Publications such as The Times and The Guardian are ramping up their efforts to lure more readers by expanding coverage of US news and culture, and it seems that the best medium for these messages is the Internet.

According to Jeff Jarvis, media blogger and journalism professor at the City University of New York, the British papers “there’s a huge curiosity about America and how they can develop that audience.”  With print readership on the decline, most of the publications are turning to their websites to reach and retain American readers.  The Guardian hopes to target its approximate 2.5 million US readers with www.GuardianAmerica.com, and The Times, in addition to creating a separate global homepage, began to market its website with an American edition of its printed paper. 

Anne Spackman, editor of Times Online, and Emily Bell, editor of Guardian Unlimited, both point to a decline in international coverage by American media as a reason for the shift towards UK news sites.  Bell also said that The Guardian’s liberal slant appeals to US readers by providing “a level of debate and examination you might not get in the mainstream US media.”

The BBC, whose North American websites already boast over 9 million unique users per month, is particularly focused on breaking into the American market with multimedia features and more aggressive advertising.  Its websites will soon feature iPlayer, a viewer for archival BBC television footage.  The news organization also hopes to sell advertising on its global Web sites, which are currently ad-free.  If all goes according to plan, digital media will make up 10 percent of BBC’s revenue by 2012.

Americans may be gravitating towards UK news sites, but advertising still remains within national boundaries and constrained by media format.  According to Mike Peralta, managing director for Western Europe at Advertising.com, “a lot of these publishers have a decent amount of foreign traffic, but they don’t know how to monetize it.”  Jarvis suggests that the papers’ best hope for selling advertisements in the US is to band together in one single sales operation.

Source: The New York Times through Media Bistro