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Alan Rusbridger The Guardian

The Guardian’s editor-in-chief robustly justifies his newspaper’s latest cover price increases

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By The Drum Team, Editorial

September 19, 2011 | 3 min read

The Guardian’s editor-in-chief, Alan Rusbridger, commandeered the top half of page 2 of Saturday’s edition to justify his newspaper’s latest cover prices increases.

The price of the Monday to Friday Guardian rises from £1 to £1.20p from today (Monday) while the Saturday paper was upped to £2.10p at the weekend.

Explaining that the Guardian & News Media was increasingly turning to examining the benefits of digital papers, he pointed out: “We are in a period which has been described by some commentators as a perfect storm for newspapers: increased costs, diminishing revenues and the worst global economic climate for 60 or more years.

“Three of the four newspapers groups in our market in the UK are currently losing money.

“We are not owned by a multi-billionaire proprietor or international media organisation. The Scott Trust, founded in 1936, is the last remaining truly independent media group in the UK.

“Its sole purpose is to secure The Guardian’s liberal journalism in perpetuity, and it invests all its resources to that effect.”

Rusbridger pointed to four major stories which its readers had enabled the paper to cover in the past year:

• WikiLeaks

• Arab spring

• Phone-hacking

• And the English riots

He pledged that The Guardian would not follow the lead of some news organisations ...”cutting back on the very investigative and original reporting that, in the end, is the main reason for their existence”.

Rusbridger explained: “The Guardian has cut back on all “bulk” sales, international sales and artificial aids to circulation.

“We don’t dump our papers in hotels, planes, or on trains. Some newspapers now virtually give away more copies than they sell.”

The Guardian, he said, was deeply interested in the loyalty of readers who recognised the value of its journalism and in strengthening those ties.

“We do think that £2.10 on Saturday and £1.20 during the week is good value for a serious, internationalist newspaper.

“A daily cappuccino sets you back between £1.80 and £2.05. A satellite TV subscription is probably costing you £1.70p - odd a day. We think the prices represent fair value.

“The Guardian has been around for 190 years. Like all papers, it’s going through a dramatic transition. It’s being read by more people than it could have imagined, even 15 years ago. In August more than 51 million people around the world turned to us for their news.

“In a world dominated by globalised media organisations we look increasingly rare: an open, genuinely independent, successful, inquiring, not -in-it-for-the profit news company that is taking on some of the jungle’s biggest beasts – and winning.”

Earlier, in the lengthy article, he explained that all newspapers were being buffeted by a number of forces - not least the digitial revolution, which was competing for attention and sucking advertising, especially jobs advertising, out of print.

“Like all newspapers, we judge that digital forms of what we do –whether paid for or free – will be crucial to the future of The Guardian.

“That digital research, development and expansion, in parallel with sustaining the print form, costs more money – and it will be some years before the returns from this transformation cover the costs of investment.”

Alan Rusbridger The Guardian

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