Guardian CEO Andrew Miller voices fears that the paper won't survive in the UK and must go global

The New Yorker article stated: “’We need to be global,’ Andrew Miller, the Guardian media Group’s CEO told me. ‘At the moment, I believe we could not survive in the UK with the oversupply’ of newspapers and the omnipresence of the BBC.”

According to the article, Miller was encouraged by the Guardian’s 2012-13 digital ad revenues – which rose 29 per cent to £56m – while editor Alan Rusbridger said the figures were “a huge improvement”.

The article added: “Rusbridger can envisage a paperless Guardian in five to 10 years. He also ‘can imagine,’ he says, printing on only certain days.

“For the moment, with digital dollars composing only a quarter of the company’s revenues, ‘if you want to support the kind of journalism we do, you can’t kiss goodbye 75 per cent of your revenues,’ he said. ‘But all that will change.’”

The Guardian's online readership has tripled since 2009 and two-thirds of its readers are now based outside of the UK, according to the article.

Rusbridger went on to say that a pay wall would deliver a “small, elite audience, with restricted access for everyone else.”

He added: “We want a large audience and international influence, and not just with elites. That appears to be an attractive mission for advertisers.”

Miller admitted in to the New Yorker that he did not see the newspaper “earning a profit anytime soon” and Rusbridger added that the aim now is to have “sustainable losses”.