Roger Fingas
Prominent U.K. newspaper The Guardian on Friday pulled out of two major app-based initiatives, Apple News and Facebook Instant Articles, in a bid to reclaim revenue.
"We have run extensive trials on Facebook Instant Articles and Apple News to assess how they fit with our editorial and commercial objectives. Having evaluated these trials, we have decided to stop publishing in those formats on both platforms," The Guardian said in a statement to Digiday.
"Our primary objective is to bring audiences to the trusted environment of the Guardian to support building deeper relationships with our readers, and growing membership and contributions to fund our world-class journalism."
Sites like The Guardian do make money from Apple News and Instant Articles, particularly since Apple News now prompts people to subscribe to access stories hidden behind a paywall. By directing readers to its own site and app, however, The Guardian is likely improving its take from ads, and can more directly nudge people into subscribing or at least donating.
In 2016 the site hit 200,000 subscribers, a number it will need to boost dramatically to hit a goal of 1 million by 2019. It also managed over 100,000 one-time contributions.
The Guardian is still involved with Google's Accelerated Mobile Pages, which like Instant Articles should load faster on mobile devices. In March the publication announced that some 60 percent of its traffic was coming in via AMP.
Marko Zivkovic
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24 Comments
That's a shame but I subscribe to the Guardian / Observer anyway so I'll still get my 'fix'. Apple news is my 'go to' for a quick scan, but I find it increasingly falls short of what I had hoped for. I guess it has built up a 'paxman' profile and attempts to feed that, Facebook style. The thing is I don't enjoy an entirely one sided news feed. I also don't like, no change that to I HATE, click bait articles that sensationalize news. In the age of Trump I am getting swamped by these articles that that take statements out of context and blows them out of all proportion. I understand why this happens and I am guessing it happens on the right as much as on the left. I am getting so sick of blinkered one sided shouting match style 'news reporting'. It is rarely informative or entertaining, but often tedious and insulting. Intelligent discourse is about the exchange of ideas from which the assumption is that participants can form their own opinions.
The Guardian has a dilemma: They need more revenue so are trying to increase their regular readership but they've spotted that doing that by giving away their product doesn't result in revenue. To run a business that provides curated, researched and genuine news (whatever one's opinion of the Guardian), paywalls look like the least-bad answer at the moment.
I also agree with Paxman's comments about the overall quality of Apple News so perhaps the Guardian isn't a good fit there anyway.
Good riddance. Who wants that leftist garbage the Guardian spews daily in their Apple News feed.
Here's what I want gone from Apple News - notifications of Sport results. Had to turn off CNN because of it.
I either:
Don't care about the sport and don't care about the result.
Do care about the sport, have seen the game and know the result.
Worst case, care about the game, haven't yet seen it and the result is spoiled.
PS: I like the Guardian and will just continue to use their app.
I don't care about Apple News. Don't use it and never will. I prefer to go straight to the source. Why have someone curate your information sources and impose a wall between you and your interests?
The revenue problem for news outlets such as The Guardian is they are essentially competing with public broadcasters like the ever expanding Beeb. It is very hard to make a living if you produce the exact same product as a monolithic competitor that is able to rely on tax dollars (sorry pounds)/the public purse for its revenue stream rather than sell content for which consumers are prepared to pay.
Because of that reality, I don't think a paywall will help the poor old Gruniard.