The Observer is the world's oldest Sunday newspaper, with 233 years in print as of 2025. Based in Britain, it was acquired in 2025 by Tortoise Media, a six-year-old digital-journalism startup.
The Observer was rescued in 1993 by Scott Trust Limited, which has an endowment of £1.3bn and a mission to protect liberal journalism, when a rival paper, the Independent on Sunday, planned to acquire and possibly close it. The Scott Trust kept the Observer alive but neglected it: the paper lost its foreign, business and sports departments, relying on writers from its sister title, the Guardian, to fill those pages. In the past 15 years its editorial staff fell from about 170 to around 75.
The Observer's print circulation collapsed from around 500,000 in 1993 to barely 100,000 by 2025. It had no website of its own; its content was published on the Guardian's site, where readers could sometimes find the two titles' reviews and opinions in direct conflict.
Tortoise Media approached Scott Trust Limited with an offer to buy the title and spend £25m on a digital makeover. The deal prompted a revolt: staff at the Observer and the Guardian went on strike, and six former Observer editors wrote to the Scott Trust to object. About half the paper's staff took voluntary severance rather than join the new team.
Under Tortoise Media's ownership the Observer will gain its own website, which will go behind a paywall after a few months—in contrast to the Guardian, which relies on advertising and donations. The new owner plans to focus less on breaking news and more on longer, "sense-making" pieces, with culture competing with political news for top billing. Tortoise has promised to keep the Observer in print for at least five years.
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