The Guardian US team had more reason than most to feel disconsolate after Donald Trump‘s surprisingly emphatic US election victory.
The title has, perhaps more than any other mainstream US newsbrand, declared its opposition to Trump and what he stands for.
Asked how she set about rallying the team after the election on 5 November, Guardian US editor Betsy Reed said: “I’m really not the kind of person who’s going to charge in there and give a pep talk at a moment when everyone is really exhausted and depressed.
“So instead we had a newsroom meeting that was more sombre and allowed people to express how they’re feeling about this moment…
“Then we have to make sure people know why our mission is still really vital and important and unique and why our jobs are so important in this moment.”
Reed helped raise around $2m in reader revenue for The Guardian with just a few minutes’ work after she sent out a five-paragraph email to its millions of newsletter subscribers on 26 October noting the brand’s leader column opposing Trump.
She contrasted The Guardian’s position (that Trump’s “history of dishonesty, hypocrisy and greed makes him wholly unfit for the office”) with that of The Washington Post and Los Angeles Times, which both stayed neutral. Noting the editorial independence of The Guardian, Reed said in her email that both those rival titles “have billionaire owners who could face retaliation in a Trump presidency”.
Reed is keen to emphasise that years of work from the whole Guardian US team has gone into building various email newsletters which enable it to reach millions of readers with funding pleas.
The Guardian US has 11 email newsletters in total, with Fighting Back (the opinion desk’s response to a Trump victory) the most recent launch.
The Guardian US is now hoping to raise $4m in total of additional reader revenue by the end of the year.
But who is the UK-owned Guardian to tell US voters what to do, and does its opposition to their democratically-elected leader not irk some readers?
“We haven’t had that feedback,” Reed responds. “And the reason for that is we are now more global and more American. I’m American, my commercial partner is American and our newsroom is at least half American journalists. I don’t think we are perceived as a foreign entity at this point because we’ve put down real roots in America.”
Guardian America launched in 2007 with an eight-strong team based in Washington and an estimated monthly audience in the US of just over 4 million, according to Nielsen.
Today The Guardian US has 160 staff, including 110 in editorial, mainly based in New York but with bureaux in Washington and California. (Around 50 staff were hired in 2013 to get the site ready for election year.)
Reed, who joined The Guardian in 2022 after seven years leading non-profit campaigning US news website The Intercept, says it reaches 47 million unique users per month in the US.
Overall, she says, page views to US-produced content are a 50/50 split between US readers and the rest of the world.
The Guardian US is funded by a combination of reader revenue (donations and subscriptions), advertising and philanthropic donations, which are made via the separate non-profit entity the Guardian.org Foundation. This last category funds specific areas of reporting and saw donations of $3m last year, down from $5m in 2022.
Guardian revenue for North America is available in published accounts dating back to 2019 and shows steady growth until the year to March 2024, when it fell by just over £1m.
North America accounted for £45.3m of Guardian turnover in the year to March 2024 (compared with £167.1m in the UK).
The Guardian made an overall loss of £36.5m in its last financial year, but Reed said the US operation is self-funding.
Asked what makes The Guardian US stand out in a crowded news market, Reed pointed to its more global view, its openness (outside any paywall) and "our liberal values and grounding in progressive principles".
The victory for Trump has been seen by some as a failure for big news organisations like The Guardian, CNN and The New York Times which opposed him.
Is there a danger that journalists effectively played Trump's game in the last election by reporting and amplifying the various outrageous comments he made over the course of the campaign?
"I do think that the outrage cycle is a serious challenge in media, and I don't think it's a simple one, because I think when you have a presidential candidate trafficking in outright fabrications, racist fabrications, for example the charge that Haitian migrants are stealing and eating their neighbours' pets in Springfield, Illinois, I feel like it's incumbent on the media to cover that.
"I think the strategy has to be cover that news story, but also simultaneously pull people away from that and into more substantive stories about what's really going on in the country, how Trump and his policies are disconnected from the real interests and needs of American voters."
[Read more: Polls, trust and video shorts: Lessons for news publishers from US election]
She adds later: "There's been a big loss of this environment where we're all collectively operating from the same set of facts. So, I mean, I think that's a tremendous challenge. There are really terrible repercussions of that for democracy…
"But it also, I think, reinforces the need for fact-based journalism and journalism that is itself accountable to readers."
The Guardian left X (formerly Twitter) earlier this month because, it said, the platform had become toxic under owner Elon Musk.
Press Gazette understands this led to the second biggest day ever for Guardian reader revenue contributions, (beaten only by Reed's election email funding plea).
Reed said Instagram, Youtube, Apple News and email are now the biggest platforms for the title other than the website itself.
Big hits for The Guardian US over the last year have included its new investigation team's revelations about allegations of sexual misconduct against the magician David Copperfield (shortlisted for a British Journalism Award) and an investigation into the cost of US healthcare.
Election exclusives for The Guardian US have included three big stories about the mistreatment of animals by senior right-wing political figures.
In April The Guardian revealed that Republican contender for Vice President Kristi Noem once shot and killed a healthy pet dog (as well as the family goat).
In September, the title revealed that Kevin Roberts (architect of the Project 2025 policy manifesto) boasted to colleagues that he once killed a neighbour's dog with a shovel because it was barking too loudly.
Outside politics, The Guardian US is investing in its coverage of soccer (football in the UK), health and wellness.
Asked what The Guardian US plans are for covering America in the era of Trump Two, Reed says: "We definitely want to double down on areas of success like newsletters, and outside of Trump and politics we want to make sure that we're offering readers a diversity of content and things that give them joy and hope."
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