Pod Insights Masters of Scale Rapid Response: The Guardian’s secret weapon against media’s collapse, with CEO Anna Bateson About this episode While legacy news outlets like The Washington Post stumble, The Guardian keeps growing — but how? Guardian Media Group CEO Anna Bateson joins Rapid Response to pull back the curtain on the company's unusual ownership structure and the multi-revenue model fueling its resilience. Bateson also weighs in on the threat and opportunity of AI chatbots, the Jeff Bezos effect on media, and what role she sees The Guardian playing as the future of news takes shape, even as the pressures of today demand her full attention.
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1:41 Speaker 01 One of the most helpful things I was told by a rather informed board member was that even the most sophisticated engineers working in the most extraordinarily frontier-level AI don't really know what's going to happen in the next 12 weeks, let alone in the next 12 months. You could spend weeks doing plans for the next five years, which will become irrelevant and redundant. And actually, not trying to do longer forecasting or planning, but actually thinking, how do we set ourselves up to be ready to adapt and adjust? That's what I try and focus on.
2:21 Speaker 02 That's Anna Bateson, CEO of Guardian Media Group, publisher of The Guardian. The Guardian has had remarkable success as a news brand, growing globally when other aspirers like The Washington Post have struggled. That's in part because of The Guardian's unusual ownership structure under the umbrella of a 90-year-old trust that helps provide stability. But Anna has also embraced the exceedingly modern realities of speed, flexibility, and focus. I wanted to learn how The Guardian is tapping into multiple business models and into the emotional aspects of a brand to differentiate itself. And Anna did not disappoint. So let's get into it.
3:04 Speaker 02 I'm Bob Safian, and this is Rapid Response.
3:11 Speaker 02 I'm Bob Safian. I'm here with Anna Bateson, CEO of Guardian Media Group. Anna, thanks for joining us.
3:17 Speaker 01 Well, thank you for having me.
3:19 Speaker 02 Today, The Guardian is the fifth-most-traffic news site in the world. More than 1.4 million subscribers provide regular financial support. It's an impressive feat for a legacy British newspaper to turn into a global brand, especially when other news outlets are struggling. I'm eager to learn your secret. Is there a single secret that underlies all of this?
3:47 Speaker 01 No, there's never a single secret. I think there are a number of things that really contributed. The first is that we were very early to embrace digital and to see the opportunities of digital. And that decision, which is, I think, 30 years ago or something, took us from being the ninth-biggest national newspaper in the UK, so inherently parochial to a degree, to really build audiences all around the world. The uniqueness of our ownership model, the independence that's endowed by the Scot Trust, also allows us to think long-term, and that did allow us the opportunity to grow. It didn't feel as though we were in a good position 10 years ago, when you began to
4:26 Speaker 01 realize that, crucially, digital advertising wasn't going to substitute for print advertising. But actually, that was the basis, then, of us being able to build the reader revenue model.
4:39 Speaker 02 The first important thing was embracing digital. Does that make you more aggressive about embracing AI? Because that's maybe the next turn in the business?
4:50 Speaker 01 No, I don't think it makes us more aggressive about embracing AI. I think it means that we are genuinely a deeply digital organization. We look at AI through a particularly informed lens, quite a curious lens. We have aimed to try and be really cautious and thoughtful, actually, in how we endeavor to understand AI, in how we think about its application within our organization, across all aspects of the organization, the changes it's going to make to our audiences' behaviors. It's incumbent on all of us to truly understand it as a technology. And I think you can only understand it by applying it and by using it.
5:33 Speaker 02 You mentioned that Guardian is owned by a private trust.
5:37 Speaker 01 Yes.
5:37 Speaker 02 So that means you don't need to necessarily pass down all of your profit. The revenue you generate can be reinvested in the content.
5:45 Speaker 01 Yes.
