Playing his tune: Alan Rushbridger was one of the best newspaper editors of his generation, but lacked commercial success ©Amy T. Zielinsky/Getty Images

Let’s agree that the Guardian is a great newspaper whose survival should concern us all. It may sometimes be pompous and self-regarding, but in an age of dumbing down it still carries a torch for serious newspaper journalism—more than ever now that the print edition of the Independent has expired.

That the Guardian’s future should be in any doubt is pretty incredible. The Guardian Media Group (GMG), which owns the Guardian and the Observer, had a fund of £740m to support them at the last count. This enormous sum would seem to guarantee the future of both titles and the website for as long as anyone can see.

But it doesn’t. GMG figures which emerged at the end of January, and confirmed to me by the company as accurate, paint an alarming picture. Losses in 2015 to the end of March are expected to amount to £58.6m, an annual record. Including leasing costs and capital expenditure, more than £80m in cash has flown out of the window in the last year. At the same time, the value of GMG’s investment fund fell from £838.3m last July to £740m at the end of January, which largely reflects market conditions (although it may have been helped by the recent market recovery). According to its critics, the company has demonstrated its ingrained inability to control costs. On 17th March it announced a new round of swingeing redundancies and other savings.

There is another worry. Many journalists on the paper to whom I have spoken question what GMG has termed its “digital-first” strategy, which it has pursued for more than a decade. Might it be that its policy of putting all its journalistic material online without charging readers is commercially unviable? Could the free model be fatally flawed? There are good reasons for thinking so.

The Guardian and the Observer (also a paper with a great history) have been losing huge sums of money for as long as anyone can recall. I have totted up the losses that the newspapers have jointly posted over the last 11 years, including this one. They amount to about £340m. Apart from this year, the worst performance was in the 12 months ending March 2012, when the titles lost £44.2m. If you can burn through £340m in just over a decade, a fighting fund of £740m suddenly doesn’t seem so much.

YOU'VE HIT THE LIMIT

You have now reached your limit of 3 free articles in the last 30 days.
But don't worry! You can get another 7 articles absolutely free, simply by entering your email address in the box below.

When you register we'll also send you a free e-book—Writing with punch—which includes some of the finest writing from our archive of 22 years. And we'll also send you a weekly newsletter with the best new ideas in politics and philosophy of culture, which you can of course unsubscribe from at any time

Email

Prospect may process your personal information for our legitimate business purposes, to provide you with our newsletter, subscription offers and other relevant information.

Click to learn more about these interests and how we use your data. You will be able to object to this processing on the next page and in all our communications.