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Guardian in talks to sell world’s oldest Sunday paper

Guardian editor-in-chief Katharine Viner said a deal with Tortoise “has the potential to be a very positive thing…reports Asian Lite News

News publisher Guardian Media Group said Tuesday it is in talks to sell The Observer newspaper to Tortoise Media, a “slow news” outlet founded by a former BBC executive and a US diplomat.

Founded in 1791, the Observer is the world’s oldest Sunday newspaper. It was bought by Guardian Media Group, which also publishes the Guardian, in 1993. Tortoise was co-founded in 2019 by James Harding, a former BBC news executive and editor of The Times newspaper, and Matthew Barzun, who was a U.S. ambassador to Britain between 2013 and 2017.

Tortoise has produced multimedia investigations including the popular podcast “Sweet Bobby,” which is set to be made into a Netflix documentary. The companies did not disclose the price or terms of the potential deal.

Guardian editor-in-chief Katharine Viner said a deal with Tortoise “has the potential to be a very positive thing.” “My number one priority is a future in which both titles continue to thrive and deliver high quality journalism to our readers,” she said.

Harding said the Observer “is one of the greatest names in news.”

“We believe passionately in its future – both in print and digital,” he said, promising to maintain the newspaper’s “uncompromising commitment to editorial independence, evidence-based reporting and journalistic integrity.”

The Observer, like the rest of the newspaper industry, has suffered a decline in print sales. Its circulation was 136,656 copies in 2021, before GMG stopped publishing ABC sales data.

Its online content is closely integrated with the Guardian’s.

Tortoise said it would continue to publish The Observer on a Sunday and build the digital Observer, combining it with Tortoise’s podcasts, newsletters and live events.

“Like its many, many loyal readers, we admire the strength and heart of The Observer’s reporting, we prize its original, unbiddable thinking and we love it for its passions: food, music, film and art,” Harding said.

“George Orwell described The Observer as ‘the enemy of nonsense’; we’re excited to show readers, old and new, that it still is,” he added.

GMG’s 2023-24 results, published on Tuesday, showed pressure from a slowdown in advertising and the long-term print decline.

Overall revenue fell 2.5% to 257.8 million pounds ($340.6 million), it said, and adjusted cash outflow rose to 36.5 million pounds, from 17.3 million pounds in the previous year.

The company is owned by the Scott Trust, an endowment fund valued at 1.275 billion pounds, the results showed.

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The Guardian hit by ransomware attack

Ransomware attack.

The publication said that with a few key exceptions, “we would like everyone to work from home for the remainder of the week unless we notify you otherwise”…reports Asian Lite News

Leading UK-based newspaper The Guardian on Wednesday confirmed its systems have been hit by a “serious IT incident,” which appears to be a ransomware attack.

The publication said the cyber attack began late on Tuesday and affected parts of the company’s IT infrastructure.

“Online publishing is largely unaffected, with stories continuing to be written and published to the Guardian website and app,” wrote the media editor at the publication.

Guardian Media Group Chief Executive Anna Bateson and Editor-in-Chief Katharine Viner said in a note to employees that “We believe this to be a ransomware attack but are continuing to consider all possibilities.”

“We are continuing to publish globally to our website and apps and although some of our internal systems are affected, we are confident we will be able to publish in print tomorrow,” they told the employees.

The publication said that with a few key exceptions, “we would like everyone to work from home for the remainder of the week unless we notify you otherwise”.

In September, hackers breached the internal systems of US business publication Fast Company. In October, The New York Post also confirmed that it was hacked.

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Newspaper to challenge secrecy over Prince Philip’s will

The left-leaning daily said its challenge would “focus attention on the secrecy that surrounds an obscure exemption that has been granted to the royal family” over wills…reports Asian Lite News

British newspaper The Guardian on Monday said it had been given permission to challenge a decision banning the media from a court case about Prince Philip’s will.

A High Court judge in September 2021 ruled the will should remain sealed for 90 years, to protect the privacy of his widow, Queen Elizabeth II, and other royals. The hearing was held in private and media organisations were not allowed to attend.

The Guardian said a Court of Appeal judge had allowed it to take legal action against the attorney general, who is the government’s chief law officer, and the Queen’s private lawyers. Judge Eleanor King said there was “a real prospect” the newspaper would succeed in arguing the original judge had “erred in law” by preventing the media from attending, it added.

The left-leaning daily said its challenge would “focus attention on the secrecy that surrounds an obscure exemption that has been granted to the royal family” over wills.

Unlike those of ordinary members of the public, wills of the Windsor family are kept secret after their deaths. More than 30 members of the royal family have successfully applied at private court hearings to keep their wills secret since 1910, the newspaper said.

Prince Philip, who was also known as the Duke of Edinburgh, died in April last year, just weeks short of his 100th birthday, after more than a month in hospital. He and the Queen were married for 73 years.

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