5:45 Speaker 02 And you've kind of got a backstop in tougher times, if I'm understanding that correctly. Are there any downsides to this structure? Any complications? Because you are fairly unusual to have this kind of a setup.
5:59 Speaker 01 Yes, it is unusual. I think it's an enormous strategic advantage for us, a really key point of differentiation. The sole purpose of the Scott Trust is to ensure that the Guardian thrives in perpetuity. So that's an extraordinarily privileged ownership structure to be the beneficiary of. We have quite a lot of governance as a result. So that's something that we navigate. But no, I think that this is, it's an advantage for us. And it's definitely something that our audiences understand. It's a big motivator for them when they choose to support the journalism. They know that the money is going to fund journalism and it isn't going to enrich, you know, a proprietor or shareholders.
6:43 Speaker 02 And you as the CEO, you have limitations, maybe that you might not because of some of the the structural things, but at the same time, you you don't have to worry about shareholders. So there's there's a little bit of a trade off there, right?
6:58 Speaker 01 Completely. Yes. I mean, I um, the editor in chief and I report to the G M G board. She ultimately reports to the Scot Trust, which is it is a structural way of guaranteeing editorial independence and integrity. And the relationship is one that's described as a happy partnership, a happy marriage. And we're meant to be arm in arm. The commercial and editorial strategies and ambition are symbiotically intertwined. When you see the challenges of The Washington Post, I think that it never has it sort of seemed more clear how actually the structural guarantee around that editorial independence, it's a very significant thing. It's a very important thing.
7:43 Speaker 02 Hmm. Most legacy news organizations depend on ad dollars, even in the digital age. The Guardian's leaned on support from readers, supporters, although The Guardian is is free. How do you get people to pay for something that's free?
8:02 Speaker 01 So, first of all, we also have advertising. Advertising is very important to us. However, you're right, we have the the the stability of essentially having built this now really quite significant global supporter base. One of the things that our ownership structure enables us to do is to be open about our publishing and and available to all. So when we first started to to to build out our reader revenue model, it was optional. You're correct. It wasn't forced by being gated around a paywall. It was all about unlocking the words and the the routes and the messages to essentially explain what what reader support could give
8:47 Speaker 01 us, and then to make it incredibly easy and frictionless. We do have some paid products, so it's not completely true that we are just completely free. If you subscribe to our app, we ask you to pay after you've used a certain amount. We have a cooking product, which we ask you to pay for. But we are committed to this, to the to the principle of being open and freely available on the web.
9:11 Speaker 02 I talked on the show with your counterpart, your colleague at the New York Times, Meredith Kopit-Levien, who is also one of a handful of legacy print outfits that managed to be thriving. And she talked a lot about lifestyle verticals. You mentioned cooking. She talked about cooking and games and other things. When you think about your business plan, do you track that similarly? Or how much is your model more like a donation-based resource like Wikipedia? You're straddling those two things.
9:48 Speaker 01 Yes, well, I have nothing but admiration for the New York Times, and indeed for Meredith. And I have nothing but admiration, actually, for Wikipedia. And you're completely correct that I think we probably drew inspiration from both of those august institutions. If you think about it, newspapers were the original bundle, a bundle of different verticals put together in a beautifully designed, elegantly delivered product. And we've always been good at cooking. We've always been good at cultural content. We've long been great at lifestyle. We've always had games. It's a very important piece of a newspaper to have crosswords. So in a sense, as you think about taking the areas that are defining
10:33 Speaker 01 of us and transitioning those into a digital world, it's not really surprising that we end up consolidating in the same sorts of areas. Puzzles are wonderful things. They're all about driving habit. That's something that you want to do every day. It's really how do you best unlock your strengths that you have and use that to reach audiences and unlock the most value from those audiences around the world.
10:57 Speaker 02 You're also leaning into...
11:01 Speaker 02 And able, I guess, because of your structure, to reinforce the mission of the organization, which allows you to sort of emulate Wikipedia, as we were talking about, right, to sort of have that loyalty be part of what the appeal is in supporting The Guardian?
