NDM Story #9- The New York Times introduces its new 'International Edition'

The New York Times introduces its new 'International Edition'

Summary:
The International New York Times has changed their name to The New York Times International Edition in an attempt to retain and, if possible, gain a wider audience on their digital paper. They've also redesigned their website to achieve the same goal. They are trying to increase their advertisement and subscription revenues by increasing their readership. They've also had to make a large number of their French employees redundant due to moving their headquarters to London. This new version of the paper will be more geared towards those interested business and analysis with an increase in articles surrounding these topics. The firm is also merging the new international site with their main site promoting one sole brand.

• The company has spent an estimated $50m (£42m) over three years in an attempt to widen their digital footprint globally, in a multitude of languages
• They're constantly expanding their employee numbers from reporters to editors in order to increase international story figures.

My personal opinion:
I think that these changes are quite minor and will probably be ineffective since the firm still expects people to subscribe to the online service. I understand the motives of the company and why they think this will work but I don't think their goal of attaining a normal profit or even an increased profit would be fulfilled because audiences have access already from a wider range of free articles. Unless the company attempts to have exclusive content which cannot be observed on any other website, I find it difficult to see any success in this change. I think revenue would definitely be increased due to advertisements but regarding subscriptions, most likely not. In fact, they'd probably be at a loss, again, unless they were targeting a niche audience (in which case their goal of a wider or sustained audience would not be fulfilled). Their overall reasons for changing the design and title are too many, in my opinion and I think that if they are trying to retain a digital "newsprint" audience, they need to focus on one objective at a time rather than plunging straight into the deep-end, headfirst without assessing the likely outcomes, fully.