Alan Rusbridger: welcome to Guardian Membership
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Version 0 of 1. You’ve read the Guardian. Maybe, in recent times, you’ve listened to, or watched the Guardian. You may have come to our building to learn with the Guardian, in one of our series of Masterclasses. Now you can join the Guardian. From today you can become a member of the Guardian. You can become a closer part of the community of journalists, readers and friends of an institution that has been around for well over 190 years. By joining you can be part of our journey of transformation into an open and global 21st-century media company. This is how the idea started: just over two years ago, we threw open our doors at Kings Place in London for a kind of weekend festival. We wanted to test the appetite of our readers for close-up encounters with the paper’s journalists, together with a scintillating array of outside speakers, and with each other. About 6,000 of you crowded into the building over the weekend. The atmosphere was great. The debates were absorbing. The food, fringe conversations and music were incredibly relaxed and enjoyable. The sun shone. In various sessions we asked a number of questions of the readers and participants. Would they want something like this again? More generally, how did they feel about the issues newspapers around the world were – and are – kicking around: paying for content v free content, open v closed, and so on. The answers were revealing. Yes, the readers definitely wanted more – much more – of this. The prospect of being part of the debates, ideas and conversations we could start and host was immensely appealing. Most readers said they would happily contribute money to the “cause” of the Guardian – but an overwhelming majority also wanted the journalism to be free, so that it could reach the maximum possible audience. A fair number were happy to be subscribers, but the most hands shot up when asked if they would like to be “members”. This was profoundly interesting. The Guardian and our Sunday title the Observer have no proprietor: the only relationship our journalists have is with our readers. We felt we had a real possibility of deepening the intense bond between the producers and consumers of what we do. But was it real, or was this just the Sunday morning enthusiasm of audience buoyed up by good conversation and coffee? We tested the idea with numerous groups of readers, both loyal and casual. The people running the research said they’d rarely experienced such an overwhelmingly warm embrace for such a proposition. We wanted to be absolutely sure, so we did even more research. We tested a range of further ideas, including having a physical space near the Guardian office in Kings Cross, where we could hold events, and which could act as a kind of hub for members to meet, work, listen, discuss, hang out and relax. Again, the reaction was extremely positive. So we’ve taken the plunge and we hope you will, too. In 2016 we will open a space in the Midland Goods Shed over the road from our offices, where we will host discussions, events and screenings, and provide an area for general relaxation for all. The Grade II Listed Midland Goods Shed was built by the Great Northern Railway in 1850, and served as part of a temporary passenger terminal while the current King’s Cross station was being built. It was converted to a goods shed in 1857. It is a spectacular industrial space in Kings Cross, which is itself turning into one of the most vibrant and stimulating areas in London. Our soon-to-be neighbours include the University of the Arts, the stunning new Francis Crick Institute, Google, the British Library and the Aga Khan Foundation cultural centre. Our programming partners will include Central St Martins; Birkbeck, University of London; 5x15; The School of Life; Technology Will Save Us and Lost Lectures. We will also be scheduling further events and debates outside London and abroad. The idea of a newspaper is changing rapidly. Twenty years ago, the Guardian and the Observer were much as they’d always been: printed broadsheets made up of text and pictures. The revolution of the past two decades has seen us tucked in behind the New York Times as the second most read serious global newspaper website in the world; we are now accessed every month by more than 100 million browsers the world over. The Guardian now exists in moving pictures, in sound, data – and in the response, dialogue and contribution of our readers. We have fully embraced the idea of “open” journalism, which knits the best of what we do, with the best of what’s published by others. But (as the music industry has found) the more digital the world becomes, so the appetite for physical meet-ups and live events grows. The Guardian’s journey into this live world, which began modestly with our open weekend in 2012, is about to begin with a soft launch, or (in digital language) beta phase. We would love as many of you as possible to be part of it, and to contribute your own thoughts to help us shape how the scheme develops. The greatest Guardian editor, CP Scott, wrote perhaps the most famous essay on journalism ever written, to mark the paper’s centenary in 1921. By then he had not only edited the paper for 46 years, he had also become its owner. This was his vision of what the Guardian should be: A newspaper has two sides to it. It is a business, like any other, and has to pay in the material sense in order to live. But it is much more than a business; it is an institution; it reflects and it influences the life of a whole community; it may affect even wider destinies. … It plays on the minds and consciences of men. It may educate, stimulate, assist, or it may do the opposite. It has, therefore, a moral as well as a material existence, and its character and influence are in the main determined by the balance of these two forces. Over the past few years the Guardian has grown as a business, last year earning more than £70m in digital revenues as it leads the world in transforming journalism for a new age. But the Guardian is – now, as in 1921 – more than just a business. In the past few years, the Guardian has broken extraordinary stories, including Wikileaks, phone-hacking and the Snowden revelations, which have reverberated around the world. In July this year, we won the Pulitzer Prize for public service journalism. This sort of journalism is becoming much rarer. By becoming a member you will help support the Guardian as it nears its bicentenary. You’ll help develop the changing idea of what journalism itself is. And you’ll have a great time. Interested in Guardian Membership? Click here to find out more. We’d also love to hear your thoughts. |