Teesside ultra-local sites create more jobs
By Leah McBride Mensching, Tuesday 18 September 2007 at 22:37 :: World Digital Media Trends :: #578 :: rss
The Teesside Evening Gazette's successful series of hyperlocal sites targeting smaller postcode areas has brought in more advertising revenue, which means more jobs and a greater investment in journalism, the Gazette's editor told the Society of Editors Scotland conference at Glasgow Caledonian University, Press Gazette reported Tuesday.
“(Gazette Communities) have attracted new advertising and proved such a success that Trinity (Mirror) has launched print versions of the microsites,” Editor Darren Thwaites said.
The Evening Gazette has a combined 50,000 unique users across its sites, and more established ones are growing at about 25 percent per month, Thwaites said, according to Press Gazette. Gazettelive.co.uk offers videos produced by 10 videojournalists, as well as blogs, forums and picture galleries, he said. A large portion of the microsites is made up of user-generated content, and by the end of this year, the paper expects to recruit 160 people to write blogs for the sites, including teachers, charity workers and youth leaders.
“We have new advertising opportunities and it has generated great content that we can reverse back into the paper,” Thwaites is quoted as saying by the Press Gazette. “I have been able to expand my team on the back of the commercial value of the microsites.”
Search engine optimisation is driving traffic from Google to the Web site, which now attracts about 200,000 unique users per month.
The Evening Gazette is also looking to reach into education, creating a multi-media journalism degree together with the University of Teesside. The NCTJ-accredited degree will be 70 percent applied practice, and due to begin in October.
For more on this topic, visit our partner site, Editorsweblog.org.
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