Viewpoint: James Bromley, managing director, MailOnline
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We have a dedicated editorial team in the US, based in New York and Los Angeles, creating content for that market. But we find that people now define themselves not by geography but by their interests. If you are interested in a particular sport, event or celebrity, you don’t go to your local news product, you go to the one that you feel best represents what you are interested in.
We don’t go into markets. We are pulled into markets by our audience. A third of our audience was already in the US before we entered that market. We didn’t decide that we wanted an audience in the US – the audience adopted us. All we have done is add to the content that we had already created. Our business is growing, and it is growing fastest outside the UK.
This country has a fantastic heritage in journalism, and our approach is different from many of our competitors in the US market. Ultimately, we produce the content that audience wants to read, rather than it being anything about where we hail from.
Our competitors include [gossip sites] People magazine and TMZ.com, and also the news from the Boston Globe and other high-end products.
We often see debates happening between US and UK users in the comments, especially on stories where there are differences in each country. Whether that is on gun crime or fashion, you find people speaking across the geographies.
We don’t really target an audience – the audience finds us. It might be counter to some people’s opinions, but the reality is if you walk into any office across the country there will be people looking at MailOnline.
