIAN: When The Washington Post and the L.A. Times quashed their 2024 U.S. presidential endorsements under pressure from their owners, The Guardian’s U.S. editor, Betsy Reed, went the other way and called them out in a fundraising pitch that raised something like $2 million.

BATESON: Yes.

SAFIAN: How do the editorial and business sides coordinate when it comes to generating funds? Is this something that you talk about, or does Betsy just decide, I’m going to do this?

BATESON: No, it’s very collaborative. I think it’s one of the things that is so fascinating about the reader revenue model, and we’ve obviously got to evolve our language about that because they’re much broader than readers now, is the level of collaboration that takes place between editorial and the commercial teams. In a way, it’s the logical evolution of an organization away from a very siloed sort of church-and-state model where you had editorial and you had advertising, and they didn’t really need to come into contact with one another. I think the essence of the audience funding model is that there is greater collaboration. Ultimately, Betsy would decide what she felt was the right kind of message, but it would be done in deep concert with the reader revenue side.

SAFIAN: And in that instance, when that idea came up, was there any concern like, “Oh, we don’t want to pick a fight in that way?”

BATESON: We talked about it, but in the end, it was something that we wanted to do, and I think it was the right thing to do. I think it was the right thing to do editorially, and it was the right thing to do for our supporters. It was a very emotional moment, and that translated into a lot of people, I think, coming to The Guardian and choosing to support our journalism in a way that they hadn’t before.

Copy LinkDoes The Guardian have a progressive bias?

SAFIAN: The Guardian is known for its sort of unapologetically progressive values, and I’m curious how that impacts your business goals. Some might say it colors trust in your journalism.

BATESON: First of all, the lens that we are viewed through is interestingly different in the UK, where we have a long legacy and a longstanding understanding of our editorial position. It’s a much less entrenched view when you get into mainland Europe, into the U.S., and into the rest of the world. And actually, what I think our audiences appreciate there is very much this sense of a global perspective. So it’s less, I think, about this association with unashamed progressive values, although I think that is true for us. It’s also the fact that we have a perspective that is very different and distinctive from a U.S.-based perspective. Trump, the Iran war, tech, climate, immigration — there’s something audiences really appreciate in our ability to have a non-U.S.-rooted perspective. The capacity to contextualize or frame the story also comes from having a European perspective or a British perspective or an Australian perspective or a Canadian perspective. We can bring a broader context and a voice that is from many other places and not deeply grounded in one place.

SAFIAN: The Guardian is such a distinctive operation: its business model, its broad context, as Anna describes it, even its openness about progressive values. So how are AI chatbots impacting its work? And what does Anna really think about Jeff Bezos’ stewardship of The Washington Post? We’ll talk about that more after the break. Stay with us.

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Before the break, The Guardian’s Anna Bateson shared how its distinctive business supports distinctive content. Now she talks about how The Guardian has sidestepped the impact of AI chatbots so far and what Jeff Bezos misunderstood when he bought The Washington Post, plus the role The Guardian can play in the future of news and how she keeps the business anchored in the here and now. Let’s jump back in.

Copy LinkResponding to AI disruption

SAFIAN: Before coming to The Guardian, you worked for Google and YouTube. The transition from search to AI chatbots, things like Google’s Gemini summaries, has cut down traffic a lot for a lot of content outlets, and a lot of folks struggle with that. How are you thinking about that? Does that make you look at Google any differently?

BATESON: We have not seen declines in audience that have been reported for other media organizations. In fact, we’ve seen incredibly strong and resilient audiences, particularly in the U.S. We’ve actually just overtaken The Washington Post, so January and February for readership within the U.S., which is quite a significant moment from our perspective. So I don’t think we’re naive. There’s clearly deep disruption and change coming in the way that people are going to discover and then choose to consume the news they want to read or watch or listen to. However, we aren’t seeing that level of change yet reflected in our audience numbers.

SAFIAN: Is there anything that you’re doing? Are you blocking bots or AI companies from crawling your content? Or is this more, do you think, about the brand affinity that people have with The Guardian? Do you have a sense of why it’s not hitting you the way it’s hitting others?

