Guardian parent company in talks to sell Observer
The Independent|September 18, 2024
The Guardian Media Group (GMG) is in talks to sell The Observer newspaper to Tortoise Media, a news business launched in 2019 by a former BBC executive. The media giant is in exclusive discussions to sell the world's oldest Sunday newspaper.
ANNA WISE
Guardian parent company in talks to sell Observer

Tortoise approached the Guardian newspaper group with an offer to buy the publication and invest more than £25m over the next five years in the editorial and commercial side of the business. It also plans on building the digital Observer and combining it with Tortoise’s podcasts, newsletters and live events, while continuing to publish the Sunday newspaper. The companies did not disclose the price or the terms of the potential deal.

The Observer was founded in 1791 and bought by GMG in 1993, where it is run as a separate paper to The Guardian. Tortoise was co-founded by James Harding, a former director of news and current affairs at BBC News and editor of The Times. The company, which specialises in what it describes as “slow news”, has produced investigations including the popular podcast series Sweet Bobby, which is set to be made into a Netflix documentary.

This story is from the September 18, 2024 edition of The Independent.

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This story is from the September 18, 2024 edition of The Independent.

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