11:18 Speaker 01 Whenever we do audience research, that sense of the emotional desire to support journalism is common. So people believe that the mission is important. They believe in the significance of the independent ownership model. There's a real sense of I'm supporting something that I value, but other people value too. Also, ultimately, it allows those people who can't afford to pay also to be able to consume it and have access to it, which is really important in this modern world.
11:50 Speaker 02 In terms of business model, several high-profile media outlets have turned to billionaires for support. The L.A. Times, the Washington Post, Time Magazine. The tone that you mentioned earlier made me think that you may not feel like this benefactor model is necessarily good. I'm curious about that. I mean, the magazine where I worked as editor-in-chief at, S Company, was owned by a single business leader who was quite supportive. But as you say, certainly, the Washington Post is embroiled in questions around Jeff Bezos's commitment and pressure.
12:26 Speaker 01 I'm not sure it's for me to judge whether a benefactor model is good or bad. I think it has risks. And I think that for a long time, perhaps, media organizations saw benefactors as saviors, that hope and belief that you could have benign, you know, kind of benefactors. I just think that there are moments when the personal interests of a benefactor may or may not come into conflict of a genuinely independent editorial organization.
12:57 Speaker 02 When the Washington Post and the L.A. Times quashed their 2024 U.S. presidential endorsements with, under pressure from the owners, The Guardian's U.S. editor, Betsy Reed, went the other way and sort of called them out in a fundraising pitch that raised something like $2 million.
13:17 Speaker 01 Yes.
13:17 Speaker 02 How do the editorial and business sides coordinate when it comes to generating funds? Like, is this something that you talk about, or Betsy just decides, I'm gonna do this?
13:30 Speaker 01 No, it's very collaborative. I mean, I think it's it's one of the things that is so fascinating about the reader revenue model. And we've obviously got to evolve our language about that because they're not they're much broader than readers now. But but is the the level of collaboration that takes place between editorial and and the commercial teams. And in a way, it's the it's the logical evolution of an organisation away from a very siloed sort of church and state. Where you had you had editorial and you had advertising and they didn't really need to ever sort of, you know, come into kind of contact with one another. And I think that the essence of of of the audience funding model
14:09 Speaker 01 is that there is a greater collaboration. Ultimately, you know, Betsy would decide what she felt was the right kind of, you know, message. But it would be done in in deep concert with the reader revenue side.
14:23 Speaker 02 And in in that instance, like when when that idea came up, was there any concern of like, oh, we don't want to, you know, pick a fight in that way?
14:33 Speaker 01 We talked about it, but in the end, it it it was something that we wanted to do. And I think it was the right thing to do. I think it was the right thing to do editorially, and it was the right thing to do for our supporters. It was a very emotional moment, and that translated into a lot of people, I think, coming to The Guardian and choosing to support our journalism in a way that they hadn't before.
14:55 Speaker 02 The Guardian's known for its sort of unapologetically progressive values. And I'm curious how that impacts your business goals. I mean, some might say it colors trust in your journalism.
15:09 Speaker 01 So first of all, the lens that we are viewed through is interestingly different in the UK, where we have a long legacy and longstanding understanding about our editorial position.
15:23 Speaker 01 It's a much less entrenched view when you get into mainland Europe, into the US, into into the rest of the world. And actually, what I think our audiences appreciate there is very much this sense of a global perspective. And so it's it's less, I think, about this this association with unashamed progressive values, although I think that is the truth for us. It's also the fact that we have a perspective that is very different and distinctive to a US-based to a US-based kind of perspective. You know, Trump, the Iran war, tech, climate, immigration.
16:02 Speaker 01 There's something very appreciated by audiences of our ability to have a, you know, non non-US sort of rooted perspective. The the capacity to contextualize or frame the story that comes from also having a European perspective, or a British perspective, or an Australian perspective, or a Canadian perspective. It's just that we can bring a broader context and a a voice that is from, you know, many other places and not deeply kind of grounded and rooted in one place.
