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Comment by Emma_Goldman | Hacker News Reader

As a long-standing Guardian reader, I couldn't disagree more. It might be financially solvent, but the business model of the paper under the leadership of Katherine Viner has shifted to high throughput, low quality content vying for clicks in the attention economy. They have gone all-in on volume.

Compare that to the Financial Times, which has a low throughput of very high quality content, enabled by a discerning and high paying subscriber base. I read the Guardian for the lifestyle / cooking sections these days, but the FT is an incomparably better and more serious publication, whatever your politics (mine are the diametric opposite of the financial class).

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Yeah, me too. I'm definitely more on the side of the Guardian politics wise, but the FT is SO MUCH BETTER.

To be fair though, the FT is both really expensive, sells market data for a large price, and has a tier of subscription that can only be bought by organisations (they didn't even show me a price).

The Guardian has been going downhill massively over the last few years. I think the point at which I lost faith in them was when they trumpeted that 50% of carbon emissions were caused by 10 companies (i.e. the oil majors).

They approach environmental reporting like a campaign organisation, it's just not serious. Politically, I will never forgive the Guardian for the mendacious editorial campaign they waged against the Corbyn project. In general, the Guardian leads with cultural issues geared towards the liberal professional managerial class, which only compounds the logic and superficiality of its clickbait business model. It is incredibly hard to learn anything by reading the Guardian. This quote from the nymag piece is telling: “The reason I think that it works for us is we cover so much breaking news and it drives a lot of traffic, and we have the scale to make it work,” Reed said. “Even if we only monetize one percent, it’s still a lot.”

I agree as well: the Grauniad's UK political reporting is often shameful at the way it covers internal Labour Party warring with anonymous "internal party sources" that often toe the center-right line, and what are often briefed pre-speech announcements for centrist Labour up-and-comers that read like press releases. (Let alone how they'll breathlessly report anything remotely related to "gender confusion" regardless or not of its actual impact.) Sure, the "quality" UK press is often in hock with one party or another, but it still rankles.

Betsy Reed runs the American side with a lot more quality and a lot less political baggage, which is to her credit. I do think that her tenure at The Intercept, and and in particular The Intercept's inadvertent leak of Reality Winner's identity the feds, has made her more thoughtful.

> Politically, I will never forgive the Guardian for the mendacious editorial campaign they waged against the Corbyn project.

Yup. As Harold Wilson is reputed to have said, with friends like the guardian who needs enemies?

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