BATESON: There is a piece around brand affinity and around genuinely differentiated, quality original journalism, the meaningful relationship that I think our audiences therefore have with us, which allows us to potentially be more resilient and have more direct traffic. I think it is also about how the search experience is developing. There is a different experience around hard news and serious news than there might be around softer lifestyle media and coverage.

SAFIAN: The Guardian is a founding member of a coalition called the Strategic Partnership for Uplifting Rights, or SPUR, which is intended, I guess, to design better guidelines for AI training. Can you explain what the motivation behind SPUR is and what you’ve seen so far?

BATESON: At this time, when you are facing very well-funded and very sophisticated technology organizations, we need to rise to that moment. We need to work together as an industry. So I think the first piece of it was, how can we collaborate? And it’s important that the founding members were both broadcasters and former newspapers, and they’re across the political spectrum. We then have every intention that this will broaden out and become a global coalition, defining standards and protocols that are really going to be necessary to the creation of a potential licensing market around quality journalism and content. We ought to be defining those standards and protocols rather than having them defined for us by technology businesses.

SAFIAN: We talked about your structure earlier around your business model, and I’m curious whether you think that structure gives The Guardian a certain kind of role in the media ecosystem and in how it evolves. Do you feel like you have to be a leader in a different kind of way, maybe, or that it allows you to be a leader in a different kind of way?

BATESON: Yes, I think there is a sense of responsibility. The secondary purpose of the Scott Trust is broader. If the primary purpose is ensuring the sustainability of The Guardian in perpetuity, a secondary purpose is around ensuring that liberal journalism can flourish.

Copy LinkAdapting > Forecasting

SAFIAN: The leadership challenges of running any organization right now are quite intense. Are you thinking about your role within The Guardian differently? Are there particular things about how you manage the team or the planning that might be instructive?

BATESON: One of the most helpful things I was told by a rather informed board member was that even the most sophisticated engineers working in the most extraordinarily frontier-level AI don’t really know what’s going to happen in the next 12 weeks, let alone in the next 12 months. And I found that really helpful. Focus on curiosity about what’s happening, on capabilities within the organization, and on flexibility, because you could spend weeks doing plans for the next five years that will become irrelevant and redundant before you know it. Rather than trying to do longer forecasting or planning, think about how we set ourselves up, equip ourselves, and skill up to be an organization that’s ready to adapt and adjust as we’re going to need to. That’s what I try to focus on. And I think that as a leadership team, it’s incumbent on us to hang on to that humility and to continue to keep learning and be curious about what’s happening. That’s what will, I think, equip us for what’s to come.

SAFIAN: It’s a very different framework from the traditional way business works. I’m sure you still have to have plans and budgets that extend farther out, but if you really can’t see more than 12 weeks out, it’s pretty hard to plan.

BATESON: Yes. Well, it’s easy to plan, right? You just have to be able to adapt when the plan begins to veer off course. There’s a discipline and a rigor around planning, which is actually really useful, but I think it’s about being adaptable enough that when the plan begins to change, you can accommodate that.

Copy LinkThe financial expectations of media companies

SAFIAN: When I first came into media in the late ’90s, these organizations were making so much money, hand over fist. And I sometimes wonder whether the expectations about how much money news organizations should make are a little out of whack. We’re trying to turn them into growth businesses when they’re really more cash-flow businesses. And obviously you don’t have quite the same pressure of that because of the trust structure. But I’m curious whether you feel that way or have any thoughts about that.

BATESON: I think you are correct in your observation. There was an expectation about the kind of returns that you could get that probably is unsustainable now. But also, I think if you’re building a news organization now, you would build it in a very different way, with a very different cost structure. And that might then allow you to be a growth business and to deliver the kind of returns proportionately that perhaps they used to. So it’s both sides, isn’t it? Can you restructure yourself to adapt to a new reality? And also, can you culturally evolve sufficiently to operate in a way that will allow you to grow? That’s the thing that The New York Times has done so spectacularly well, which has allowed them not only to invest in journalism, but actually to build out a very successful set of subscription-based businesses.

