In an age where people hoover up decent journalism and don’t expect to pay a penny for it - what other recourse are outlets like The Guardian left with, I wonder.
I’ve heard that financial mismanagement and profligacy were pretty bad under Rusbridger’s helming. To the extent this may have killed the paper long-term for good. But ultimately people want free content - not sure you can blame the Guardian entirely for the knock-on effects.
I’d heard the opposite about Rusbridger - by the time he left, the paper/Trust was on a fairly sound footing in terms of long-term stability (even if the paper itself was losing money), but since then there have been huge problems.
I can’t remember where I read that - Private Eye, maybe?
Can’t stop sneezing. Send help.
I think they pay some of their in-house columnists a lot of money though.
You may well be right - think the general consensus is the Guardian’s always had a bit of an issue with finances, who people choose to blame is probably down to arbitrary factors. Who knows. Although Viner’s only been in charge for a couple of years hasn’t she?
Private Eye’s usually pretty reliable for media matters.
Pretty much all papers have an issue with finances. Take out the cross-promotions from Sky in the News Org papers and I think it’s only the Daily Mail that actually turns a profit these days - and that’s down to the website traffic.
Undoubtedly. Think Milne was on around double what he is now at Labour, for instance so he might have been coining £200k or so (could be totally wrong but I think I read that somewhere). Although he was also Comment is Free Editor and I think he increased readership substantially when he was so his salary doesn’t seem especially unjustified in media land. I don’t really know much about it, just got an assumption that signature columnists get six figures+.
Fully aware of this - wasn’t criticising The Guardian at all here (I know it’s common to stick the boot in to the old Graun for struggling with money for some reason).
A lot of ex-public school people with the right contacts and social background coining it in, and a sea of freelancers scrabbling round for bits of piecework is how two different people characterised it to me.
Sounds about right. Nepotism rules at every paper. I mean this is Rusbridger’s daughter isn’t it? Bella Mackie | The Guardian
Speaking from experience, museums and galleries are exactly the same, except with a load of postgrads doing minimum wage guard/ticket desk jobs.
Not looking forward to going into work today. Just got this dread that I completely fucked up on Monday before I went to the pub. Can’t remember either way. Heh.
Just took my big exam. Think I’ve scraped it. Fingers crossed.
A month until the second (less important) exam. Going to enjoy myself a bit until next week though.