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Fighting for journalism and profitable news media
Viner on Guardian reader revenue boom | Court rejects £14k costs claim against journalist
Plus European publishers seek £552m+ from Google claiming ad market abuse
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Good morning from the team at Press Gazette on Monday, 8 June.
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🥳 Guardian editor-in-chief Katharine Viner kept a pretty low profile over her first ten years as editor.
But she is now popping up more frequently in public to trumpet the success of the title’s innovative financial model.
This was largely fuelled, she said, by growth in the US where The Guardian has found a willing audience for journalism which is avowedly critical of Donald Trump and his MAGA movement.
The Guardian has worked hard to make it easy for readers to pay it for things (whilst also increasing the friction for those who don’t pay).
The central message remains the same: Guardian readers pay to keep the journalism free for all. But donations are also becoming increasingly like subscriptions as paying readers benefit from fewer annoying pop-ups asking for support, less advertising and access to additional benefits like apps and the weekly print edition.
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⚖️ Good news from the courts, where a costs claim against reporter Barnie Choudhury over a Freedom of Information Act request he made to the Judicial Appointments Commission (JAC) has been thrown out.
Choudhury feared he would face financial ruin over the £14,270 legal costs claim against him that came about after he threatened the JAC with contempt of court.
He was prompted to act because the body was failing to release information about its appointment processes requested under his successful FOI request.
If Choudhury had been compelled to pay these costs the case would have had a chilling effect on any journalist forced to go to court to obtain information which the public has a right to see.
Thankfully, the legal principle that FOI in the UK really is free remains intact after this ruling.
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💶 Following last week’s CMA ruling against Google over abuse of its search monopoly, it’s easy to forget that the tech giant remains under attack on multiple fronts over its adtech dominance.
Last year the European Commission, which has so far taken a tougher approach on tech regulation than the UK, fined Google £2.6bn for abusing its dominance in the world of online advertising.
The programmatic advertising market was, the EC found, largely an illusion with Google dominating the sell-side of publisher adtech, as well as the buy-side technology used by marketers and the ad exchanges that sit in the middle.