The Guardian's U.S. push
It’s now bigger than The Washington Post
In October 2007, The Guardian landed in America with an eight-person Washington bureau and an exclusive interview with Hillary Clinton, then the frontrunner for the Democratic nomination. Eighteen months later, it was gone.
The Guardian tried again with the launch of Guardian US in 2011. Through fits and starts, it has found a lane in the U.S. news market as a progressive alternative to institutional American media, boasting an audience larger than The Washington Post’s, backed by a voluntary contribution model that has attracted 700,000 supporters, 500,000 of them recurring. Reader revenue has grown 35% a year for the past two years, with a still-growing 150-person newsroom. It’s a trajectory that stands in contrast to the collapse of well-funded upstarts like The Messenger and the struggles Jeff Bezos has faced turning The Washington Post into a viable operation.
Here’s what The Guardian has gotten right in its 18-year-old overnight success story:
A clear lane. The U.S. is a center-right country in which very rich and powerful people all believe there is a need for another center-right news publication. These people happen to be center-right, coincidentally. The Guardian saw a different lane. Its research pegs about a third of the U.S. market as potential readers. The differentiation: a global lens on news, independence from corporate and oligarchic interests, and free to read unlike most high-end journalism products in America. The Guardian lives by the ethos of its longtime editor C.P. Scott: “”Comment is free, but facts are sacred.”
Embracing independence. At 205 years old, The Guardian is hardly a manosphere upstart. It still isn’t universally known in America, with 59% brand awareness. It’s used that to its advantage. “Not for sale,” reads a banner asking for donations. “The Guardian has something US newsrooms increasingly don’t: guaranteed independence. With no billionaire or big corporate owner, our journalists are free to report without interference: our job is to scrutinize the rich and powerful, not take orders from them.” When Bezos pulled The Post’s endorsement of Kamala Harris and overhauled its opinion page, The Guardian piled on with a fundraising email to its list stating its fate would never be dictated by a billionaire owner.
Structural leverage. Scott, who was editor of what was then The Manchester Guardian from 1872-1929, set up a unique ownership structure in the form of an endowment designed to protect its journalism from cutting corners or kowtowing to corporate interests. That trust allows The Guardian to take long-term bets, like its commitment to the U.S. operation even when The Guardian itself was hemorrhaging money.
Focus on reader revenue. Scott’s “comment is free’ dictum is uncomfortably close to “information wants to be free” mantra that has not aged well. With paywalls off the table, The Guardian has pioneered a voluntary donation model that generated $57 million in U.S. reader revenue last year. Steve believes that up to 70 million people in the U.S. are the addressable market for The Guardian’s style of journalism.
Embracing a global orientation. The Guardian historically was a very British publication, with its founding in Manchester in 1821 following the Peterloo massacre of working class protesters demanding political reform. It has morphed into a global publication akin to The Economist, only with a very different orientation. The Guardian has operations in the UK, US and Australia. A decade ago, 8% of revenue came from outside the UK. Today it’s over 40%, with Australia, Europe and the U.S. all operating as standalone editorial operations.
Troy’s vibe coding project has moved into high gear, as institutional and personal memory becomes the point of leverage with media’s ultimate goal shifting to how to get the right people in the saloon. Claude Design and GPT-Image 2 reinforce the same message: You’re either high-end craftsman or you’re orchestrating AI systems, like it or not. Plus: Tim Cook hands over the CEO reigns after Apple’s boring decade, why media is about artists, suits and engineers, the dismal fate of much of Vox’s publishing assets, the emptiness of cloned media assets and why there’s leverage in coming out of the kitchen to spoon the gravy, no matter how much you’ve accomplished.
Thanks for reading. Send me a note with your feedback by hitting reply.