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Friday 31 January 2014

Guido Fawked – Guardian Still Standing

There is no finer example of the vindictive streak possessed by the perpetually thirsty Paul Staines and his rabble at the Guido Fawkes blog than their unyielding campaign against the deeply subversive Guardian. And a particular favourite of the Fawkes folks has been to focus on the operating losses incurred by the paper and its online operation over the years.
The Guardian? Er yeah, it's more skint than me after a night on the piss, shit no, town, getting arseholed, bollocks no, more media contacts. Who can help me get legless. Oh sod it

The attacks on the paper, and editor Alan Rusbridger, are typified in their scale and ineptitude by a July 2012 post, “Guardian losses picture data special”, which recycled a graphic that wrongly asserted Rusbridger’s monthly salary to be the amount he was paid for the whole year. Never mind the accuracy, keep putting the boot in. And, as the man said, there’s more.

Next month cameGuardian CEO Andrew Miller Spins Losses to Staff” – and yes, I know, The Great Guido accusing others of spin is an interesting one – trying to give the impression the losses were increasing and by inference were unsustainable. Then last July cameGuardian Still Losing Half-a-Million a Week”, once more making the accusation of spin.

Readers were pitched such terms as “haemorrhaging” money, so we can be in no doubt of the impression this copy is intended to give. And that impression, not for the first time with the Fawkes rabble, is one whole pile of weapons grade bullshit. Because Guardian Media Group (GMG) has been sitting on a cash pile worth hundreds of millions, and now the final security brick has slotted into place.

GMG’s remaining stake in Trader Media Group (bought or sold a car recently? You may well have used their website) for a cool $1 billion. So the paper and its website might lose $50 million a year? With that much dosh available, being invested and grown all the while, such numbers are not going to be a problem. The securing of the title “in perpetuity” looks rather more settled now.

And, as the Columbia Journalism Review has pointed out, the Guardian brand, thanks to its targeted expansion and involvement with Wikileaks, Phonehackgate and the Snowden revelations, is becoming not merely recognised, but a significant presence, across the globe. Moreover, GMG still has a stake in profitable business and events firm Top Right Group – future sale of which could yield yet more.

Dominic Ponsford at Press Gazette put it well: the sale “sticks two fingers up to the Guardian-haters who take glee in the paper's huge annual losses and like to predict its imminent demise”. Who he might have meant is only too clear from the annual sniggering of The Great Guido. Right now, the Guardian looks set to outlast Staines and calmly ride off into the future.

That means the Fawkes folks are just full of crap. Another fine mess, once again.

2 comments:

rob said...

Perhaps they thought that there was going to be Government action over the Snowden leaks after taking advice from the ever delightful and vigilant La Mensch?

"In two tense meetings last June and July the cabinet secretary, Jeremy Heywood, explicitly warned the Guardian's editor, Alan Rusbridger, to return the Snowden documents. Heywood, sent personally by David Cameron, told the editor to stop publishing articles based on leaked material from American's National Security Agency and GCHQ. At one point Heywood said: "We can do this nicely or we can go to law". He added: "A lot of people in government think you should be closed down.""

From The Guardian today.

anubeon said...

Dan's comments on democratic reform of the Labour party rather highlights the chief concern of many Labour party supremos (mostly of the right of the party, it's got to be said). Namely, that the parliamentary party might lose influence. It's telling that at the last Labour leadership election, most in the media and Westminster focused on the 'democratic deficit' represented by the union block vote. Conveniently ignoring that it's the PLP block vote, and to a lesser extent the membership bloke vote, which is over represented in the Labour party 'democracy'.

Seven odd million trade union members (themselves affiliate members of the Labour party, at least in spirit) receiving ⅓ of the vote, whilst two hundred odd M(E/S)Ps and fifty thousand-ish party members (with the spare cash and political engagement to join up as party members proper) get the same ⅓ share respectively IS undemocratic. Just not in the way the Blairites who've captured Labour and held it to ransom through this skewed system like to highlight. Then again, what else could we expect from people who think it legitimate to lambast a man with a his own distinct political positions for daring to stand against his own kin. Personally, I rather value anyone who hold loyalty to principles above some absurd sense of uber-loyalty to friends and family (not that I've been blown away by Ed so far).

I do hope that Miliband the younger does follow through with reforms to genuine one-man-one-vote democracy in the Labour party. I further hope that he pushes for a more direct relationship between Labour an trade union members (as opposed to the trade unions themselves), recognizing formally as affiliate members with many if not all of the rights of full members. Maybe that will be the first step towards the recapture of the Labour party for the working classes.