Online Guardian Expands Into Australia

• January 16th, 2013
• Posted by EUEditor

The Guardian media organisation in the United Kingdom has announced it will be “extending its global reach” with the launch of a new digital edition in Australia.

It says:

“Katharine Viner, deputy editor of The Guardian, will be the launch editor of the Australian operation, (expected to start with a small bureau).

“Paul Chadwick, the outgoing director of editorial policies at the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, will become a non-executive director of the Guardian’s Australian entity. Graeme Wood, the Australian entrepreneur founder of travel website ‘wotif’ and chair of the news and features website The Global Mail, will be a founding investor.

“The launch, to take place in 2013, is a natural next step for the Guardian, which, with a global digital audience of 39-million unique users per month, is the third largest newspaper website in the world. 1.3-million of the Guardian’s unique users are based in Australia, making it the Guardian’s fourth largest market.”

“We already have a large number of Australian readers, who tell us they want more of our on-the-ground reporting, lively commentary and groundbreaking open journalism”, said Katharine Viner.

Alan Rusbridger, Editor in Chief of Guardian News and Media, said the move was a “natural next step for Guardian journalism”, and would provide a  base for reporting on, and engaging with people across Asia.

“It will be of real benefit to our global audience, to see how dominant questions of our time – economics, geopolitics, climate change, immigration, media, democracy and more – are being grasped in such an important part of the world”, he said.

The Guardian says it will be seeking to build both editorial and further commercial partnerships in Australia, without surrendering any say in editorial matters.

Paul Chadwick, a journalist, lawyer and statutory office holder with the ABC said the Guardian, as a leading innovator, with also a “long and distinguished tradition of editorial independence and valuable investigations” would make a welcome contribution to media diversity.

Media observers expect a tussle between the new entrant and Fairfax Media in particular, as the latter serves a similar part of the market, and is developing its product as a match of “tabloidised” major newspapers (The Sydney Morning Herald and the Melbourne Age) and expanding services online.

The company is proposing to charge for access on line; The Guardian, which does not charge users of its public service, shows some Australian-based advertising already and will be looking for more.

Its access figures to date indicate good support for its well-established and respected brand; on the strength of reliable reporting and finessed writing, and on the strength of being a taste of home, to legions of British migrants, expatriates and back-packers enjoying life at the other end of the Earth.

The Guardian newspaper, founded in Manchester, England in the 1820s, stood for Non-conformist moral values in the face of the social ravages of the industrial revolution. (See pictutre, engraving, first offices of the Manchester Guardian).

It continued into the present century as a promoter of liberal thought, and as one of the five, or six recognised “quality” daily mastheads. It is a leading innovator in the survival battle of newspapers in this century, to diversify their product, keeping up with the demands of new media technologies.