16:40 Speaker 02 The Guardian is such a distinctive operation, its business model, its broad context, as Anna describes it, even its openness about progressive values. So how are AI chatbots impacting its work? And what does Anna really think about Jeff Bezos's stewardship of the Washington Post? We'll talk about that and more after the break. Stay with us.
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18:56 Speaker 02 Before the break, The Guardian's Anna Bateson shared how its distinctive business supports distinctive content. Now she talks about how The Guardian has sidestepped the impact of AI chatbots so far, and what Jeff Bezos misunderstood when he bought The Washington Post. Plus, the role The Guardian can play in the future of news, and how she keeps the business anchored in the here and now. Let's jump back in. Before coming to The Guardian, you worked for Google and YouTube. The transition from from search to AI chatbots, to things like Google's Gemini summaries,
19:36 Speaker 02 that has cut down traffic a lot for a lot of content outlets. And a lot of folks struggle with that. How are you thinking about that? Does that make you look at Google any differently?
19:52 Speaker 01 We have not seen declines in audience that have been reported for other media organizations. In fact, we've seen incredibly strong and resilient audiences, particularly in the US. We've actually just overtaken The Washington Post. So January and February for kind of readership within the US, which is quite a sort of significant moment from our perspective. And so I don't think we're naive that there's clearly deep disruption and kind of change coming in the way that people are going to discover and then choose to consume the news that they want to kind of read or the or or watch or, you know, listen to. However, we aren't seeing that level of of of change yet reflected in our audience numbers.
20:37 Speaker 02 Is there anything that you're doing? Like, are you blocking, you know, bots from AI companies from crawling your content? Or or is this more, do you think, about the brand affinity that people have with Guardian? Like, do you do you have a sense of why it's not hitting you the way it's hitting others?
20:56 Speaker 01 There is a piece around brand affinity and around, you know, genuinely differentiated quality, original journalism, the meaningful relationship that I think our audiences therefore have have with us, which allows us to potentially be more resilient, you know, and have more direct traffic. I think it is also about how the search experience is developing. There is a different experience around sort of hard news, serious news than there might be about softer lifestyle kind of media and and coverage.
21:29 Speaker 02 The Guardian is a is a founding member of a coalition called the Strategic Partnership for Uplifting Rights, or SPUR, which which is intended, I guess, to design better guidelines for AI training. Can you explain what the motivation behind SPUR is and and what you've seen so far?
21:46 Speaker 01 At this time, when you're when you are facing very well-funded and very sophisticated kind of technology organizations, we need to rise to that moment. We need to work together as an industry. So I think the first piece of it was, how can we collaborate? And it's and it's important that the founding members were both broadcasters and former newspapers, and they're across the the sort of the political spectrum. We then have every intention that this will then broaden out and become a global coalition, defining standards and protocols that are really going to be necessary to the creation of a potential licensing market
22:25 Speaker 01 around quality, quality journalism and content. We ought to be defining those standards and protocols, rather than having them defined for us by technology businesses.
22:36 Speaker 02 Hmm. We talked about your structure earlier around your business model. And I'm curious whether you think that structure gives The Guardian a certain kind of role in the media ecosystem and how it evolves. Do you feel like you you have to be a leader in a different kind of way, maybe? Or, you know, it allows you to be a leader in a different kind of way?
22:59 Speaker 01 Yes, I think there is a there is a sort of a sense of some responsibility. The secondary purpose of the Scot Trust is broader. If the primary purpose is, you know, ensuring the sustainability of The Guardian in perpetuity, a secondary purpose is around ensuring that liberal journalism can flourish.
23:17 Speaker 02 The leadership challenges of running any organization right now are are quite intense. Are like, are you thinking about your your role within The Guardian differently? Are there particular things about how you manage the team or manage the planning that, you know, that might?
