The Independent is to ramp up its presence in the US as it becomes the latest news publisher to look across the Atlantic to drive revenue and readership.
After the publisher imposed brutal staff cuts following the closure of the print editions in March, it boosted Independent.co.uk’s editorial operation from a core team of about 50 to about 90, creating about 25 new roles in the UK.
It is now following in the footsteps of Mail Online, the Guardian and to a lesser extent the Mirror in seeking US growth.
“We want to increase our commitment and see how the business develops in the US,” said Christian Broughton, editor of Independent.co.uk. “The aim is to devolve a lot of the operation from control in London. Let the US focus on the US.”
The US is the world’s biggest advertising market and Broughton says web user growth has surged almost 70% year on year.
More than 60% of the Independent’s monthly web traffic is from non-UK readers, some 38 million, with about half of that from the US, according to Audit Bureau of Circulations figures.
Independent.co.uk currently has a US staff of almost 10 based in New York, Washington and Los Angeles.
It is looking to hire a US news editor, a position Broughton considers “crucial” in helping to devolve centralised power from London.
The moves do not require a big budgetand are aimed at building the digital operation sustainably.
“We have never grown the operation to the huge scale that some of our rivals so costs are controlled,” Broughton said. “We’ve been quite careful. But now we want to be more bullish, focused and confident. The US has high growth, why wouldn’t you want to hire more journalists to support that?”
Broughton also said the Independent’s global head of audience is to be moved to New York.
“It is the biggest audience opportunity so it is a bit of a moment making that move,” he says.
The Independent has been paving the way for an advertising-led push in the US, having already scrapped a paywall targeting non-UK readers – which started in 2011 with US and Canadian users – that charged £4.50 a month for access.
Independent Digital News and Media, the parent company of the digital operation, made pre-tax profit of £587,000 in the year to the end of September 2014, the most recently publicly available figures.
However, the financial filing shows that the business owes loans totalling £660,000, and bearing an interest rate of 10%, to shareholders Evgeny Lebedev and Justin Byam Shaw.
