The Observer strike raises questions we should all be worried about

In a Nevada courtroom, a family drama finally spilled out into public. Scott was quite clear that his paper should have a “higher and more exacting function” than making profits – and said explicitly that he wouldn’t have stayed as editor if the opposite had been the case. Angry letters to the Scott Trust have been penned by virtually every Guardian and Observer journalist you’ve heard of, and many you haven’t. Ostensibly, the walkout – the first in the company since 1971 – is in part a protest over the Scott Trust’s decision to jettison The Observer, essentially gifting it to an enterprising but loss-making startup called Tortoise. Former Daily Mail editor Paul Dacre used to label it part of the “subsidariat” – by which he meant news organisations that couldn’t connect with enough consumers to be commercially viable.