• by Sara Guaglione , October 10, 2018

The Guardian is relaunching Guardian Weekly as an international magazine.

It will introduce two new local editions — one for North America and another for Australia — in addition to its global edition for the UK and the rest of the world.

“We see the biggest growth opportunities in Australia and the U.S. where there is already a loyal Guardian audience,” Will Dean, editor of Guardian Weekly, told Publishers Daily.

The North American and Australian editions will each have four pages of local content; the global edition will have four additional pages of international coverage. The magazine is 64 pages in total.

The new Guardian Weekly also has an updated look and more pages than the former newspaper, modeled after The Guardian’s print and digital redesign earlier this year, when the publication changed to a tabloid format.

It is part of a three-year plan by London-based parent company Guardian Media Group, which publishes The Guardian’s U.K. and U.S. editions and The Observer, to cut costs and balance its books by April 2019.

“The weekly news/current affairs magazine market is currently strong and it makes business, as well as brand sense, to offer readers a high-quality, keepable format for Guardian Weekly and make it available on more newsstands,” says Dean.

Building on a current global circulation of 42,000, including over 32,000 subscribers, the Guardian Weekly will be more widely available on newsstands in Australia and the UK, where the magazine will be available to buy in 120 travel WHSmiths for the first time.

The first copies will hit newsstands and arrive with subscribers starting tomorrow.

Guardian Weekly, a nearly 100-year-old publication, combines news reporting, opinion, features and photography from The Guardian, Observer, theguardian.com and the U.S. and Australia editions.

It also contains analysis and feature stories, a focus on the big stories of the week, sport, science and environment reporting, a dedicated culture section, crosswords and puzzles.

Guardian Weekly will continue to be edited by Dean, who was appointed editor in December 2017. He will work closely with the Guardian Australia and Guardian U.S. teams.

The Guardian does not have a paywall and it does not ask readers to commit to paying a certain amount every month for a year, like most digital subscriptions. Instead, it asks readers to make a one-time payment, or set up monthly payments, starting from $2.

The publication says it now has over 500,000 readers globally who support the publisher monthly through either a contribution or subscription.