The parent company of The Guardian said on Tuesday that it was in formal talks to sell The Observer, Britain’s oldest surviving Sunday newspaper, to the start-up Tortoise Media.
A deal would signal that Guardian Media Group is willing to shed a pillar of the British media landscape — The Observer has run in print since 1791 — as it increasingly focuses on news of worldwide interest, delivered digitally.
In an internal memo to employees, leaders of Guardian Media said that Tortoise had approached them with a “compelling” offer to buy The Observer. The approximately 70 employees of the Sunday publication were told about the talks on Tuesday.
A final deal could be reached within about three months, according to a person briefed on the talks, who was not authorized to discuss the details publicly. The negotiations are ongoing and may not end in an agreement.
For years, The Guardian, which was founded in Manchester in 1821, has sought to establish itself as a global media company. It established a digital U.S. edition in 2007, and has sought to expand aggressively across the Atlantic.
Executives at The Guardian said that a deal to sell The Observer, which the company bought in 1993, would allow their company to focus even more on international expansion.
“It provides a chance to build The Observer’s future position with a significant investment and allow The Guardian to focus on its growth strategy to be more global, more digital and more reader-funded,” Anna Bateson, Guardian Media’s chief executive, said in a statement.
Tortoise Media’s founders include James Harding, a former director of BBC News and former editor of The Times of London; and Matthew Barzun, a former CNET executive and onetime United States ambassador to Britain. Tortoise describes its approach as “slow news,” with articles, newsletters, podcasts and in-person events it calls ThinkIns, where subscribers, editors and guests discuss coverage of the issues of the day.
It is backed by a range of investors, including David Thomson, the chairman of Thomson Reuters, and the investment firms Lansdowne Partners and Local Globe, though no investor has a controlling stake.
The start-up said on Tuesday that it was committed to investing up to 25 million British pounds, or $33 million, in The Observer over the next five years. It would build out the newspaper’s digital operations while also continuing to publish its print edition on Sundays.
“We think The Observer is one of the greatest names in news,” Mr. Harding said in a statement. “We believe passionately in its future — both in print and digital.”
The talks come amid broader questions about the financial health of the news industry, amid a wrenching transition from print to digital advertising and subscriptions.
Guardian Media disclosed on Tuesday that revenue for the year to March fell 2.5 percent from the previous year, to £257.8 million. Its operating loss expanded more than 80 percent over that period, to £43.5 million, in what the company described in its accounts as “one of the most challenging advertising markets in recent memory.”
Tortoise Media did not explain publicly where the funds for the purchase of The Observer would come from. For 2022, the most recent period publicly available, the company reported an operating loss of nearly £4.6 million on revenue of £6.2 million.
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