The Guardian

For other uses, see The Guardian (disambiguation).

The Guardian
Front page on 28 May 2021
TypeDaily newspaper
FormatBroadsheet (1821–2005)
Berliner (2005–2018)
Compact (since 2018)
Owner(s)Guardian Media Group
Founder(s)John Edward Taylor
PublisherGuardian Media Group
Editor-in-chiefKatharine Viner
Founded5 May 1821; 203 years ago (1821-05-05) (as The Manchester Guardian, renamed The Guardian in 1959)
Political alignmentCentre-left[1][2]
LanguageEnglish
HeadquartersKings Place, London
CountryUnited Kingdom
Circulation105,134 (as of July 2021)[3]
Sister newspapersThe Observer
The Guardian Weekly
ISSN0261-3077 (print)
1756-3224 (web)
OCLC number60623878
Websitetheguardian.com

The Guardian is a British daily newspaper. It was founded in Manchester in 1821 as The Manchester Guardian, and changed its name in 1959,[4] followed by a move to London. Along with its sister papers, The Observer and The Guardian Weekly, The Guardian is part of the Guardian Media Group, owned by the Scott Trust Limited.[5] The trust was created in 1936 to "secure the financial and editorial independence of The Guardian in perpetuity and to safeguard the journalistic freedom and liberal values of The Guardian free from commercial or political interference".[6] The trust was converted into a limited company in 2008, with a constitution written so as to maintain for The Guardian the same protections as were built into the structure of the Scott Trust by its creators. Profits are reinvested in its journalism rather than distributed to owners or shareholders.[6] It is considered a newspaper of record in the UK.[7][8]

The editor-in-chief Katharine Viner succeeded Alan Rusbridger in 2015.[9][10] Since 2018, the paper's main newsprint sections have been published in tabloid format. As of July 2021, its print edition had a daily circulation of 105,134.[3] The newspaper is available online; it lists UK, US (founded in 2011), Australian (founded in 2013), European, and International editions,[11] and its website has sections for World, Europe, US, Americas, Asia, Australia, Middle East, Africa, New Zealand,[12] Inequality, and Global development.

The paper's readership is generally on the mainstream left of British political opinion,[13][14] and the term "Guardian reader" is used to imply a stereotype of a person with modern liberal, left-wing or "politically correct" views.[15] Frequent typographical errors during the age of manual typesetting led Private Eye magazine to dub the paper the "Grauniad" in the 1970s, a nickname still occasionally used by the editors for self-mockery.[16][17]

In an Ipsos MORI research poll in September 2018 designed to interrogate the public's trust of specific titles online, The Guardian scored highest for digital-content news, with 84% of readers agreeing that they "trust what [they] see in it".[18] A December 2018 report of a poll by the Publishers Audience Measurement Company stated that the paper's print edition was found to be the most trusted in the UK in the period from October 2017 to September 2018. It was also reported to be the most-read of the UK's "quality newsbrands", including digital editions; other "quality" brands included The Times, The Daily Telegraph, The Independent, and the i. While The Guardian's print circulation is in decline, the report indicated that news from The Guardian, including that reported online, reaches more than 23 million UK adults each month.[19]

Chief among the notable "scoops" obtained by the paper was the 2011 News International phone-hacking scandal—and in particular the hacking of the murdered English teenager Milly Dowler's phone.[20] The investigation led to the closure of the News of the World, the UK's best-selling Sunday newspaper and one of the highest-circulation newspapers in history.[21] In June 2013, The Guardian broke news of the secret collection by the Obama administration of Verizon telephone records,[22] and subsequently revealed the existence of the surveillance program PRISM after knowledge of it was leaked to the paper by the whistleblower and former National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden.[23] In 2016, The Guardian led an investigation into the Panama Papers, exposing then–Prime Minister David Cameron's links to offshore bank accounts. It has been named "newspaper of the year" four times at the annual British Press Awards: most recently in 2014, for its reporting on government surveillance.[24]

