The Guardian is not Britain's largest newspaper - there are 10 in the UK with a bigger circulation - nor is the paper turning a profit. The company that runs it reportedly lost $50m last year. But the Guardian has been at the centre of two of the biggest news stories of the past 18 months.
We break format this week to bring you a one-on-one interview with the newspaper's editor, Alan Rusbridger. We spoke to him about the phone hacking scandal at Rupert Murdoch's News International and how it not only revealed the underhanded tactics employed by the now defunct News of the World, but also the influence News International wielded over British politicians, police and possibly other news organisations. We also spoke to Rusbridger about his publication's unique collaboration with the whistle-blowing website Wikileaks, its front man Julian Assange and why that relationship came to an acrimonious end. And finally we got the editor's views on the future of journalism in the digital age and his resemblance to a bespectacled magician who also managed to overcome the odds.
The Guardian, formerly known as The Manchester Guardian (founded 1821), is a British national daily newspaper in the Berliner format. Currently edited by Alan Rusbridger, it has grown from a nineteenth century local paper to a national paper associated with a complex organisational structure and international multimedia presence with sister papers The Observer (British Sunday paper) and The Guardian Weekly, as well as a large web presence.
The Guardian in paper form had a certified average daily circulation of 232,566 in September 2011, behind The Daily Telegraph and The Times, but ahead of The Independent.[3] According to its editor, The Guardian has the second largest online readership of any English-language newspaper in the world, after the New York Times.[4]Founded in 1821, the paper identifies with centre-left liberalism and its readership is generally on the mainstream left of British political opinion. The paper is also influential in design and publishing arena, sponsoring many awards in these areas.
The Guardian has changed format and design over the years moving from broadsheet to Berliner, and has become an international media organisation with affiliations to other national papers with similar aims. The Guardian Weekly, which circulates worldwide, contains articles from The Guardian and its sister Sunday paper The Observer, as well as reports, features and book reviews from The Washington Post and articles translated from Le Monde. Other projects include GuardianFilm, the current editorial director of which is Maggie O'Kane.
For the last six years pundits have been reading the long obituary of the newspaper pronouncing them irrelevant and out of date yet if it wasn't for newspapers how the world have known about the torture which took place at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq, Warrantless searches in the United States thanks
to James Risen and the Hew York Times, Extraordinary rendition which swept up the innocent and sent them to places like Syria, Egypt and Thailand to be tortured and how many other stories which have shed light on the wrong doings of governments thanks to the investigative journalism of newspapers.
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