I work for the Guardian and it’s the first I’ve heard. I suspect the OP’s been slightly confused by the scheduled expiry of the ipad app free trial period. The app was launched in October with an initial 3 months free trial, ending in January when it will be charged at £9.99 a month.
I’ve been in several of the guardians “digital first” strategy briefings and it’s been made pretty clear that they don’t believe a paywall on the website will work. Its major revenue source is still the printed copy, which is predicted to remain the most profitable form of media for at least the next 5 years before digital revenue catches up.
However, as already pointed out, were loosing large sums of money every year, and whilst we’re a not-for-profit organisation, we do have to be sustainable. The Guardian is making some very big cuts right across the group, including half the staff at our plant alone. The printed product will be quite different from January/February going forward, with the website taking more of a leading role. The paper will try and engage and capture the readership in the morning with more in depth stories about recent events, whilst the faster digital side, such as the website will deliver more breaking news which is what its good at, and where the paper cant compete.
The guardian is also investing heavily in America. We are already established there as one of the top sources for international news and receive massive unique user hits on the .co.uk website from that region. Unfortunately the American sales market won’t take us seriously until we have a .com web address. This has led to the recent acquisition of http://www.guardiannews.com and a permanently based team there to try and tap the market. Hopefully some of these strategies will bring in the advertising revenue that is needed for the survival of the guardian and the Scott trust values of journalism.