Independent announces ‘big ambitions’ to expand with launch of US digital bureau

The Independent has announced the creation of a new US office with a digital focus.

Andrew Buncombe, formerly the newspaper’s Washington correspondent, has moved to the role of US digital editor. He now joins US editor David Usborne in New York. Buncombe was previously Asia correspondent for the newspaper. New positions have been promised in the coming months.

The Independent was one of the fastest-growing national newspaper websites in January, up 60.4 per cent year on year to an average of 2.5m 'unique browsers' a day. Most of its web traffic comes from abroad: of the 52.6m unique browsers accessing the site in January, according to ABC, some 20.3m came from the UK and 30.3m from the rest of the world.

Independent digital editor Christian Broughton said : “These new record figures are testament to the excellent teams we now have in place on independent.co.uk and i100.co.uk. It’s an exciting time for us.

"We have a big combined platform now, and big ambitions. We’re expanding the editorial staff again over the year ahead, adding new specialisms and building on existing strengths. The US office has two key targets: to extend our US news coverage for our global audience, and to serve our US audience, which accounts for a third of the total, better than ever before.”

Topics in this article : The Independent