New York Times to invest $50m on global digital expansion

The New York Times is to invest more than $50m in an aggressive international digital expansion to take its “without fear or favour” brand of journalism outside the US.

The publisher said that with mounting pressure on international media around the world there was an opportunity for the NYT to become an “indispensable leader in global news and opinion”.

“At a time when journalism and independent media around the world are under acute pressure, from forces both financial and political, the New York Times has never had a better opportunity to expand its mission and its reach,” the company said in an internal announcement from Times publisher Arthur Sulzberger Jr, chief executive Mark Thompson and executive editor Dean Baquet.

“Just as the Times became a truly national news organisation in a previous generation, we believe we now have the opportunity to become an indispensable leader in global news and opinion.”

The NYT receives about 375m visits from readers globally each month.

However, just 26.6% of web traffic is from outside the publisher’s home market of the US, where it is the sixth biggest media site, according to figures from SimilarWeb.

The UK is set to receive a significant chunk of the NYT’s expansion investment, including hiring more staff, as it is estimated to be the publisher’s third biggest market accounting for 2.5% of all traffic.

The media organisation is to launch a new division, NYT Global, which will be responsible for spearheading a three-year $50m digital growth strategy.

The new “international digital growth team” will be led by international editor Joe Kahn and international president Stephen Dunbar Johnson.

“A team of our top editors and business executives has identified a large, untapped, international audience for Times-style ‘without fear or favour’ journalism’,” the memo said. “While we are already seeing significant growth in consumer revenue from international markets, we believe we can achieve much more by better engaging our non-US readers and reporting for them as well as about them.”

The company said that its aim was to double total digital revenues to about $800m by 2020 and that it was setting even more ambitious targets for international growth.

“Every part of the company, the newsroom, product and technology, advertising and consumer marketing, and data and analytics, among others, needs to think creatively about attracting and retaining a bigger non-American audience and growing revenue outside the US,” the memo says. “We intend to cultivate a much larger and deeper readership in core markets abroad and set up teams to pursue cross-market, pan-regional topics we believe the Times can dominate journalistically, appealing to readers and advertisers alike.”

Last year, the NYT broke through the 1 million digital subscriber mark. The publisher launched its digital paywall in 2011.