Observer sale to loss-making Tortoise is a betrayal, says ex-editor

The former editor of The Observer has criticised plans for it to be sold after its suitor warned it was “heading down a path to closure” if a deal cannot be struck.
Paul Webster, who retired on Saturday after 28 years at the Sunday newspaper, said the proposed sale to the digital start-up Tortoise Media would “severely damage the reputation” of its owner the Scott Trust.
“This planned sale, if ratified by the trust, would be a discreditable conclusion to a damaging episode in the company’s history,” Webster said.
He said the sale was based on two false premises — that the poor state of The Observer’s finances threatened the future of its sister paper The Guardian and that Tortoise had the resources to sustain it.
“The Scott Trust boasts a proud record of defending liberal journalism, as represented by both The Guardian and The Observer,” Webster said. “It appears as if it’s about to betray that record by essentially gifting The Observer to a small, historically loss-making start-up.”
Tortoise, a podcast and “slow news” site, was founded by James Harding, a former editor of The Times and BBC News director, in 2018. It has pledged to invest £25 million in The Observer over the next five years, having made losses of £4.6 million in 2022.
The Guardian said: “We are very grateful to Paul for his six-year tenure as editor of The Observer. Our priority is to ensure that The Observer and its talented staff can continue to produce exceptional liberal journalism in a challenging media environment.”
Webster’s comments were made as the renowned restaurant critic Jay Rayner announced his move to the Financial Times after 25 years at The Observer.
One insider predicted further high-profile exits. “The problem for the big names is going from 2 million views per article to a hoped-for 100k subscribers,” they said.
On Wednesday, Guardian Media Group staff who are members of the National Union of Journalists voted in favour of holding two strikes next month over the deal.
A spokesman for Tortoise said that the union was wrong to “defend things staying as they are”.
“The path of managed, accelerating decline is not the answer,” he added. “We hope the NUJ will listen to the growing number of voices on The Observer looking to see it given a new lease of life, investment in journalism and a plan for the future.”
Harding warned this week that the newspaper was at risk of being closed down if a deal was not struck. “Everyone can see it is heading down a path to irrelevance and, probably sooner rather than later, closure,” he said.