Can Free Web Content Save The Guardian?

Alan Rusbridger could hardly be accused of being old-fashioned. The editor-in-chief of the Guardian loves the Internet. The website of the British daily is considered one of the industry's best. Yet Rusbridger, 57, has chosen to preserve his greatest journalistic triumph in good old aluminum: in the form of a matte gray exposed printing plate with light-blue lettering; the front page of the July 5, 2011 edition. The souvenir stands on the desk of his London office.
A large part of the page is given over to a photo of a young girl, 13-year-old Milly Dowler, who was abducted on her way home and later killed. On the July 5 in question, the Guardian revealed that a reporter at Rupert Murdoch's tabloid News of the World had tapped the cell phone of the murdered schoolgirl. Although this was only one of many scoops by the Guardian in the wiretapping scandal surrounding the Murdoch paper, it was undoubtedly the most momentous. The story shook the Australian media tycoon's global empire, scandalized the British public, and prompted the British parliament to openly discuss curbs on the yellow press. Murdoch closed the News of the World and police opened investigations into 16 reporters and managers at the paper. And all because of Rusbridger's "guardians."
The paper has made something of a name for itself with such revelations. In fact it has become the symbol of independent journalism. But in purely economic terms, it's a complete fiasco.
Offsetting the Losses
The Guardian has been losing money every year since 2004. Last year alone, it and its sister newspaper, the Observer, lost more than €47 million. It's only thanks to the farsightedness and generosity of its former owners, the Scott family, that the paper hasn't gone bankrupt.
Since 1936, the paper has been funded by the Scott Trust. This structure has but a single aim: "To secure the editorial independence of The Guardian in perpetuity."
Many newspapers would like to be based on such a business model. The Scott Trust owns a number of lucrative companies, including the used-car magazine and portal Auto Trader. The profits generated on these are used to offset the heavy losses incurred by The Guardian.
"Our mission is to be profit seeking rather than profit finding," says Deputy Editor Ian Katz. Even CP Scott, the paper's owner in the early 20th century, believed it was more important to be influential than to turn a profit.
However, the Guardian's losses have become too big to absorb -- and in 2007 the Scott Trust was forced to sell some of its assets to refill its coffers.
Andrew Miller, a former consumer-goods industry manager and for the past year the managing director of the newspaper's parent company, the Guardian Media Group, recently warned that if the Guardian continued to make such heavy losses, the company would simply run out of money within five years...

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Isabell Hülsen @'Der Spiegel'