23:42 Speaker 02 That might be instructive.
23:45 Speaker 01 One of the most helpful things I was told by a rather informed board member was that even the most sophisticated engineers working in the most extraordinarily frontier level kind of AI don't really know what's going to happen in the next sort of 12 weeks, let alone in the next 12 months. And I found that really helpful, you know, focus on curiosity about kind of what's happening and capabilities within the organization and flexibility because you can, you could spend, you know, weeks doing plans for the next five years, which will become irrelevant and, you know, sort of redundant before you know it. And actually,
24:26 Speaker 01 not trying to do long, longer sort of kind of forecasting or planning, but actually thinking, how do we set ourselves up, equip ourselves, skill up really, to be an organization that's ready to kind of adapt and adjust as we're going to need to. That's what I try and focus on. And I think that as a leadership team, it's incumbent on us to sort of hang on to that humility and to continue to keep learning and be curious about what's happening. And that's what will, I think, equip us for what's to come.
24:57 Speaker 02 It's a very different framework than the traditional way business works, right? I mean, I'm sure you still have to have plans and budgets that, you know, that extend out farther. But if, if really you can't see more than 12 weeks out, it's pretty hard to plan.
25:14 Speaker 01 Yes. I mean, well, it's, it's easy to plan, right? Just you've got to be able to adapt when the plan, you know, begins to veer off course. There's a discipline and a rigor around planning, which is actually really useful. But I think it's being able to be adaptable enough that when the plan begins to change, you can accommodate that.
25:33 Speaker 02 When I first came into media in the late 90s, these organizations were making so much money, like hand over fist. And I sometimes wonder whether the expectations about how much money news organizations should make is a little out, out of whack, like we're trying to turn them into growth businesses when they're really more cash flow businesses. And obviously, you don't have quite the same pressure of that because of the, because of the trust structure. But I'm just curious whether you. Whether you feel that way or have any thoughts about that?
26:09 Speaker 01 I think you are correct in your observation. There was an expectation that the kind of returns that you could get that probably is unsustainable now. But also, I think if you're building a news organization now, you would build it in a very different way, with a very different cost structure. And that might allow you then to be a growth business and to deliver the kind of returns proportionately that perhaps they used to. So it's both sides, isn't it? It's can you restructure yourself to adapt to a new reality? And also, can you culturally evolve sufficiently to be operating in a way that will allow you to grow? That's the thing that The New York Times has done so spectacularly well,
26:52 Speaker 01 which has allowed them to not only invest in journalism, but actually build out a very successful set of subscription-based businesses.
27:03 Speaker 02 I guess sometimes I think that when Jeff Bezos bought The Washington Post, he didn't really realize what he was buying and what he was getting into.
27:13 Speaker 01 I think that's probably right. There were years when you thought you were going to solve the problems by technology. And actually, the fact that that wasn't going to solve the problems was masked by the enormous sort of growth in audience and engagement that was Trump. And then, of course, was COVID. You think you have the answers because you come in and you look at these businesses and you've been very successful elsewhere. And they're more complicated than that. And they're complicated both because of legacy and because of the changing market.
27:43 Speaker 02 The expectations, right? I mean, listen, how much money The Washington Post makes one way or the other is not really measurable on Jeff Bezos's P and L, like his personal wealth. It's a rounding error, right?
27:57 Speaker 01 I suspect that.
28:00 Speaker 01 It's less about the amount of money and it's more about what that kind of financial performance symbolizes about the sustainability and the health of the organization. You can live with losses, but if you feel that they are the sign of something that's more problematic, that I think then becomes the thing that's troubling.
28:22 Speaker 02 In some ways, I think it would make more sense for The Washington Post to be structured as a nonprofit. I know I talked to the owner at Fast Company at certain times about, you know, should we convert this to be a nonprofit because, you know, because really that's what its mission is about. But when you have folks who are owners, who are business people, they believe that that profit imperative, you know, pushes certain kinds of results and gets rid of complacency.
