Guardian’s US push likened to move from Manchester

The Washington correspondent of The Guardian likened the expansion of the paper’s US offering to its 1964 relocation from Manchester to London.

‘Is it on a par with the shift from Manchester to London?’asked Richard Adams on Saturday. ‘It could be.”

The Guardian announced on Friday that the editor of Guardian.co.uk, Janine Gibson, is to move to New York – along with several other senior members of staff – to oversee the group’s new digital operation in the US.

That announcement followed news that Steve Howe, a former Wall Street Journal and Financial Times executive, was last month appointed by Guardian News & Media as its new chief revenue officer in the US to help breathe new life into its stateside operations.

Adams outlined how the Guardian now regularly draws 8.6m US unique users each month, making Guardian.co.uk more widely read in the US than many major American titles.

‘Of course the Guardian isn’t about to decamp for New York City en masse – we are only talking about a handful of staff – but there are strong parallels,’Adams said.

‘The move from Manchester to London was a reflection of the social and economic logic of post-war Britain: the south-east of England was where the readers and the advertising were.

‘Similarly, the US offers a potentially huge English-speaking readership and – as with Willie Sutton’s alleged advice on robbing banks – it’s where the money is.”