The New York Times excitedly announced its new Australian bureau in January and launched to great fanfare in May. But although subscriber numbers are up, the past few months haven’t been smooth sailing for the experiment in global expansion.

There have been copy mistakes and missteps attracting Twitter pile-ons of a sort we didn’t really see when other international outlets like The Guardian and BuzzFeed moved into Australia in the past few years. Why are some people getting so upset over the tone and mistakes made by an international news website that hasn’t broken into Australia’s 10 most visited news websites?

Australia bureau chief Damien Cave doesn’t really know — it could be the legacy of the Times, a peculiarity of Australian sensibilities, or just down to general unease in the industry. But he is sure that the people getting worked up are a pretty select group.

[New York Times confirms Australian expansion]

“It seems to be a group of Australian journalists who are reading us really closely. But it’s not representative of the reaction we’re getting from our audience,” he said.

Regardless, he said he was being transparent about mistakes the Times was making: “I’m committed to, when we fuck up, to fixing it … Journalism is in a learning process, and that includes The New York Times.”

In a marketing email in June, the Times celebrated awards from the Society of Publishers in Asia and included a quite incredible claim: “As a result of the reporting in ‘Australia’s Offshore Cruelty’ by Roger Cohen, the Australian government agreed to pay more than $50 million to those it has abused.” The compensation was part of a settlement deal in a case brought by a group of asylum seekers detained on Manus Island. The case — as well as the experience of detainees and the Australian government’s policy of offshore detention — has been covered by Australian media outlets for years, and the claim was tone-deaf at best.

“If we’d seen it before it went out, we would’ve changed the wording … someone was trying to do the right thing [with the marketing],”Cave said. “Going forward all marketing emails will go through us [in the Australian bureau]. We’re really committed to getting this right.”

There have also been style issues that have irked readers — something Cave said they’re trying hard not to do.

“We’re still figuring out how to not alienate our readers with small things,” he said.

Cave has lobbied for — and won — a few changes in the Times‘ rigid style guide. The I in”indigenous” won’t be automatically changed by the spellchecker to lowercase in articles coming out of the Australian bureau anymore, and distance will be measured in kilometres first, then miles. Dollars will be Australian first, then USD. And then there is just the tone and type of story that has confused some readers.

“We haven’t done a great job yet of explaining what it is we’re doing … What we’re doing is not like the Guardian or BuzzFeed. It’s not a local edition, it’s a mix that includes Australian content.”

Cave says the Australian bureau was a test for The New York Times in global expansion, and that he hopes it will add a fresh perspective to the media landscape.

[Memo to the New York Times (and Fairfax): you can’t be all things to all people]

He says he has been surprised by the reaction of local media objecting to his work and approach — in his previous experience as a foreign correspondent, local journalists had been happy for any extra attention given to their patch.

“I’ve been a little bit surprised by the combativeness. It’s a time of change and struggle in the industry. I don’t know if we were here 10 years ago, if it would have been different … To use a sporting analogy, it’s like they’re playing rugby, and they want us to play rugby so they can show us that they’re better at playing rugby than us. What if we’re playing soccer and fans can love both sports? It doesn’t have to be, it’s you or us.”

Cave wouldn’t give figures, but he says subscriber numbers in Australia were up 44% since the beginning of the year, when the new bureau was announced, and 95% year-on-year. He says feedback he received via email has been overwhelmingly positive, and conversation on the private Facebook group for subscribers was at a high level.

“Our goal is to be a little bit above the fray and stir up conversations,” he said.

RMIT senior journalism lecturer Alex Wake says more voices were always better in the media, and said the Times could offer a perspective and stories we might not see .

“There are issues around race that I think Americans have a more complex understanding of than we do here in Australia. There’s a bit of a cultural cringe happening with those who love The New York Times,” she said.