Q&A with Evelyn Webster, CEO U.S. & Australia, The Guardian
This week, The Idea caught up with Evelyn to discuss The Guardian’s record contribution numbers and the future of reader revenue not based on paywalling content. Subscribe to our newsletter on the business of media for more interviews and weekly news and analysis.
Can you tell me about your path to The Guardian and what your current role is there?
I was running a business in the publishing business in the U.K. We located to The States over 10 years ago with Time Warner found myself at Time Inc. I worked there for about six years. I was part of Time Inc. team that managed the spinoff out of Time Warner. Shortly after that, I traveled quite a lot, hoping I could travel for 12 months and not actually have to land a job, but then The Guardian opportunity came up, which is how I landed here over three years ago.
I wear two hats at The Guardian: I’m the CEO of The Guardian North America and Australia. The other hat I wear is a global one — I run our global philanthropic and client partnership businesses.
What are the different ways that readers can support The Guardian?
The Guardian is committed to providing our readers with free unfettered access to quality fact-based journalism. That means we really don’t want to put up a paywall because we believe that everybody around the world should be able to have access to quality journalism, whether they can afford it or not. It also means we have to be pretty creative in terms of how we generate income, which comes largely from advertising and reader revenue, and also philanthropy.
We have different products from a reader perspective, which has been the one area that has exploded over the last three years. You can support us by taking out a digital subscription — where a digital subscription would be a premium version of our app, a new digital product that we launched called the Edition, and a digital version of the British newspaper. The paper in its physical form is not available outside the U.K., but that doesn’t mean that people around the world are not interested in reading it.
You can also contribute to the Guardian. We distinguish between people who contribute on a one-time basis — I loved this piece I’ve just read, I’m going to give you $50 dollars, or whatever amount people give us — and those that sign up to contribute to us on a recurrent basis.
We still have members as well. We started a membership program three or four years ago, and we still have many, many members of the Guardian, and they do become part of a community.
The U.S. might be a third of the global reach in terms of the number of readers we reach across the world, but we are about half of the one-time contributions, so we’re over-indexing in America. In the U.K., they have way more subscriptions, and in Australia, it’s an interesting combination of the two. It’s a reflection of the cultural differences that we have in each territory, the role that The Guardian plays in each of those markets, and where The Guardian is in the life cycle in each of those markets.
Which of these contribution pathways are you most excited about?
We haven’t really focused on memberships in the States. When we launched the membership program, we thought it was going to be our path to unlocking reader revenue, but that very quickly pivoted to this contributions model, which has been phenomenally successful over the last three years, probably because we were the first doing it.
I would love to revisit memberships at some point. I talk a lot to the editorial team about how we can create communities of interest. One of the things that we tested recently was fundraisers around particular topics. We did a big fundraiser around gun violence and motherhood in America. We started them thinking they were simply means of generating more reader revenue. Actually, what we found is that it was an amazing opportunity to engage our readers in a two-way dialogue and to create a community of interest around specific topics.
What are the similarities and differences between working across the U.S. and Australia?
The Guardian is a global news platform — lots of people say that, but it’s actually true. We have over 300 million unique browsers accessing The Guardian every month across the globe. We have news teams in all of those major markets who are creating content not just for the market that they’re in, but also for the rest of the globe. That’s why people come to The Guardian: because we give them this really international perspective. So when you think about the journalism, I don’t really distinguish hugely between the territories because we’re a global news organization.
If you think about our advertisers and our readers, of course they are different. So, what does change is the language we might use for our readers in each of those territories, but what we do around the brand and the journalism, it’s global in nature.
It’s interesting that the language around reader revenue differs between territories.
We’re very cognizant of the fact that our product is at a different life stage in each of those markets. Even though The Guardian is almost 200 years old, we haven’t been in America for two hundred years. We’ve been in America for about a decade, and we launched in Australia about six years ago. If you’re in Britain, The Guardian is an institution, and how we talk to our readers might emphasize this 200-year-old institution that everybody knows and trusts. (We are held by a trust, and our ownership structure gives us a level of independence that is pretty unique anywhere in the world.) In America, we do not have the same history and legacy, so we talk to them about the subjects which they are particularly interested in rather than talking about The Guardian as an institution. For example, we might use language around facts, data, science, truth, trust rather than institution or ownership structure, because the language resonates differently in different territories.
Looking at the industry as a whole, is there an area of potential that you’re personally most excited about that you think is currently under-tapped?
We’re already seeing some early indications of the ways artificial intelligence could influence the news industry, and I’m excited to see what opportunities it presents for us and our peers as it becomes more sophisticated. In Australia, we published an automated article last year for the first time, but of course that’s just one of many avenues our sector can explore. I’m particularly interested in how it can help with data processing for marketing and advertising activities, how it can create better-curated experiences for news consumers, and how it can mitigate the spread of fake news and misinformation online. I see lots of potential and I don’t doubt we’ll see some really interesting applications of it in the near future.
Rapid Fire Questions
What is the first thing you read in the morning?
The daily Morning Brew email.
What is the last book you read?
The Dutch House by Ann Patchett, which I loved!
What is the last podcast you listened to?
Slow Burn Season 3: Biggie and Tupac.
What would you be doing if you weren’t in your current role?
I’d want to be traveling the world somehow, so a job that allows me to do that!
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