News Corporation is to print and publish its UK flagship newspaper The Times in New York. Once considered as the voice of the British establishment, the 221-year-old newspaper has been published six days a week without a break since 1785.
The US edition will be distributed in the New York tri-state area as from June 6. It aims to collar advertising dollars by attracting wealthy readers, particularly in the finance and media industries, or "the penthouse demographic," as Times editor Robert Thomson refers to it.
The Times, which to the disgust of its traditionalist UK readers, moved from broadsheet to tabloid format last year, will retain its new look for the New York edition - a decision that enables it to be printed on the presses of the New York Post, also a NewsCorp publication.
But why try to crack the fiercely competitive Big Apple media market?
"It's a double play," Thomson explains. "We felt we could take a profit from the circulation and extra advertising. It also allows us to build up our profile in a market where we already have three million [unique monthly] visitors to our website."
The starting print run is 10,000 daily, selling by subscription and on newsstands at $1 each, although the price will likely increase once NewsCorp can gauge what the market is prepared to pay.
However, few media-savvy Britons believe there is cause for the Wall Street Journal to be shivering in its shoes.
Data sourced from Wall Street Journal Online; additional content by WARC staff
