The Guardian’s bullish push into the US market accelerates as editor Alan Rusbridger announces a New York-based initiative that will be ‘significantly larger than anything we’ve done in the states before’. ”Newspapers have been fighting to find their role in the online world since The Daily Telegraph first launched online in 1994, but The Guardian is gaining enough international traction to realise its dream of becoming the world’s ‘liberal voice’. Audiences have been strong enough to bring in good ad revenues, and premium CPMs. Stand by for their announcement of the US editor…
Guardian editor Alan Rusbridger has confirmed the newspaper will appoint a New York based US editor, part of its expansion in America. The timing seems right for this, as the left-leaning paper has recently gained steam through its WikiLeaks coverage, but it remains to be seen if American audiences will finally embrace The Guardian brand.
Rusbridger told a Yahoo! News blogger they would shortly be announcing a new editor, as part of a digital venture which “will be significantly larger than anything we’ve done in the States before.”
“We’re not in a position to say more than that at the moment,” Rusbridger said, adding: “the United States is going to be a more important part of what we do in the future.”
GNM have also appointed a new chief revenue officer in New York, who has previously worked at the Wall Street Journal and Financial Times.
GNM are holding a technology conference called Activate New York in April, their first American-based conference. It promises to “bring together many of the world’s brightest and most influential figures to debate how technology is driving positive social change on a global scale.”
Rusbridger also hinted at forming a possible collaboration with OpenLeaks, a document-leaking platform launched by a WikiLeaks defector, Daniel Domscheit-Berg.
In a Guardian blog, Roy Greenslade also predicted the paper may develop an in-house document-leaking system, echoing a similar project planned by the New York Times.
“We haven’t yet definitively worked out how effectively we could build the technology,” said Rusbridger. “It’s an ongoing dilemma that we’re thinking about.”