28:54 Speaker 01 I have some sympathy for that perspective. A commercial ambition and drive, as long as it's compatible with and supportive of editorial independence, is a good thing to have. I think you're right. You don't want your organization to be complacent and you don't want people not to care really about kind of the commercial kind of underpinnings of where they work.
29:23 Speaker 02 How do you reinforce and encourage that, that commercial side when, you know, that's not the way you're structured?
29:33 Speaker 01 We are held to account around, you know, financial performance and financial sustainability. Editorial impact is only really secure and sustainable if it's attached to a business model that is also kind of secure and sustainable. That, I think, is a message that... Is understood. And I think crucially, there's it's amazing how once you begin to see that something's working and that that is a a sign of genuine relationships with audiences who believe in what you're doing, who see the impact of it, who value it. The momentum that you get from that is very powerful.
30:15 Speaker 01 I think in the end, you know, relevance and impact is what what we're all here to do. And and and the fact that people want to support us and the fact that people want to partner with us, you know, brands and advertisers want to partner with us is indicative of of us achieving what it is that that we're aiming for.
30:32 Speaker 02 Absolutely. Commercial success is a is a a hallmark, a sign that you're that you're connecting. Right?
30:40 Speaker 01 It's the validation that audiences understand that this is important, valuable and, you know, kind of necessary work.
30:49 Speaker 02 I hear this all the time from colleagues that that news organizations are are facing so many threats, overlapping threats, technological, political, economic.
31:03 Speaker 02 And I'm curious, like, how bleak is the future? Or or should I say challenging is the future? Like, what's at stake at this point when you look to what's to come for for news?
31:17 Speaker 01 I think there are perspectives where you could see it as pretty bleak. However,
31:26 Speaker 01 at the same time, you know, quality news has never been needed more. It's never been valued more. You could argue that that that it's being engaged with and, you know, consumed at extraordinary levels. And trusted brands who can take a long term perspective and have a have the resilience that comes from a particular ownership structure, from from the the the power of a two hundred and six year old brand, from genuine relationships with audiences around the world. I mean, that's quite a potent combination. And if, you know, out of that, we can sort of give people some hope and some help in how they navigate kind of a complicated world
32:09 Speaker 01 of which there are so many unknowns, then that's a reason to not be bleak. And that's a reason to actually feel quite optimistic. So. It might slightly depend the day that you asked me that question, but I think the fact that it matters more and that people genuinely understand that and value it and that our model speaks to that. But as does the success at The New York Times or many other admirable organizations, I think that speaks to there being reasons for hope.
32:42 Speaker 02 Well, Anna, I applaud that hope and that feeling. And thanks for doing this.
32:49 Speaker 01 It was a pleasure.
32:53 Speaker 02 As a journalist myself, I have a particular interest in how the news business operates. But you don't need to be a news hound to gather lessons from Anna's experience at The Guardian. She gives high praise to the unique ownership structure there. But even more important is what she calls the genuine relationship with audiences around the world. Every business needs to understand who they're serving and how best to engage them. For all the technology brings to the modern marketplace, business ultimately requires an emotional connection. We lose sight of that at our own peril. I'm Bob Safian. Thanks for listening.
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35:24 Speaker 03 Humans will never be more intelligent than AI.
35:27 Speaker 04 There's going to be two types of companies. Those are great at AI and those that went out of business because they weren't.
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36:07 Speaker 02 Rapid Response is a Wait What original. I'm Bob Safian. Our executive producer is Eve Trow. Our producer is Alex Morris. Associate producer is Mashumaku Tonina. Mixing and mastering by Brian Pugh. Our theme music is by Ryan Holiday. Our head of podcasts is Lital Malad. For more, visit rapidresponseshow.com.
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