SAFIAN: I guess sometimes I think that when Jeff Bezos bought The Washington Post, he didn’t really realize what he was buying and what he was getting into.

BATESON: I think that’s probably right. There were years when you thought you were going to solve the problems through technology, and actually the fact that that wasn’t going to solve the problems was masked by the enormous growth in audience and engagement that came with Trump and then, of course, COVID. You think you have the answers because you come in and you look at these businesses and you’ve been very successful elsewhere, and they’re more complicated than that. They’re complicated both because of legacy and because of the changing market.

SAFIAN: The expectations, right? I mean, listen, how much money The Washington Post makes one way or the other is not really measurable on Jeff Bezos’ P&L. His personal wealth makes it a rounding error, right?

BATESON: I suspect that. It’s less about the amount of money and more about what that kind of financial performance symbolizes about the sustainability and the health of the organization. You can live with losses, but if you feel that they are the sign of something more problematic, that then becomes the troubling thing.

SAFIAN: In some ways, I think it would make more sense for The Washington Post to be structured as a nonprofit. I know I talked to the owner at Fast Company at certain times about whether we should convert this to be a nonprofit because really that’s what its mission is about. But when you have owners who are businesspeople, they believe that that profit imperative pushes certain kinds of results and gets rid of complacency.

BATESON: I have some sympathy for that perspective. A commercial ambition and drive, as long as it’s compatible with and supportive of editorial independence, is a good thing to have. I think you’re right. You don’t want your organization to be complacent, and you don’t want people not to care about the commercial underpinnings of where they work.

SAFIAN: How do you reinforce and encourage that commercial side when that’s not the way you’re structured?

BATESON: We are held to account around financial performance and financial sustainability. Editorial impact is only really secure and sustainable if it’s attached to a business model that is also secure and sustainable. That, I think, is a message that is understood. And crucially, it’s amazing how, once you begin to see that something’s working and that it is a sign of genuine relationships with audiences who believe in what you’re doing, who see the impact of it, and who value it, the momentum you get from that is very powerful. In the end, relevance and impact are what we’re all here to deliver. And the fact that people want to support us, and that brands and advertisers want to partner with us, is indicative of us achieving what it is that we’re aiming for.

SAFIAN: Absolutely. Commercial success is a hallmark, a sign that you’re connecting, right?

BATESON: It’s validation that audiences understand that this is important, valuable, and necessary work.

Copy LinkWhat’s at stake for news?

SAFIAN: I hear this all the time from colleagues, that news organizations are facing so many threats, overlapping threats: technological, political, economic. And I’m curious, how bleak is the future? Or should I say, how challenging is the future? What’s at stake at this point when you look to what’s to come for news?

BATESON: I think there are perspectives from which you could see it as pretty bleak. However, at the same time, quality news has never been needed more. It’s never been valued more. You could argue that it’s being engaged with and consumed at extraordinary levels. And trusted brands that can take a long-term perspective and have the resilience that comes from a particular ownership structure, from the power of a 206-year-old brand, and from genuine relationships with audiences around the world — that’s quite a potent combination.

And if out of that we can give people some hope and some help in how they navigate a complicated world in which there are so many unknowns, then that’s a reason not to be bleak, and that’s a reason to actually feel quite optimistic. So it might slightly depend on the day that you ask me that question, but I think the fact that it matters more, and that people genuinely understand that and value it, and that our model speaks to that, as does the success at The New York Times or many other admirable organizations, speaks to there being reasons for hope.

SAFIAN: Well, Anna, I applaud that hope and that feeling, and thanks for doing this.

BATESON: It was a pleasure.

SAFIAN: As a journalist myself, I have a particular interest in how the news business operates, but you don’t need to be a newshound to gather lessons from Anna’s experience at The Guardian. She gives high praise to the unique ownership structure there, but even more important is what she calls the genuine relationship with audiences around the world. Every business needs to understand who they’re serving and how best to engage them. For all the technology brings to the modern marketplace, business ultimately requires an emotional connection. We lose sight of that at our own peril. I’m Bob Safian. Thanks for listening.