DIGITISATION GLOBALISATION Is Guardian now an AMERICAN paper?

Unique charitable ownership (Scott Trust) guarantees a future?

[UPDATE: Points from new article on Guardian linking up with several other media brands to jointly sell online display advertising added below the line]

This has been coming for some time, and reflects the globalising impact of ongoing digitisation. As well as highlighting investment in video content, American offices and ad sales staff to sell US-targeted ads (I already frequently see US ads within the Android Guardian app!), and detailing the wider corporate strategy, the central role of the US audience is made abundantly clear. We have to ask several questions here:

• Can a US/world-facing paper be properly regulated by UK media regulators?
• Lets not forget that the Guardian continues to boycott IPSO (at the time of writing)
• Does a separate press regulator make sense when convergence is essentially making the Guardian into an online TV producer as well as written/photographic news provider? Furthermore...
• Okay, the Guardian at a mere £1bn net worth is not on the scale of Murdoch et al, but nonetheless it does own other media interests - why is there still so little focus on cross-media ownership?
• Is it feasible that under pressure to please its US (and other nationalities) readers the Guardian won't shift its editorial style or approach on the US? Where might this leave British readers/users?
• Given the near-absence of any 'left-wing' within mainstream US politics, could this signal a further threat to pluralism within the UK press market?
• There are more positive issues too - the Guardian has built up a considerable record in recent years of collaborating on major, expensive projects with French, German, American and other papers, and this could enhance the prospects for more of this. Globalisation meant that the UK government's rather clumsy attempts to silence the Snowden reportage (physically smashing a Guardian PC received widespread mockery and contempt) was doomed to failure.

Make particular note of the 2nd paragraph below [article in full]:

The Guardian has invested heavily in its US operation, first in building an editorial team in New York, and more recently in commercial staff to sell advertising aimed at a US audience.
The US audience has grown by 37% over the last year and now accounts for a greater proportion of the Guardian’s more than 120 million unique browsers a month than the UK.
“[The Guardian in] America journalistically did fantastic work over the last few years, it’s really working now economically too,” said Miller. “We’re doing 120 million global uniques now a month, that is definitely equal to the New York Times. What we’ve now got to do is take that reach and build the engagement and loyalty and monetise it.”
The Guardian has also launched in Australia in partnership with internet entrepreneur Graeme Wood, and Miller says further expansion globally is under discussion.
He said: “The primary decision about where we go next internationally sits with the new editor. [It could be] India like every other media company, sub-Saharan Africa, even Canada which now has a very similar political situation to Australia which could be interesting for us.”

Source.

UPDATE: CONVERGENCE - GUARDIAN TEAMS UP WITH OTHER MEDIA BRANDS FOR ONLINE AD PUSH 

 Another indicator that national media regulators, let alone industry-specific regulators, are simply insufficient in this era of globalisation? The Guardian is teaming up with some high-profile global brands to jointly sell online display advertising, reflecting the growing perception that gigantism or scale is vital to have any chance in the cut-throat online ad market in which Facebook and Google swallow up over half of UK and global online display ad revenue:

The Guardian, the Financial Times, CNN International, Reuters and the Economist have teamed up to pool their digital advertising space, to fight back against the drain of ad spend to tech giants such as Microsoft, Google and Facebook.
...
The global online display advertising market, worth an estimated $60bn (£41bn) according to WPP’s Group M, is increasingly becoming dominated by media owners that can offer giant scale to advertisers.
In the UK, Google and Facebook will this year take half of the total digital display advertising market, well over £1bn, according to eMarketer.

The table below of estimated global audience reach of selected media brands puts this into perspective:

Read full article.