The evidence from this Open Weekend suggests that Guardian enthusiasts are eager to support the journalism they love
Your paper needs you, but do you need your paper? I've just spent the weekend watching Guardian readers grill the top management and leading hacks at the Open Weekend. Festival sessions like these are hardly a scientific survey, but the results suggest there is a special relationship. The readers feel this newspaper is a vital part of their lives. They offer their loyalty on the condition that it delivers the "journalism with values" they trust. The question is, will it survive the great leap into the digital future?
In the 24 hours before the Open Weekend the Guardian published 400 pieces of text, audio, graphic, video and photography, with only a third consuming it in the UK. Millions more read it online than on paper. With print sales declining annually at a projected 12%, those digital trends will dominate. Turning off the printing presses might save costs, but it will also cause problems for loyal Guardianistas. As one older reader put it: "If we didn't have the newspaper, we'd have to talk to each other at breakfast!"
It is clear that the core readership sees the Guardian brand as more than just journalism, it is part of their personal and social lives. When asked to describe the Guardian, they use words like "honest", "open", "intelligent", "diverse", "liberal", "smug". It is the same language we might use about a human relationship, a friendship or even family.
But the Guardian is changing, so is it growing apart from these highly attached consumers as it seeks new traffic online? Is it losing its special identity as the journalism becomes more networked? This is the point at which the digital diversity of all the Guardian's online innovation might start to run up against different reader expectations.
One woman emphasised how she really liked the angry and fractious debates in the readers' comments on Comment is free. The last thing she wanted was Guardian journalists interfering to tone down a good online scrap. On the other hand, another reader said he had been in Syria recently and did not trust the slew of videos and articles being pumped out by bloggers and activists: "I want the Guardian to tell me directly what is really going on, I don't trust Twitter."
Gary Younge, the US-based Guardian columnist, does not see that as contradictory. There is no doubt that he has a passionate sense of the Guardian's mission and he believes in the vital role of a reporter going out and seeing for themselves. But he accepts that he might now do that reporting in a variety of formats, such as video, and with a new awareness of the reader: "I am now conscious that I am writing for an American audience as well as a British one. But what they want is the Guardian brand. I think that the reader can now be part of the storytelling process, and the interactivity keeps us honest."
Of course the Guardian is not doing all this for fun. It has bet the farm, or rather the newsroom, on the long-term viability of an open business model where it attracts enough clicks to pay for the content. It is now selling readers apps to access the content. And as well as the usual Guardian offers of winter-hardy fuchsias, it made a million quid last year from putting on masterclasses about everything from street photography to Star Wars.
To make this really effective, the Guardian needs to turn its consumers from readers into a resource. First, it needs to tap into their knowledge as a crowd to be sourced for information, insight and material. But it also wants to tap into their pockets, and to do that it needs more data about them. It wants to know much more about you, where you live and what you do. It wants you to tick the box that allows them to "use this information to provide goods and services". The evidence from the Open Weekend was that the core readers are quite happy to do just that. They were actually asking for more ways to give money to the paper they love.
So perhaps eventually the "Guardian reader" is going to turn into a "Guardian member". Call it what you like – a community, club or network. Not only will they sign up for the paper or the app, they could contribute directly to content creation. One speculative idea floated by the editor, Alan Rusbridger, was that volunteers might come in to the newsroom to help moderate reader comments on the Comment is free section of the website. Someone in that session immediately offered his services.
I would argue that it has to go further and faster. It seems to me that audiences are changing their media lives quicker than journalists. Not everyone is on Twitter or owns an iPhone, and only a few will have the time or inclination to help create the content on a regular basis. But the Guardian is now read by more people (online) than ever before in its history. They demand the usual mix of challenging, quality journalism but on a wider range of platforms and in ever more diverse formats. Even the readers who still treasure the printed newspaper are keen to have it on their Kindle as well. Among Guardian enthusiasts the digital divide seems to be disappearing. They want classic Guardian but also a whole lot extra.