Here's Comment Is Free editor Georgina Henry:

"It's obvious to us that our major competition for opinion and debate is moving online, and unless we move with it, we're failing our journalists and future generations of readers. We need to expand and deepen the debate which takes place every day in our newspapers and for which we have an unrivalled reputation. We need to ensure that the Guardian and Observer remain at the heart of the liveliest liberal-left discourse (although we'll continue our long tradition of carrying voices from across the political spectrum). How? Not only by doing so much more than we can in print, and much more immediately, but by putting our own writers where their real rivals are. Readers, too, need to be at the heart of the conversation, and much more engaged than print allows."

Getting big name US bloggers like Arianna Huffington and Glenn Reynolds on board is a canny idea. The Guardian's online team buys strongly into the blog-evangelist concept that global readership matters more than national news. Perhaps it has some reason to: It's the UK's most popular online paper, but gets millions of hits from US and overseas readers who despair of the relative toothlessness of the US press.

That said, the idea of the news item as a floating, placeless commodity only tells part of the story: The Guardian may be an international brand but it is a British paper. It isn't parochial to see your home (paying) audience as your main target. It might be flattering to be the house newspaper of Bush-hating "Free America" but the newspaper will continue to depend on its success in the UK.

It's a difficult balancing act, and one worth following closely.

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