The Guardian launches its Australian digital edition
The Guardian has this morning launched its Australian digital edition by promising readers a fresh perspective on Australian and world news.
Editor-in-chief of the Australian edition, the paper’s third international digital edition, Katharine Viner said the UK newspaper was eager to capitalise on its existing online Australian audience.
“We already have a large and loyal Australian readership, who tell us they want more of what we do,” said Viner.
“Our research indicates that Australians are looking for an alternative that is truly independent, both global and local, which offers serious reporting and lively commentary, and is all-embracing in its use of everything that the digital sphere has to offer.”
The most recent numbers from Nielsen shows that the UK newspaper had an Australian audience of 1.1 million readers putting it just outside the top 10 Australian news websites.
In preparation for its launch the newspaper has hired a number of senior Australian journalists including author and commentator David Marr and poaching Lenore Taylor and Katherine Murphy from Fairfax. Earlier this month it also announced the appointment of a number of other Australian editorial staff, including blogger Greg Jericho.
“Starting today, we’ll be reporting and blogging, providing commentary, debate and community interaction, and using cutting edge data visualisation and interactive technology to engage our readers in new ways,” said Viner. ” We have built a strong Australian team including award-winning journalists David Marr, Lenore Taylor and Katharine Murphy.”
For the launch the newspaper has built a interactive feature telling the story of the Holmes family who captured the world’s media attention in January after clinging to a jetty during the bushfires in Tasmania.
Lenore Taylor has also interviewed Prime Minister Julia Gillard, who reveals she is a secret fan of Games of Thrones.
The website also includes an Australian version of its successful opinion and commentary website Comment is Free which launches with pieces from Robert Manne, John Pilger and Thomas Keneally.
Nic Christensen
Shame they’ve chosen to keep it on the http://www.guardian.co.uk domain as /australia. I suppose it probably makes sense if you want to make use of the data tools and content tools that I’m sure are part of Guardian technical infrastructure but it just feels like a bolt on at the moment.
Also gets confused with http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/australia which is the standard url structure the Guardian uses for countries. I wonder how they’re going to align those.
Just realised it’s interesting that I ascribe less local authority to http://www.guardian.co.uk/australia than I would to http://www.guardian.com/australia if that existed. Guess that says something about our hidden biases towards urls.
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Finally, a news site for grown-ups.
Off now, Fairfax. Take your click-bait, your auto-start and your churnalism, and go hide behind a paywall. We won’t be meeting again soon.
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Hi Steerpike,
The Guardian announced a few days ago it would shift to one “theguardian.com” domain later in the year (http://www.journalism.co.uk/ne.....2/a553070/). I suspect it is temporary until then.
Cheers,
Tim – Mumbrella
I want them to do some reporting. I do not need more Manne, Pilger or Taylor commentary. In fact if anyone would pls do some reporting (thanks Kate McClymont) i would be most grateful.
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Cheers for the update, Tim. It’ll be fascinating to watch how development work occurs under a centralised domain when it’s serving such distributed teams. I wonder if they’ll have separate dev teams and risk fragmentation or if they’ll force the worldwide content teams to negotiate through a centralised development team.
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The homepage is this sort of hodge-podge of local stuff and articles nicked from the UK site. But go into sport etc and it’s all basically UK content. Can I be honest – don’t bother Guardian Australia. I just want the UK version, please.
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They need more local content
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Wow, what a bad homepage … a dog’s breakfast … they desperately need some UX help there.
Could the banner at the top be any bigger?
Don’t see myself going to the site much … I prefer well laid out sites myself 🙂
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John Pilger and David Marr???
Thanks for the heads up. I won’t even bother visiting the site. I want proper news, not hand-wringing, bleeding heart leftist crap.
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@ Hoin… Totally agree. Marr and his predictable, lefty PC bleatings. No thank you.
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Apart from the nav item for ‘soccer’ I like it.
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@Wayne. The Guardian is a left-leaning newspaper. If you don’t like “PC bleatings” I’m sure News Ltd is more your style…
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Read it this morning and it’s the EXACT same stories every other news site is running. Does anyone know how I can get passed the Aussie mess and back to my beloved UK site?
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I am originally from England and now reside in Australia. Every day I frequent Australian news websites and UK sites. (UK sites; so I can see what is happening back in the UK, reading as if I were there.)
When I go to http://www.guardian.co.uk in Australia it now recognises me as being in Oz and automatically defaults to http://www.guradian.co.uk/australia This is really annoying.
I welcome the launch of The Guardian in Australia, however I want to be able to still see the UK side of affairs too.
The Guardian should sort out a separate Australian url, so that people like ‘me’ can still oggle the site as if I am in the UK, plus of course feel a little more Aussie if viewing from Oz. (.com.au is Stralian mate!)
Please sort this very basic UX out dear Guardian team, so I can browse my news without frustration. Ta v much.
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Update – handy tab top left enables you to read the UK, US and Aus versions – nice!
I still feel that a local URL (.com.au) will benefit the site. Making it feel less ‘UK’ to Aussies who do not know The Guardian (they dont want to read Pommie websites…)
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I wish the Guardian every success and hopefully mischievous murdoch some loss of media oxygen in OZ!
A counterbalance to murdoch’s malicious attacks on anything decent in this country is well over due..
A truly balanced view will get my attention, one which acknowledges the best of all political parties and exposes their negative aspects equally too – without the murdoch rant of hatred and bias!
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If I ‘Google’: “The Guardian Australia”
Google returns this page:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/australia
Which is not the Aussie homepage, which is this one:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/australia
For your Australian audience I would recommend a .com.au url (make it personal and intimate for your local audience). Plus Google will love you too. It will help you. I love the Aussie version. I am frequenting SMH far less than before and I will certainly not be paying for SMH content.
Go The Guardian!!
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