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Key links:
Primary website:
globalpost.com
Primary Twitter:
@globalpost

Editor’s Note: Encyclo has not been regularly updated since August 2014, so information posted here is likely to be out of date and may be no longer accurate. It’s best used as a snapshot of the media landscape at that point in time.

GlobalPost is a for-profit online foreign news service.

The site was founded in January 2009 by Philip Balboni and Charles Sennott with $8.5 million in private funding. It is based in Boston and had a staff of about 18 as of 2013, as well as about 70 part-time correspondents in 50 countries, who are generally paid about $1,000 a month, plus a stake in the company, for four stories.

GlobalPost produces print and video reports, as well as multimedia packages. Its work focuses more on in-depth reporting than breaking news and is intended to supplement traditional newswires as “an American voice for foreign news.” GlobalPost also aggregates content from hundreds of international bloggers on the site.

Though much of GlobalPost’s website is available free and supported by ads, the site offers a yearly premium subscription service called Passport that includes access to conference calls and meetings with reporters, as well as custom research projects. In early 2010, it announced its Passport program would be among the first to use Journalism Online’s Press+ paid-content system.

The site’s traffic grew quickly after it was founded (most of it coming from the United States and Canada), though its advertising was slow and premium subscribers few, with 400 by January 2010.

As of 2013, about two-thirds of GlobalPost’s revenue came from advertising, but the organization’s most successful revenue stream relative to its expectations, the source of 19 percent of its revenue as of 2013, has been its syndication business through which news organizations can pay to use its foreign coverage. Its 25 or so clients include CBS News, PBS, New York Daily News and The Huffington Post. The site has also received at least $3 million in foundation funding from various organizations. In 2013, it began a more extensive partnership with NBC News.

Peers, allies, & competitors:
Recent Nieman Lab coverage:
March 14, 2016 / Laura Hazard Owen
GlobalPost’s founder hopes to find freedom from platforms and ads with a new email newsletter — When Philip Balboni sold his international news website GlobalPost to WGBH’s Public Radio International last year, he could have exited journalism as well. After all, he’s been in the business for 49 years no...
Aug. 29, 2013 / Ken Doctor
The newsonomics of big and little, from NBC News and GlobalPost to Thunderdome — Ah, the joys of big and of little. In media businesses, little means few if any layers of bothersome decision-making. Agility. Nimbleness. Independence. All great and positive values. But little can also mean limited rea...
July 29, 2013 / Justin Ellis
NBC News teams with GlobalPost to boost int’l coverage — The peacock network’s news division is partnering with GlobalPost to increase its foreign reporting. From the news release: As part of the agreement, NBC News and MSNBC will have access to GlobalPost’s corres...
May 3, 2012 / Ken Doctor
The newsonomics of Pricing 101 — Now that news companies are getting comfortable with the idea of charging digital customers, the question becomes: How much? Here are nine things we've learned from early experiments....
March 9, 2011 / Martin Langeveld
The flip side of black hat SEO: If your news site publishes paid links, you risk suffering Google’s wrath — Last month, the New York Times outed retailer JCPenney for engaging in "black hat optimization" — the practice of buying or placing links designed primarily to improve a site's standing in Google search results.While J...

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Primary author: Mark Coddington. Main text last updated: October 2, 2013.
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