Guardian Media Group announces it is in negotiations with Tortoise Media over world’s oldest Sunday newspaper

The Observer, founded in 1791, was bought by Guardian Media Group in 1993. Photograph: Alicia Canter/The Guardian

The Guardian’s parent company has announced that it is in formal negotiations with Tortoise Media over the potential sale of the Observer, the world’s oldest Sunday newspaper.

Guardian Media Group (GMG) told staff it was in exclusive negotiations with Tortoise after being approached with an offer that was significant enough to look at in more detail.

The company said it had chosen to be transparent about the negotiations despite the fact that much of the detail of the talks remained commercially sensitive.

Observer staff were told the offer from Tortoise represented a significant investment in the title as a standalone product that would help safeguard its future.

The Guardian Media Group chief executive, Anna Bateson, said: “This is an exciting strategic opportunity for the Guardian Media Group. 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.”

The Guardian editor-in-chief, Katharine Viner, said: “This has the potential to be a very positive thing for both the Observer and the Guardian. My number one priority is a future in which both titles continue to thrive and deliver high-quality journalism to our readers. It is extremely important to me that the Observer, with its excellent journalistic reputation, loyal readership and heritage as the world’s oldest Sunday newspaper, is in good hands.”

Founded in 1791, the Observer was bought by Guardian Media Group in 1993. Since then it has coexisted with the Guardian, which will remain a seven-day-a-week digital operation regardless of the outcome of the negotiations.

Tortoise was launched in 2019 by James Harding, the former editor of the London Times and former director of news at the BBC; and the former US ambassador to the UK Matthew Barzun.

Tortoise said in a statement it planned to continue to publish the Observer on a Sunday and build the digital Observer, combining with Tortoise’s podcasts, newsletters and live events. It said it planned to invest more than £25m over the next five years in the title.

Harding, the editor of Tortoise, said: “We think the Observer is one of the greatest names in news. We believe passionately in its future – both in print and digital. We will honour the values and standards set under the Guardian’s great stewardship and uphold the Observer’s uncompromising commitment to editorial independence, evidence-based reporting and journalistic integrity.

“Like its many, many loyal readers, we admire the strength and heart of the Observer’s reporting, we prize its original, unbiddable thinking and we love it for its passions: food, music, film and art. George Orwell described the Observer as ‘the enemy of nonsense’; we’re excited to show readers, old and new, that it still is.”

GMG made the announcement as it published statutory accounts showing that Guardian News and Media, its main subsidiary, had grown global digital reader revenue by 8% to £88.2m in the 2023-24 financial year.

The company has in recent years made the growth of digital reader revenue a priority, focusing on expanding globally and encouraging financial support from readers while keeping its journalism free to all on its website.

The accounts showed that overall revenue was down 2.5% on the previous year to £257.8m, which GMG said reflected a global market slowdown in advertising revenues and sustained structural pressures on its print business.

It recorded a net operating cash outflow of £36.5m, which the company said reflected planned investment in Guardian US and a new Guardian Europe edition to drive global reach and impact, as well as planned technology and product investment, including the launch of the new Guardian Feast cooking app.

Liz Wynn, the Guardian’s chief supporter officer, said in July that the app had been downloaded more than 100,000 times since its soft launch in April.