James Harding Mocked on BBC for Struggling Observer’s Weekend Launch – Guido Fawkes

LISTEN: James Harding Mocked on BBC for Struggling Observer’s Weekend Launch

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The Observer has sent out its first email to subscribers this morning promising “a range of expanded newsletters from the Observer” before listing two: a daily news one and a food review one. James Harding’s new vanity project getting off to a slow start…

A portion of the new paper’s website, launched on Friday, is dedicated to advertising “podcasts from the team behind The Observer” at Tortoise Media. Which has lost half of its readers this year so far…

On BBC Radio 4’s Broadcasting House programme yesterday the usually emollient host Paddy O’Connell ripped into the new operation in with Harding present in the studio:

 “The cover price of The Observer – £4.20! Many people according to the BBC news are turning off the news, describing it as depressing relentless and boring. The Observer hasn’t published circulation figures for years because they’ve been plummeting. Is anyone buying these things – is it just us banging on on Sunday?”

Harding’s response was to waffle that “when The Observer was launched in 1791 actually one of the things that is special about it was it committed itself it had some principles independence and truth but it committed itself to the dissemination of every species of knowledge.” Paddy furiously interjected – “It’s no good taking be back, I’ve never been taken back so far in one Sunday morning. People are not buying papers James”…

Harding says his pet paper will be “liberal, “progressive” and “internationalist,” it is “trying to do the opposite of what Hitler would have done” and its unofficial motto is that “dignity is as important as good.” When the cash burn runway expires, will the Observer go down with the Tortoise ship?