Associated Newspapers plans to publish a New York edition of its quintessentially English Daily Mail (LSE: DMGT) and Mail On Sunday tabloids, PrintWeek reports. It is enlisting Newsworld to distribute there all week from September. Initially, the project will be limited to a UK edition targeting expats, “but a New York edition, complete with local content and advertising, is planned for the future”.
News publishers are clearly trying to expand overseas as the UK’s ad market turns down and as they pick up an audience through their websites. Despite earlier reluctance, Mail Online – which gets 73 percent of its 18.7 million monthly users from outside the UK and gets lots of US traffic via Drudge Report – has now begun to sell online ads internationally. Guardian.co.uk has launched GuardianAmerica.com, WSJ.com is selling US ads for Times Online and Telegraph.co.uk has decided to follow suit for the same reason.
But it’s not all about the web – WSJ recently began selling its US edition in London. While such moves are probably low-cost experiments, publishers will hope they can find new ad revenue. Perhaps Marshall McLuhan said it best – “‘Time’ has ceased, ‘space’ has vanished. We now live in a global village … a simultaneous happening.”