News for the Rich, White, and Blue: How Place and Power Distort American Journalism by Nikki Usher

Author:Nikki Usher [Usher, Nikki]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Language Arts & Disciplines, journalism, Social Science, Media Studies, Discrimination, political science, American Government, National
ISBN: 9780231545600
Google: hcQIEAAAQBAJ
Publisher: Columbia University Press
Published: 2021-07-06T00:26:53.399551+00:00

STRATEGY, DIFFERENTIATION, AND MARKETING TO THE WORLD

The Times has pegged its hopes for international expansion on the instinct that the world has become more connected, readers have become more interested in global affairs, and, especially with Trump in office, international readers have become more interested in the United States. But a number of questions emerge. While the Times has invested $50 million in building up its international coverage, will this move deliver an international subscriber base? Should the Times be thinking about country-specific marketing segmentation? Are there linguistic considerations? What kinds of investments need to be made in terms of editorial content? How should subscriptions be marketed to international audiences? The Times has had a number of fits and starts in its general approach. A closer look at some of its pivots reveals the difficulty of reconciling a “type” of Times subscriber, the global citizen, with the realities of geographically specific markets and the resource constraints of the Times itself.

On one level, there is a psychographic marketing portrait of a Times subscriber that transcends geography, a classification based on their attitudes, preferences, and demographics that exists irrespectively of their location. Stevenson explained what market research had revealed: “The kind of reader that subscribes to the NYT in any of its forms was a type that was present in almost any country and culture to greater or lesser degrees.”74 He also noted that international readers “have a kind of well-educated global outlook on life[;] they’re relatively high up in income but not stratospheric.” These readers could be described as omnivorous in their interests, perhaps turning to the Times for cultural coverage just as often as they might for political coverage, with a high degree of fluency in English or interest in improving it and likely some sort of enduring link to the United States in either their personal or professional lives. Polgreen put it bluntly: “There are a lot of similarities between a wealthy well-educated person in Singapore and a wealthy, well-educated person living in New York.”75

On another level, physical geography is very much at the core of the difficulty of figuring out how to market appropriately to the world. As Hannah Yang, head of subscription growth, explained, “Internationally, overall, the conversion rate is something that is harder to impact. There is no one blunt instrument to apply to all the countries.… There are a gazillion differences between different countries, and I don’t think about [the audience] as one segment.”76 For example, there are different cultural sensitivities for electronic payments. In the United States, recurring electronic payments are an afterthought, but in some markets, everything is paid for via a prepaid card, so recurring charges don’t work. In other cases, figuring out the price point that works can be a matter of rhetorical juggling. In the United Kingdom, setting an introductory offer at a pound a week makes sense, even if the pound is slightly more than the $0.99 a week for the U.S. version of the offer. Other questions included how to make the “ask.

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