The Daily Mail’s Web presence is “putting more firepower behind expanding its international digital media empire, hiring teams of reporters and ad executives across the US,” Emily Steel and Andrew Edgecliffe-Johnson report. Mail Online honcho Martin Clarke tells the reporters English-language news is a “global commodity” and that “If we weren’t doubling down, we’d be profitable.”
Also, Steel and Edgecliffe-Johnson write:
Mail Online’s audience in the US is now larger than the UK, where it derives about a quarter of its traffic.
It is by some measures the most popular newspaper site in the world.
Clarke likens Mail Online to “journalism crack,” which is very similar to how Kelsey Campbell-Dollaghan described the site, while explaining why it won a “design effectiveness” award despite having a layout that “isn’t particularly beautiful“:
Sometimes the Mail’s front page is so long, it scrolls for the pixel-equivalent of several meters. The model here is more–always have more content available for those landing on the front page.
The sidebars on story pages include links to, on average, 70 other stories, Campbell-Dollaghan notes.
Of course, Mail Online’s got other keys to success, like publishing stories that are fabricated or ripped off from other publications. In one remarkable case, Mail Online published a story that was not only false but was also attributed to a reporter who said he didn’t write it.
Related: Mail Online hires Daily Caller editor to open a D.C. office (FishbowlDC)
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