YouSaid · the spoken record

Anna Bateson

lines on the record: 27
first: 2026-06-06
most recent: 2026-06-06
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

“The fact that it matters more and that people genuinely understand that and value it and that our model speaks to that, but as does the success at the New York Times or many other kind of admirable organizations, I think that speaks to there being reasons for hope.”
2026-06-06 · Masters of Scale · Rapid Response: The Guardian’s secret weapon against media’s collapse, with CEO Anna Bateson · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I think there are perspectives where you could see it as pretty bleak. However, At the same time, quality news has never been needed more. It's never been valued more. You could argue that it's being engaged with and consumed at extraordinary levels and trusted brands who can take a long-term perspective and have the resilience that comes from a particular ownership structure, from the power of a 206 year old brand, from genuine relationships with audiences around the world. I mean, that's quite a potent combination. And if, you know, out of that, we can sort of give people some hope and some help in how they navigate kind of a complicated world of which there are so many unknowns, then that's the reason to not be bleak. And that's a reason to actually feel quite optimistic. So it might slightly depend the day that you ask me that question, but I think the...”
2026-06-06 · Masters of Scale · Rapid Response: The Guardian’s secret weapon against media’s collapse, with CEO Anna Bateson · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“We are held to account around financial performance and financial sustainability, editorial impact is only really secure and sustainable if it's attached to a business model that is also kind of secure and sustainable. That, I think, is a message that is understood. And I think crucially it's amazing how once you begin to see that something's working and that that is a sign of genuine relationships with audiences who believe in what you're doing, who see the impact of it, who value it, the momentum that you get from that is very powerful. I think in the end, you know, relevance and impact is what we're all here to do. And the fact that people want to support us and the fact that people want to partner with us, you know, brands and advertisers want to partner with us isn't. Indicative of us achieving what it is that we're aiming for.”
2026-06-06 · Masters of Scale · Rapid Response: The Guardian’s secret weapon against media’s collapse, with CEO Anna Bateson · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I have some sympathy for that perspective, a commercial ambition and drive as long as it's compatible with and supportive of editorial independence is a good thing to have. I think you're right. You don't want your organization to be complacent and you don't want people not to care really about kind of the commercial kind of underpinnings of where they work.”
2026-06-06 · Masters of Scale · Rapid Response: The Guardian’s secret weapon against media’s collapse, with CEO Anna Bateson · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I suspect that it's less about the amount of money and it's more about what that kind of financial performance symbolizes about the sustainability and the health of the organization. You can live with losses, but if you feel that they are the sign of something that's more problematic, that I think then becomes the thing that's troubling.”
2026-06-06 · Masters of Scale · Rapid Response: The Guardian’s secret weapon against media’s collapse, with CEO Anna Bateson · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Think that's probably right. There were years when you thought you were going to solve the problems by technology. And actually the fact that that wasn't going to solve the problems was masked by the enormous sort of growth in audience and engagement that was Trump and then, of course, was COVID. You think you have the answers because you come in and you look at these businesses and you've been very successful elsewhere and they're more complicated than that, you know, and they're complicated both because of legacy and because of the changing market.”
2026-06-06 · Masters of Scale · Rapid Response: The Guardian’s secret weapon against media’s collapse, with CEO Anna Bateson · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I think you are correct in your observation. There was an expectation that the kind of returns that you could get that probably is unsustainable now. But also, I think if you're building a news organization now, you would build it in a very different way with a very different cost structure and that might allow you then to be a growth business and to deliver the kind of returns proportionately that perhaps they used to. So it's both sides, isn't it? It's can you restructure yourself to adapt to a new reality? And also can you culturally You know, evolve sufficiently to be operating in a way that will allow you to grow. That's the thing that the New York Times has done so spectacularly well, which has allowed them to not only invest in journalism, but actually build out a very successful set of subscription-based businesses.”
2026-06-06 · Masters of Scale · Rapid Response: The Guardian’s secret weapon against media’s collapse, with CEO Anna Bateson · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yes, I mean, well, it's easy to plan, right? Just you've got to be able to adapt when the plan, you know, begins to veer off course. There's a discipline and a rigor around planning, which is actually really useful. But I think it's being able to be adaptable enough that when the plan begins to change, you can accommodate that.”
2026-06-06 · Masters of Scale · Rapid Response: The Guardian’s secret weapon against media’s collapse, with CEO Anna Bateson · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“As we're going to need to. That's what I try and focus on. And I think that. As a leadership team, it's incumbent on us to sort of hang on to that humility and to continue to keep learning and be curious about what's happening. And that's what will, I think, equip us for what's to come.”
2026-06-06 · Masters of Scale · Rapid Response: The Guardian’s secret weapon against media’s collapse, with CEO Anna Bateson · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“One of the most helpful things I was told by a rather informed board member was that even the most sophisticated engineers working in the most extraordinarily frontier level kind of AI don't really know what's going to happen in the next sort of 12 weeks, let alone in the next 12 months. And I found that really helpful, you know, focus on curiosity about kind of what's happening and capabilities within the organization and flexibility because you could spend weeks doing plans for the next five years, which will become irrelevant and, you know, sort of redundant before you know it. And actually not trying to do longer sort of kind of forecasting or planning, but actually thinking, how do we set ourselves up, equip ourselves, skill up, really, to be an organization that's ready to kind of adapt and adjust.”
