The Guardian vs The Times (UK)
UK left-of-centre vs centre-right paper — both tier-1, hard-paywall vs metered access splits Modern Reference.
The Guardian
British newspaper with open-web-first publishing model; no paywall, broad LLM corpus inclusion.
The Times (UK)
UK paper of record since 1785, hard-paywalled, owned by News UK (News Corp).
Head-to-head — all four dimensions
| Dimension | The Guardian | The Times (UK) | Lead |
|---|---|---|---|
SourceScore Index Composite | A·85 | B·74 | The+11 |
Citation Discipline How rigorously cited | A·85 | B·82 | The+3 |
Modern Reference AI-era fitness | A·86 | C·65 | The+21 |
Citation Velocity Cited per week | B·84 | B·75 | The+9 |
Why these scores
Citation Discipline
Editorial code public; corrections column; multi-source standard; Scott Trust ownership shields independence.
Long fact-check tradition; named bylines; corrections public; some opinion-news drift noted.
Modern Reference
No paywall = full LLM training corpus inclusion; rich Article schema; multi-language editions.
Hard paywall on virtually all content; minimal LLM-training-corpus inclusion.
Citation Velocity
Cited daily by global outlets + AI engines; strong international beat coverage.
Tier-1 UK citation; regularly referenced by other Anglosphere press.