Neil Thurman from City University in London has published a paper, The globalization of journalism online, pointing out that we cater to a global audience. His abstract says: "At the British news websites studied, Americans made up an average of 36 per cent of the total audience with up to another 39 per cent of readers from countries other than the USA."
Unfortunately you have to subscribe to Journalism Online to get it, and that costs $25 for a day. Update: my colleague Bobbie Johnson points out that you can download a free PDF pre-print from http://tinyurl.com/23d7cy
However, PaidContent.org has more details. One bit of news is the following comment:
Thank Drudge. Amongst a clutch of "unlikely dependencies", The Drugde Report is the biggest single referrer of U.S. traffic to U.K. news sites at 25 percent, with Fark coming second at three percent. In fact, Drudge refers more than three times as many people to U.K. news sites as Google does, the study claims, and also more than Google News and Yahoo News.
PaidContent had already noted some British moves into the US market.
This isn't altruism. Serving US readers costs money and ultimately, as traffic grows, UK sites will need to get American advertisers to help pay for it.