2026-06-06 · Masters of Scale · Rapid Response: The Guardian’s secret weapon against media’s collapse, with CEO Anna Bateson · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yes, I think there is a sort of a sense of some responsibility. The secondary purpose of the Scott Trust is broader. If the primary purpose is ensuring the sustainability of the Guardian in perpetuity as secondary purposes around ensuring that liberal journalism can flourish.”
2026-06-06 · Masters of Scale · Rapid Response: The Guardian’s secret weapon against media’s collapse, with CEO Anna Bateson · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“At this time, when you are facing very well-funded and very sophisticated kind of technology organizations, we need to rise to that moment. We need to work together as an industry. So I think the first piece of it was how can we collaborate? And it's important that the founding members were both broadcasters and former newspapers. And they're across the sort of the political spectrum. We then have every intention that this will then broaden out and become a global coalition, defining standards and protocols that are really going to be necessary to the creation of a potential licensing market around quality journalism and content. We ought to be defining those standards and protocols rather than having them defined for us by technology businesses.”
2026-06-06 · Masters of Scale · Rapid Response: The Guardian’s secret weapon against media’s collapse, with CEO Anna Bateson · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“There is a piece around brand affinity and around genuinely differentiated quality original journalism, the meaningful relationship that I think our audiences, therefore, have with us, which allows us to potentially be more resilient and have more direct traffic. I think it is also about how the search experience is developing. There is a different experience around sort of hard news, serious news than there might be about softer lifestyle kind of media and coverage.”
2026-06-06 · Masters of Scale · Rapid Response: The Guardian’s secret weapon against media’s collapse, with CEO Anna Bateson · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“We have not seen declines an audience that have been reported for other media organizations. In fact, we've seen incredibly strong and resilient audiences, particularly in the US. We've actually just overtaken the Washington Post. So January and February, for kind of readership within the US, which is quite a sort of significant moment from our perspective. I don't think we're naive that there's clearly deep disruption and kind of change coming in the way that people are going to discover and then choose to consume the news that they want to kind of read or watch or, you know, listen to. However, we aren't seeing that level of change yet reflected in our audience numbers.”
2026-06-06 · Masters of Scale · Rapid Response: The Guardian’s secret weapon against media’s collapse, with CEO Anna Bateson · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So first of all, the lens that we are viewed through is interestingly different in the UK, where we have a long legacy and longstanding understanding about our editorial position. It's a much less entrenched view when you get into mainland Europe, into the US, into the rest of the world. And actually what I think our audiences appreciate there is very much this sense of a global perspective. It's just that we can bring a broader context and a voice that is from many other places and not deeply kind of grounded and rooted in one place.”
2026-06-06 · Masters of Scale · Rapid Response: The Guardian’s secret weapon against media’s collapse, with CEO Anna Bateson · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“We talked about it, but in the end it was something that we wanted to do. And I think it was the right thing to do. I think it was the right thing to do editorially and it was the right thing to do for our supporters. It was a very emotional moment and that translated into a lot of people, I think, coming to the Guardian and choosing to support our journalism in a way that they hadn't before.”
2026-06-06 · Masters of Scale · Rapid Response: The Guardian’s secret weapon against media’s collapse, with CEO Anna Bateson · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“No, it's very collaborative. I mean, I think it's one of the things that is so fascinating about the Reader Revenue model. And we've obviously got to evolve our language about that because they're much broader than readers now. But is the level of collaboration that takes place between editorial and the commercial teams? And in a way, it's the logical evolution of an organization away from a very siloed sort of church and state where you had editorial and you had advertising and they didn't really need to ever sort of become into kind of contact with one another. And I think that the essence of the audience funding model is that there is a greater collaboration ultimately Betsy would decide what she felt was the right kind of message, but it would be done in deep concert with the reader revenue side.”
2026-06-06 · Masters of Scale · Rapid Response: The Guardian’s secret weapon against media’s collapse, with CEO Anna Bateson · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I'm not sure it's for me to judge whether a benefactor model is good or bad. I think it has a risks. And I think that for a long time, perhaps media organizations saw benefactors as saviors that hope and belief that you could have benign kind of benefactors. I just think that there are moments when the personal interests of a benefactor may or may not come into conflict of a genuinely independent editorial organization.”
2026-06-06 · Masters of Scale · Rapid Response: The Guardian’s secret weapon against media’s collapse, with CEO Anna Bateson · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Whenever we do audience research, that sense of the emotional desire to support journalism is common. So people believe that the mission is important. They believe in the significance of the independent ownership model. There's a real sense of I'm supporting something that I value, but other people value too. Also, ultimately, it allows those people who can't afford to pay also to be able to consume it and have access to it, which is really important in this modern world.”