  1. ^  • Tsang, Amie (15 January 2018). "The Guardian, Britain's Left-Wing News Power, Goes Tabloid". The New York Times. Archived from the original on 16 January 2019. Retrieved 24 January 2019.
  2. ^ * Payling, Daisy (20 April 2017). "City limits: sexual politics and the new urban left in 1980s Sheffield". Contemporary British Society. 31 (2): 256–273. doi:10.1080/13619462.2017.1306194. ISSN 1361-9462.
  3. ^ a b Tobitt, Charlotte; Majid, Aisha (25 January 2023). "National press ABCs: December distribution dive for freesheets Standard and City AM". Press Gazette. Archived from the original on 25 April 2023. Retrieved 15 February 2023.
  4. ^ "collection (The University of Manchester Library)". www.library.manchester.ac.uk. Archived from the original on 28 April 2021. Retrieved 12 March 2021.
  5. ^ "'Guardian' newspaper trust keeps journalism at top of its agenda". The Irish Times. Archived from the original on 4 November 2021. Retrieved 12 March 2021.
  6. ^ a b "The Scott Trust: values and history". The Guardian. 26 July 2015. Archived from the original on 9 May 2019. Retrieved 5 May 2019.
  7. ^ Corey Frost; Karen Weingarten; Doug Babington; Don LePan; Maureen Okun (30 May 2017). The Broadview Guide to Writing: A Handbook for Students (6th ed.). Broadview Press. pp. 27–. ISBN 978-1-55481-313-1. Archived from the original on 29 June 2023. Retrieved 9 March 2020.
  8. ^ Greg Barton; Paul Weller; Ihsan Yilmaz (18 December 2014). The Muslim World and Politics in Transition: Creative Contributions of the Gülen Movement. A&C Black. pp. 28–. ISBN 978-1-4411-5873-4. Archived from the original on 29 June 2023. Retrieved 9 March 2020.
  9. ^ "Guardian appoints Katharine Viner as editor-in-chief". The Guardian. 20 March 2015. Archived from the original on 20 July 2017. Retrieved 6 March 2016.
  10. ^ Rusbridger, Alan (29 May 2015). "'Farewell, readers': Alan Rusbridger on leaving The Guardian after two decades at the helm". The Guardian. Archived from the original on 29 May 2015. Retrieved 29 May 2015.
  11. ^ "Latest news, sport and opinion". The Guardian. Archived from the original on 7 December 2019. Retrieved 9 August 2024.
  12. ^ "New Zealand". The Guardian. Archived from the original on 10 September 2024. Retrieved 9 August 2024.
  13. ^ International Socialism, Spring 2003, ISBN 1-898876-97-5.
  14. ^ "Ipsos MORI". Ipsos MORI. Archived from the original on 23 May 2009. Retrieved 6 March 2016.
  15. ^ "Definition of Guardian Reader". Collins English Dictionary. Archived from the original on 20 April 2021. Retrieved 10 January 2018.
  16. ^ Marchi, Anna (2019). "Over there at The Guardian". Self-Reflexive Journalism: A Corpus Study of Journalistic Culture and Community in The Guardian. Taylor & Francis. p. 152. ISBN 978-1-351-71412-9. Archived from the original on 15 July 2023. Retrieved 19 March 2023.
  17. ^ Ribbans, Elisabeth (12 May 2021). "Typo negative: The best and worst of Grauniad mistakes over 200 years". The Guardian. Archived from the original on 4 April 2023. Retrieved 4 April 2023.
  18. ^ "The Guardian most trusted and The Sun least trusted online news brand, Pamco reveals". Press Gazette. 13 November 2017. Archived from the original on 2 December 2020. Retrieved 17 December 2018.
  19. ^ Waterson, Jim (17 December 2018). "Guardian most trusted newspaper in Britain, says industry report". The Guardian. Archived from the original on 17 December 2018. Retrieved 17 December 2018.
  20. ^ "Can The Guardian survive?". The Economist. Intelligent Life. July–August 2012. Archived from the original on 1 July 2015. Retrieved 3 July 2012.
  21. ^ Woolf, Nicky (3 July 2012). "Could the newspaper that broke the hacking scandal be the next to close?". GQ.com. Archived from the original on 6 July 2012.
  22. ^ Hosenball, Mark (6 June 2013). "Obama administration defends massive phone record collection". Reuters. Archived from the original on 24 September 2015. Retrieved 6 March 2016.
  23. ^ Greenwald, Glenn; MacAskill, Ewen; Poitras, Laura (9 June 2013). "Edward Snowden: the whistleblower behind the NSA surveillance revelations". The Guardian. Archived from the original on 26 July 2013. Retrieved 6 March 2016.
  24. ^ Rawlinson, Kevin (2 April 2014). "Guardian wins newspaper and website of the year at British press awards". The Guardian. Archived from the original on 12 June 2014. Retrieved 12 June 2014.