London hosts global media expansion as US companies beef up presence

http://www.theguardian.com/media/media-blog/2015/jul/12/london-global-media-expansion-new-york-times

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Judging by the summer filler columns of the national press, glimpsed tantalisingly through paywalls and Facebook-boosted posts, London ought by now to be a deserted wasteland of empty houses and dying businesses. The Detroit of the UK, waiting to be reclaimed by the Thames Estuary, as all its citizens flee for better lives in far-off places like Brighton, pausing only to write 600 words on the vexed and important subject of moving house. However, for every “why I am leaving London” article (and there are many), the news publishing industry itself is doing anything but.

In one of the most closely watched developments in web publishing, the New York Times is expanding its European presence in general and its London presence in particular, after leasing new office space in Bloomsbury, to accommodate up to 100 staff, and adding significant new numbers on both editorial and commercial sides of the business.

When it is done, the London office of the New York Times will offer an opportunity for the staid US institution to push harder at its international plan for traffic growth. The intention is to use London as an editing hub, timeshifting the responsibility for keeping its web and mobile news presence up to date. But its ambitions in reporting are to try more new things, out of the long shadow of the famously stuffy New York newsroom, and add capabilities in multimedia and reporting on the social web – the “what colour is that dress?” story is now fair game for the Grey Lady.

European editor Dick Stevenson, who has been based in Paris, will be spending more time on Eurostar as he will also oversee the larger London operation as well as remaining in charge of the International New York Times print edition. Rising star Sewell Chan, currently deputy opinion editor, is heading for London to run the expanded news operation.

Although the reporting team remains relatively small, an existing business team of four and three national correspondents will be joined by more news editors, producers, multimedia journalists and opinion staff. The mission is very much to draw a bead on the new international digital competitive set: the Guardian, BuzzFeed, the BBC and Huffington Post and perhaps to a lesser extent Politico, which recently opened a European arm.

London is playing an interesting role as a battleground for growth which is gripping both the native web businesses. The Huffington Post’s British site, now an established part of the London scene, was in fact only set up four years ago. BuzzFeed UK, an even more recent entrant into the market, has added dozens of staff and former Guardian deputy editor Janine Gibson takes over as editor-in-chief in September, as a marker of serious intent. The NYT seems to be attempting a reverse BuzzFeed, in that it is bolting a more viral news operation on to its credentials for serious journalism, while BuzzFeed has fine-tuned the business of growth and is now reverse-engineering animal videos and dog news letters (yes, it has one of those) into a much more serious journalistic mission.

It is rather sobering that at a time when local and regional journalism in the UK is suffering from a deficit of investment, London is overflowing with new international news operations, but it is an inevitable consequence of a publishing economy which only works at scale.

International expansion is needed to feed the insatiable beast of web growth, and to remain competitive in the likely event that at some point there is a further shakeout of the news business. The New York Times no doubt has observed the success of the Guardian, the Economist, the BBC and the Financial Times in establishing a presence in America, and has been passed by Huffington Post and BuzzFeed in establishing a network of digitally-focused operations in international cities. Whether such a specific cultural brand at the NYT can translate its journalism to being of Europe rather than about Europe remains to be seen.

From an economic standpoint it would be more rational to take the advice of columnists and leave London well alone; the very expensive housing, higher salaries and ridiculous office rents don’t exactly mesh with a crisis in digital advertising revenues and an uncertain future for digital subscriptions. But as we have known for some time, the media business is not run on strictly sensible economic principles. London has sat on the sidelines of publishing development for a few years, and on the outer ring road of web publishing for about a decade. The next few years will see a reversal of fortune - the capital might yet emerge as a new centre of gravity despite what you might have read.