It has been an extraordinary year for Guardian News & Media - alongside award-winning journalism, a new look for the website and record-breaking traffic, we had a change of leadership at the top of the organisation. Alan Rusbridger, our editor-in-chief for 20 years, stepped down and Katharine Viner took his place; and I was delighted to take over from Andrew Miller as CEO of Guardian Media Group in July.
When the Manchester Guardian launched in 1821, it had 1000 readers, was published weekly, and ran to just four pages. Since then we’ve evolved from a much-respected national print newspaper to a leading global news and media brand with a growing worldwide audience accessing our journalism every minute of every day. Today, theguardian.com attracts over 130 million unique browsers a month and is one of the largest English-speaking quality newspaper websites in the world. Since launching our US and Australia digital editions, traffic from outside the UK now represents over two-thirds of our total digital audience.
We are also immensely proud of the awards we have won: Website of the Year, App of the Year, Innovation of the Year and World’s Best Designed Newspaper are just a handful bestowed on the Guardian and Observer by their peers over the last 12 months. There were also wins at the Webby Awards and our colleagues in Australia won Scoop of the Year, with ABC News, at the Walkley Awards for Excellence in Journalism, for their piece on how Australia’s spy agencies targeted the Indonesian president’s mobile phone.
Also amongst our clutch of awards was the Editorial Campaign of the Year at the British Media Awards, which we took for our campaign to end the practice of female genital mutilation (FGM). In March, we launched Keep it in the Ground, a climate change campaign for fossil fuel divestment. The campaign encourages institutions, universities, companies, charities, pension funds and other institutions to take their money out of oil, coal and gas companies for both moral and financial reasons. It continues to gather support - including that of Guardian Media Group itself, whose £800m+ cash and investment fund is now the largest fund to pull out of fossil fuels.
In addition, we have made great efforts to reduce the physical, environmental and cost impacts of our digital infrastructure. We have built a platform which provides stability, scalability and flexibility of access, whilst reducing the need for technical kit and improving energy efficiency. Following the infrastructure redesign project at our Bracknell data centre we have removed more than 50% of the physical servers, reducing energy usage from our data centres by 14%.
As always, technical innovation has been at the heart of our business. In January, after 18 months of development and a ‘soft launch’ in the US and Australia, the new-look website - theguardian.com - was unveiled to readers in the UK and the rest of the world. This has proved to be immensely popular and has helped see traffic rise by almost 35% year-on-year. We have also introduced a prominently-displayed labelling system which helps to distinguish straightforward reporting from sponsored or commercial content. This sits alongside an explanation of the labelling so that readers know who has editorial control.
We have also continued to invest in our greatest asset - our people - ensuring they can access training that helps them to capitalise on their skills and develop their career, while contributing to the success of the organisation.
Over the last year we ran three initiatives designed to attract and nurture talented people from a wide range of backgrounds, many of whom we hope may play an important part in the future of Guardian News & Media: our Graduate Programme, our Apprentice Programme for young people, aged between 17 and 19, and our Digital Journalism trainee scheme.
We also recognise that our organisation needs strong and effective leaders, so one of our priorities in 2014/2015 was the development of leadership capabilities across GNM. The aim was to challenge, inspire and provoke leaders into fresh ways of thinking, which we did through a programme of workshops. The feedback continues to be excellent.
As part of our ambition to make our reporting and coverage as wide-ranging and representative as possible, we ran three citizen reporting projects in South Africa, India and Brazil. They helped to unearth stories from marginalised communities, which were shared with the rest of the world. We also ran diverse voices seminars in the UK and USA and a number of unconscious bias workshops, the aim of which was to make sure that our recruitment processes remain open, fair, and values diversity.
We continue to invest in social justice journalism, teaming up with charitable foundations to highlight issues of particular interest to our readership. Guardian Cities was launched in 2014 to create a fresh and engaging online hub where people could talk about urban life and the future of cities around the world. The women’s rights and gender equality in focus series on the Global development site launched in February 2014 to examine issues affecting women, girls and transgender people around the world, and the critical work being carried out by women’s rights movements. Both initiatives continue to spark interest and debate.
We have also continued to support our local community partners through joint projects, sharing ideas, resources and staff volunteering.
Everything we do is underpinned by the Scott Trust values of honesty, cleanness (today interpreted as integrity), courage, fairness and a sense of duty to the reader and the community. Our vision is to be a leader on sustainability in the media sector. I believe our efforts this year mean we are firmly on track.
