Things I’m Looking @ #001; Michael Wolff on the future of the Guardian

Is the Guardian ‘on a suicide mission’? Michael Wolff writes in GQ…

For almost 15 years, I’ve had a seat at the sidelines of Rusbridger’s ambitions, as “friend of the paper”, as American confidant without portfolio, as, at times, favourite American and favourite media writer, as a journalist covering the Guardian (and being leaked to by it), as a contributor to it, and, ultimately, in the kind of falling out that often happens with Guardian friends, a dumbfounded observer of it.

Wolff is one of the best media writers about. This is a long one, but well worth the read.

Curiously, Murdoch represents for Rusbridger a kind of evil incarnate for the agendas his papers have pursued. But, in fact, both men have run their papers in similar ways. Murdoch has used the proceeds from his myriad other businesses to fund deep losses, particularly at the Times and at the New York Post. Rusbridger has used the proceeds from a trust set up by the Guardian’s owners in the Thirties, the Scott family, to finance the dire deficits at the Guardian. Arguably, Rusbridger and Murdoch have similar sorts of motivations: both men have used money-losing papers in pursuit of political beliefs – and in so doing, as each would argue about the other, placed politics above journalism.

‘Things I’m Looking @’ will be a sort-of-daily strand of updates. The ‘@’ makes it feel all futuristic and interwebby, doesn’t it? Yep.