2026-06-06 · Masters of Scale · Rapid Response: The Guardian’s secret weapon against media’s collapse, with CEO Anna Bateson · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Puzzles are wonderful things. They're all about driving habit. That's something that you want to do every day. It's really how do you best unlock your strengths that you have and use that to reach audiences and unlock the most value from those audiences around the world?”
2026-06-06 · Masters of Scale · Rapid Response: The Guardian’s secret weapon against media’s collapse, with CEO Anna Bateson · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yes, well, I have nothing but admiration for the New York Times and indeed for Meredith, and I have nothing but admiration actually for Wikipedia. And you're completely correct that I think we probably drew inspiration from both of those kind of august institutions. If you think about it, newspapers were the original bundle. a bundle of different verticals put together in a beautifully designed, elegantly delivered product. And we've always been good at cooking. We've always been good at cultural content. We've long been great at lifestyle. We've always had games, you know. It's a very important piece of a newspaper to have crosswords. So in a sense, as you think about taking the areas that are defining of us and transitioning those into a digital world, it's not really surprising that we end up, you know, kind of consolidating in the same sorts of areas.”
2026-06-06 · Masters of Scale · Rapid Response: The Guardian’s secret weapon against media’s collapse, with CEO Anna Bateson · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So, first of all, we also have advertising. Advertising is very important to us. We do have some paved products, so it's not completely true that we're just completely free. If you subscribe to our app, we ask you to pay after you've used a certain amount. We have a cooking product, which we ask you to pay for, but we are committed to the principle of being open and freely available on the web.”
2026-06-06 · Masters of Scale · Rapid Response: The Guardian’s secret weapon against media’s collapse, with CEO Anna Bateson · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Completely yes, I mean the editor-in-chief and I report to the GMG board. She ultimately reports to the Scott Trust, which is a structural way of guaranteeing editorial independence and integrity. And the relationship is one that's described as a happy partnership, a happy marriage. And we're meant to be arm in arm, the commercial and editorial strategies and ambition are symbiotically intertwined. When you see the challenges of the Washington Post, I think that never has it sort of seen more clear how actually the structural guarantee around that editorial independence, it's a very significant thing. It's a very important thing.”
2026-06-06 · Masters of Scale · Rapid Response: The Guardian’s secret weapon against media’s collapse, with CEO Anna Bateson · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yes, it is unusual. I think it's an enormous strategic advantage for us, a really key point of differentiation. The sole purpose of the Scott Trust is to ensure that the Guardian thrives in perpetuity. So that's an extraordinarily privileged ownership structure to be the beneficiary of. We have quite a lot of governance as a result. So that's something that we have to navigate. But no, I think that it's an advantage for us. It's definitely something that our audiences understand. It's a big motivator for them when they choose to support the journalism. They know that money is going to fund journalism and it isn't going to enrich a proprietor or shareholders.”
2026-06-06 · Masters of Scale · Rapid Response: The Guardian’s secret weapon against media’s collapse, with CEO Anna Bateson · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Uh no, I don't think it makes us more aggressive about embracing AI. I think it means that we are genuinely a deeply digital organization. We look at AI through a particularly informed lens, quite a curious lens. We have aimed to try and be really cautious and thoughtful, actually, in how we endeavor to understand AI, in how we think about its application within our organization across all aspects of the organization, the changes it's going to make to our audience's behaviors. It's incumbent on all of us to truly understand it as a technology. And I think you can only understand it by applying it and by using it.”
2026-06-06 · Masters of Scale · Rapid Response: The Guardian’s secret weapon against media’s collapse, with CEO Anna Bateson · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“No, there's never a single secret. I think there are a number of things that really contributed. The first is that we were very early to embrace digital and to see the opportunities of digital. And that decision, which is, I think, 30 years ago or something, took us from being the ninth biggest national newspaper in the UK, so inherently parochial to a degree, to really build audiences all around the world. The uniqueness of our ownership model, the independence that's endowed by the Scott Trust also allows us to think long term. And that did allow us the opportunity to grow. It didn't feel as though we were in a good position 10 years ago when you began to realize that crucially digital advertising wasn't going to sort of substitute for print advertising. But actually that was the basis then of us being able to build the reader revenue model.”
2026-06-06 · Masters of Scale · Rapid Response: The Guardian’s secret weapon against media’s collapse, with CEO Anna Bateson · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Of the most helpful things I was told by a rather informed board member was that even the most sophisticated engineers working in the most extraordinarily frontier level kind of AI don't really know what's going to happen in the next sort of 12 weeks, let alone in the next 12 months. You could spend weeks doing plans for the next five years, which will become irrelevant and sort of redundant, and actually not trying to do longer sort of kind of forecasting or planning, but actually thinking, how do we set ourselves up to be ready to kind of adapt and adjust? That's what I try and focus on.”
2026-06-06 · Masters of Scale · Rapid Response: The Guardian’s secret weapon against media’s collapse, with CEO Anna Bateson · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT