One of the things I miss the most about the UK is The Guardian newspaper. It's the one newspaper I could be sure to read front-to-back every day and feel like it was time well spent. As anyone who's read other posts here will know, I also admire the BBC enormously, for its independence, breadth, and audacity. Much of the world's respect for the BBC comes from its status as a publically-funded body, which avoids corporate agenda overtones. (Yes, one could argue that because it is funded via a pseudo-tax, it's a government entity but that's an argument for another day.) And today I found out that The Guardian, and its sister newspaper, The Observer, are both owned and operated by a trust, not a corporation as I'd previously believed: The Scott Trust owns The Guardian Media Group, which operates The Guardian and Observer newspapers.
This actually shocked me enormously, as I'd never heard of this before. The story of the Trust's formation is itself inspirational, with the former owner handing the entire organization to an independent body and denying himself over 1 million UK pounds in assets and inheritance.
Now I understand why The Guardian is so cutting-edge in technology and editorial! They really don't have corporate masters to whom to answer, and can venture where others would fear to tread. A fantastic example of this is The Observer Blog, which launched a few days ago. Few established media outlets are embracing blogs, and The Observer has done so and gone one step further: they even provide RSS feeds and podcasts of their content!
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