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Comment by cschmidt | Hacker News Reader

There was also speculation this week that the Guardian would go digital only. That was denied by the Guardian Editor in Chief. However, @tomstandage, an editor of the Economist tweeted:

    Claims Guardian will ditch print edition could be half right, 
    despite @arusbridger's denials; they could go weekly (as I expect NYT to)

That would be quite a change. No more daily print New York Times, or Guardian.

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It'd definitely be a shame to see The Guardian go, I stopped reading around the point where they started cutting big chunks of content out to get the costs down, but I understand why they did it. Still use them as my primary news source, although the quality has dropped some what in the past 6 months.

The Guardian is owned by a trust, intended to keep it going in perpetuity. That should shield it from commercial pressure. However, the trust only has finite resources, so it can't run at a loss forever.

I agree it is a shame.

I'm actually a bit worried about that to be honest.

At the moment we have the BBC and the Guardian, both completely shielded from having to turn a profit. The BBC is fairly easy for the government to meddle with, the Guardian is pretty extreme lefty.

It's very easy to forget as they have such a great website, but the Guardian is an extremely biased paper. If you have the Daily Mail on the right the Guardian occupies the same spot on the left.

I worry that these non-commercial, but well funded, enterprises are actually not very healthy for the the long-term future of UK journalism.

The problem isn't The Guardian or The Daily Mail, it's that people read them and use them to prop up their very narrow worldviews. Either group could trivially shift their paper of choice to the other (or one of the more moderate alternatives) -- it's not an issue of availablity.

While The Guardian isn't for profit, they still rely on the market to provide money for them, either through buying the paper or donating to the trust. The fact that the BBC which can (and sometimes does) shut it self away from any money raising concerns is more centric than the Guardian suggests that the ownership model doesn't inform the editorial much.

What is your worry about removing the most significant conflict of interest from a news organization exactly? It seems like it might cause other issues but I can't think of a reasonable reason that it would do anything but reduce the amount of bias present.

And really? The Daily Fucking Mail? First of all: middle ground fallacy. Second: What sane person takes the Daily Mail's position on anything as a serious data point about where on the political spectrum a hypothetical unbiased news source would lie.

I'm finding it difficult not to stereotype you as an american who feels the middle ground between the Democrats and Republicans is a true middle ground (and that reality therefore has a left wing bias).

I'm from the UK.

If you think the Guardian's not as far left as the Mail's far right you're uninformed and need to read more. I suggest political theory and try reading all the different broadsheets on the same day a few days to understand political bias in each one.

Finally, go talk to some real people. If you think people don't have similar political beliefs as the daily mail you're utterly deluding yourself.

I suggest people not in your age group. I have found most Daily Mail readers in the 40-60s groups. It seems you have surrounded yourself with like-minded people, nothing wrong with that, but now believe everyone thinks like you do.

The 'middle' that you claim to be inhabiting is probably actually far left. There's a lot further right you can go than the Mail (like fascism for example). Liberals do seem to make this mistake rather a lot, thinking they're the moderate centre, when they're anything but.

I have no idea what you were getting at in your first sentence, sorry.

The first sentence was asking why you think non-commercial news sources would be bad for journalism.

As to the rest, I think a lot of our disagreement comes from how we define the middle and whether "moderate centre" can exist on it's own or only relative to the local politics. There is a difference between philosophical differences in political views about subjective or unknown issues and actual bias, where ideological commitments result in irrational positions on subjects with real evidence (roughly: denial of evolution/climate change is most often political bias, differences in taxation policy or social safety net policy are most often philosophical differences)

Also, I don't think I'm moderate centre or middle at all, nor am I just left. My worldview is based on science, rationality and skepticism so on the scale you are using I swing from centre to extreme left to fairly right depending on the issue. Perhaps that's why I consider the single axis political spectrum to be a framework for the ignorant and only useful to those writing the talking points. I certainly consider The Economist to be more similar to The Guardian than to the Daily Mail, which probably sounds crazy to you.

I understand you could read the different broadsheets to understand how their politics differ but how do you translate that to bias? How have you decided where the middle is other than averaging the broadsheets? That's textbook middle ground fallacy. It's completely open to manipulation by shifts in the Overton window.

I love the phrase "pretty extreme lefty" :-). I think that's been a difference in British journalism compared to the US. There are so many papers in the UK, that they have each staked out their own niche readership. The Guardian serves left leaning readers. The Daily Mail for the right, etc.

As long as enough papers survive that there is a diversity of viewpoints, things will be fine. (That's certainly not a given, however.)

From what I can tell they're a bit narrower than merely "extreme lefty" though - they actually seem to be biased towards a particular kind of niche feminism. Not even towards feminism as a whole (and yes, there are conflicts between that and the broader left wing), but to a very specific, narrow ideology within it.

I wouldn't say The Guardian is really well funded, it's got a trust so profitability isn't a huge concern but if the money runs out they're done for.

The Guardian is pretty far left, but they do try and present a balance at times (not always), and the traditional readership is often reasonable enough to have a discourse and not shout at each other.

I guess a weekly edition would make sense, keeping up-to-date with a daily newspaper can be practically a chore.

That's the main attraction of The Economist to me.

That was an attraction for me as well. I used to read the NYT each day, but it was easier (and less paper) when I switched to the Economist. Now after reading it, I'm just an Economist fanboy because of the content.

I enjoy that the Economist takes a strong editorial line. Sometimes I agree and sometimes I disagree but I respect their opinion and color.

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