The Guardian and Observer operate at a massive loss being held by a foundation trust. According to wiki a loss of £18.9m in 2005 going to £50m 2006, who dares guess what kind of loss it operates under now. It's shored up by profitable publications within the same trust.

Alas, this isn't a long term viable strategy to be followed.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Guardian#Ownership for more info.

The Guardian and the BBC actually leave commercial papers in a bit of a tricky situation with regard to digital strategy here in the UK as they can both give their content away free without any regard to the problems of generating income, as they have guaranteed sources (trust money and license payer money).