guardian.co.uk

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This article is about the online news resource. For the newspaper, see The Guardian.

guardian.co.uk

Frontpage, 19 February 2008.
URL	guardian.co.uk
Commercial?	Yes
Type of site	Online Newspaper
Available language(s)	English
Owner	Guardian Media Group
Created by	The Guardian
Launched	1999
Current status	Active

guardian.co.uk, formerly known as Guardian Unlimited, is a British website owned by the Guardian Media Group. It contains nearly all of the content of the newspapers The Guardian and The Observer, as well as a substantial body of web-only work produced by its own staff, including a rolling news service. It is one of the world's leading online newspapers, with 15.9 million unique users in December 2007.^[1]^[2] On 7 July 2005, following the London bombings, 1.3 million unique users visited the site and a total of 7.8 million pages were viewed, a record for guardian.co.uk.^[3]

The site is made up of a core news site, plus a network of niche websites covering subjects including media, sport, education and the public sector. guardian.co.uk is notable for its engagement with readers, including long-running talkboards and, more recently, a network of weblogs. Its seven blogs were joined on March 14, 2006 by a new comment site, Comment is free, named after the famous quote by The Guardian editor, C. P. Scott. Both the talkboards and blogs accept comments without pre-moderation, although all now require registration for comments.

Most of the site can be viewed for free and without registration, though some services such as Guardian Talk require users to register.

1 Ownership
2 History
3 Guardian Talk
4 Guardian America
5 See also
6 References
7 External links

[edit] Ownership

guardian.co.uk is part of the Guardian Media Group of newspapers, radio stations, and new media including The Guardian daily newspaper, The Observer Sunday newspaper, and the Manchester Evening News. All the aforementioned are owned by The Scott Trust, a charitable foundation which aims to ensure the newspaper's editorial independence in perpetuity, maintaining its financial health to ensure it does not become vulnerable to takeover by for-profit media groups, and the serious compromise of editorial independence that this often brings.

[edit] History

guardian.co.uk was launched in 1999, born of the Guardian New Media Lab. Its popularity soared after the September 11th attack in the United States, largely thanks to the diverse range of viewpoints published in the Guardian newspaper. The website won the Best Newspaper category in the 2005, 2006 and 2007 Webby Awards, beating the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Wall Street Journal and Variety. [1].

In 2006 guardian.co.uk reported its first profitable year, with income coming mostly from recruitment and display advertising.^[4]

In May 2007, guardian.co.uk begun an 18-month programme of redesigning and adding features to the entire website, starting with the front page.^[5]

[edit] Guardian Talk

The network's forum, Guardian Talk, is the one of the largest news and politics discussion sites in Europe.^{[citation needed]} Because of this, and The Guardian’s reputation for left-wing political bias, it receives a lot of attention from right-wing American posters.^{[citation needed]} As a result, its discussion topics (divided into folders such as 'International', 'Media', 'UK News', and off-topic folder 'The Haven') are a diverse and eclectic mix of British, European and American politics, media-related topics, and eccentric British banter + Wols .^{[citation needed]} There is a strong focus on controversial international issues, and in particular there is a lot of erudite, well-informed and civilised debate about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. A converse point of view is that the Israel-Palestine debates are a "ment magnet" filled to the brim with bile and hatred on both sides.^{[citation needed]}

[edit] Guardian America

Main article: Guardian America

Guardian America is an American version of the British news website guardian.co.uk.

A lot of the content on Guardian America is taken from guardian.co.uk and The Guardian, although some content is produced specifically for Guardian America.