GMG’s Waldman: Indy is ‘not even on my radar’

Posted by Martin Stabe on 11 September 2006 at 18:20
Tags: Guardian, Independent, Journalism

Jemima Kiss of PaidContent.org last week conducted a wide-ranging interview with the newly-promoted Guardian Media Group group director of digital strategy and development, Simon Waldman.

Waldman addresses the challenges facing GMG regionals in developing their web strategies.  He hints that new investments could affect Guardian Unlimited’s profits (£1m this year) and that the major aim now is sustain the site’s revenue growth (up 50 per cent this year) and its plans for warding off competition from Times Online and Telegraph.co.uk — not to mention Yahoo! and Google.
Judging by comments buried right at the end of the interview, though, Waldman isn’t losing any sleep over the print Guardian’s rival in the left-of-centre newspaper market:

The Independent is a tiny little newspaper that has only really got smaller on the web. If they’d really, really got things right very early on they would have had the opportunity, along with us, of punching well above their weight. I’m sure they find they have lots of people reading their content in the US, but really the Independent on the web is Robert Fisk and that’s it. There’s nothing of any interest to anyone, and he’s behind a subscription wall so it’s not that heavily looked at. I can’t remember a single presentation I’ve done in the last 6-7 years where anything the Independent has done has featured as anything like a threat to us. They are not even on my radar.

The Indy has of course, been quite clear about the web-scepticism that has led it to have a far less ambitious online presence than the other quality newspapers. But Press Gazette understands that Fisk is actually a surprisingly big money-spinner the Indy’s low-key web site. Subscription walls may be an unfashionable strategy, but the Indy seems content to collect the revenue rather than enduring the decade of costly online investment that others have only recently begun to recoup.

Tags: Guardian, Independent, Journalism