The price of The Guardian-an analogy for a Labour government
Buying The Guardian for the first time in a while the other day I was amazed to discover it was £1.60-far more than its quality newspaper rivals. This has been a consistent pattern. I remember several years ago when the other quality titles were having a price war that The Guardian did not cut its price.
What it suggests is that it has an audience that is not price-sensitive, one which takes the view that whatever it costs, that's what it costs. That did set me thinking about whether that reflected a mindset amongst the liberal-left chattering class Guardian audience of being suspicious about attempts to cut costs, relatively affluent and so not resistant to cost increases and generally sniffy about competition, (the 'we don't need a Tesco in our town. We have a Waitrose already. That's sufficient' type of approach.)
If so, does that translate into their view of government? i.e. of being suspicious about any talk of being cost-effective, disliking competition between state services on the basis that their local school is OK and/or they're not services they makes much use of anyway.
In short does the fact that The Guardian apparently feel no pressure to be as cost-effective as the other quality papers tell us that their audience-who is likely to be largely Labour voting-don't much care about being cost-effective and assume that 'if it costs more it must be good'?.
What it suggests is that it has an audience that is not price-sensitive, one which takes the view that whatever it costs, that's what it costs. That did set me thinking about whether that reflected a mindset amongst the liberal-left chattering class Guardian audience of being suspicious about attempts to cut costs, relatively affluent and so not resistant to cost increases and generally sniffy about competition, (the 'we don't need a Tesco in our town. We have a Waitrose already. That's sufficient' type of approach.)
If so, does that translate into their view of government? i.e. of being suspicious about any talk of being cost-effective, disliking competition between state services on the basis that their local school is OK and/or they're not services they makes much use of anyway.
In short does the fact that The Guardian apparently feel no pressure to be as cost-effective as the other quality papers tell us that their audience-who is likely to be largely Labour voting-don't much care about being cost-effective and assume that 'if it costs more it must be good'?.
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The Times is still heavily subsidised by its owners but it has lost readership in recent years when it has put prices up.
Isn't the moral of this story that The Times is the subsidy junkie that cannot stand on its own two feet at all whilst The Guardian knows its market and knows what its value is to its audience- in other words being perfectly capitalist.
"I worked at the Guardian on a zero-hours contract for a long time," the letter began, "It was horrendous. Our so-called 'casual' contracts gave us absolutely no job security and no sick leave pay - even though most of us were expected to work full-time, five days a week. It was a constant nightmare. It was also incredibly humiliating because the company kept denying that it employed anyone on zero-hours contracts, even though loads of people were, and still are. The evidence is right there, but the Guardian ignored it. What's more, most people were too scared to say anything, in case it damaged their career prospects or cost them their job altogether."
The writer concluded: "I will be interested to see whether this gets published or not." So far the answer is: not. Surprise!' Private Eye Iss 1366
Clearly 'cost effectiveness' is as much of a concern to the Guardian as it is to anyone else in their line of business
PS: There are plenty of other reasons this particular Socialist wouldn't touch the Guardian with a sh**ty stick but this is the most entertaining one I've seen recently
The Guardian are a bunch of hypocrites, actively being vocal about Zero hours contracts and tax evasion/avoidance whilst doing it themselves.
Thankfully,"a few years ago", it didn't drop its standards and successfully uncovered outrageous practices involving other news organizations.
I'm amazed they can do it all for the price of a bar of chocolate- and indeed free online.
£1.60 for a bar of chocolate?!! Guardian readers really do have no concept of value for money!
Glossed over the substantive points, I notice.Oh well, with a non-existent argument and having won the award for starting the daftest-thread-of-the-month, what can you do,in fairness?!
So you really think The Guardian is going to pick up casual readers-and thereby grow its business-when they look at the paper in the shop and discover it is £1.60?
Oh you mean the Daily Telegraph,
Thankfully a few years ago they didn't get their wish of a tax on internet users to support their rag and as a result their readers have to pay for it rather than all of us.
See also
http://www.newstatesman.com/blogs/business/2012/09/why-david-leighs-broadband-tax-plan-bonkers
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/09/28/graun_aid_competition_winners/
You've probably missed out on vast swathes of news down the years.Perhaps many topics weren't covered,in great detail, in your paper of choice at the time ( Daily Sport/Star, possibly?).
The BBC are doing their best to make sure The Guardian doesn't go bust because they's be lost without it.
Where would BBC News get it's editorial lines without it? Where would BBC presenters and panel-show comedians get their opinions?
It would be a disaster.
The Guardian has one of the most read websites in the world. The last time I looked it was in the top five most read news websites. They have to find a way to turn that into advertising revenue.
As far as the price goes I would rather pay £1.60 if I felt the newspaper was producing quality articles rather than pay less and get the shoddy bilge that the Star, Mirror and Sun produce. And let's face it, the Metro is a paper for people who have no interest in news. You get what you pay for and the Guardian is the only paper for people of a left-leaning persuasion.
A question for people who can get the Standard. Since it has gone free is it a paper worth reading or is it just as bad as the Metro?
No, but its website grows from strength to strength.
The Guardian - tick
The BBC - tick
Eastern Europeans - anyone ?
You can only feel pity for the BBC/Lefty haters sitting in their bunkers wearing their tin-foil hats and muttering to themselves that all will be right with the world if we could only scrap the licence fee. No more war, famine or even death anymore. We would no longer need to work either as food and anything else we need will just magically appear as soon as we think we want it. The only thing that is stopping this nirvana is the BBC, the licence fee and Billy Bragg.
But that's not a real comparison in terms of style of newspapers. The Times and the Telegraph both regularly produce high quality articles. Whether you agree with them or not isn't the question. What's the point of only reading articles you agree with? The point of reading them should be to make you think.
The Times and The Telegraph do produce quality articles but the left wouldn't read the papers anymore than the majority of the right would read the Guardian.
For lefties it is between the Guardian and the Mirror. And the Mirror is quite frankly awful. The Times and the Telegraph does have competition for their political standpoint the Guardian doesn't. Hence the higher price.
Is this the Guardian that gets lots of income from all of those government / local authority / quango job ads (a subsidy junkie, you could say?), the Guardian that preaches against zero hours contracts and unpaid interns but uses both, and the Guardian that rallies against tax avoidance while not condemning their parent organisation for avoiding tax?
They could save so much money if they stopped paying the likes of Owen Jones and Polly "Tuscan Villa" Toynbee for their drivel.
So they only want to read articles from people who agree with them? So much for the aim of quality newspapers being to make you think.
Well not really. Most people only have time to read one newspaper - if that. We are too busy to flit from newspaper to newspaper so we have to make a choice. Do you buy a paper that roughly aligns with your political views or one that doesn't. We also buy out of habit.
The fact you get look at the Telegraph and the Guardian for free on the net means you get a greater chance of sampling more stories. The Times being behind a paywall could do it damage in the future. People are getting used to free news.