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Hyperlocal rebrand for 150-year-old weekly

A free weekly newspaper will be relaunched today under the ‘Local People’ banner after joining forces with three hyperlocal websites.

The Clevedon Mercury has been published for more than 150 years but will now be editionised and renamed after three sister community sites – Clevedon People, Nailsea People and Portishead People – with the first issues hitting the streets today.

Under the move, content submitted by users to the Local People sites, such as reviews, comments, photos and blogs, could appear in print alongside stories by journalists.

The websites are part of Northcliffe Digital’s Local People network of more than 100 community sites and the transformation of the Clevedon Mercury, also owned by Northcliffe, is thought to be the first partnership of its kind between the sites and a newspaper.

  • The front page of the new Clevedon People title which has hit the streets today.
  • Northcliffe Digital managing director Roland Bryan said: “This is an exciting new product for the community and advertisers in Portishead, Nailsea and Clevedon.

    “The Mercury’s excellent news service has always put it at the heart of its community. Now, thanks to this partnership with localpeople, that community can help set the agenda for their local title.

    “Now, the discussion, forums and photos submitted by users of our local sites will help to enrich the paper’s content.

    “Advertisers will have the best of both worlds – the penetration of print and the extra reach and response-led marketing of digital, all in one package. This really sets us apart from the competition.”

    Abigail Edge, a regional publisher for Northcliffe Digital, added: “By bringing the Local People sites and the Clevedon Mercury together, we’re making sure that what happens online also happens in the newspaper.

    “This is a great chance for people to create the headlines in their town, and to have their say on the issues that affect them locally.”

    An article about the move on the Nailsea People website said: “When the Nailsea People newspaper hits your doorstep, just remember your Mercury just hit the 21st century.

    “And thanks to this website, you now don’t just read the news, you are very much part of it.

    “Your comments, photos, tweets and blogs mean your voice has never been so important – and by bringing the Mercury and Nailsea People together we’re making sure that what happens online also happens in the newspaper.

    “Not only will you be able to get all your community news, discussion, events and reviews from one source, you’ll also have the chance to create the headlines in Nailsea.”

    Nailsea People was launched nearly two years ago and Carol Deacon, a former editor at the Clevedon Mercury, is the community publisher for the site.

    36 comments

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    • February 17, 2011 at 8:41 am
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      Have you seen the standard of some of these Local People sites ? Many are full of amateurish drivel. If this is the way forward for the local press, I feel very sad indeed.

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    • February 17, 2011 at 8:54 am
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      Great – I guess we can look forward to pages and pages of unfiltered advertising by irrelevant opportunists, interspersed with occasional out-of-area news stories thrown in to boost visitor numbers. I’m breathless with anticipation.

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    • February 17, 2011 at 9:16 am
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      It’s easy to be cynical, but really! This is just cost-cutting disguised as as innovation. We’ve been talking about ‘hyperlocal’ and ‘UGC’ for years. Most journalists are well aware this is merely a development of what any decent paper should already have been doing long before the web even existed – encouraging contributions from readers. The danger comes when this is ALL you fill the paper with. Although nonsense, it is dangerous nonsense as MDs from other companies read stories like this and convince themselves they can take more journalists out ‘because the public will write stories for us’. What a sad indictment of the value placed on our skills – I don’t see the same enthusiasm for getting Mr or Mrs Public in to run the HR department or operate the presses! The vast majority of the Local People sites are utter tripe…people writing about jumble sales dominate the ones I’ve looked at. Not a great deal of investigation or holding the establishment to account!

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    • February 17, 2011 at 10:08 am
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      I fink its a gr8 idea. Just the sort of fing I luv. I cant w8 to rite sum newz.

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    • February 17, 2011 at 10:10 am
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      Those people sites are awful – why would anyone want to associate their paper with them? From what i have seen the sites are only commented on by about four people at the most – I can’t imagine those four people will be able to provide decent writing for a local paper.

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    • February 17, 2011 at 10:12 am
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      we all dread the dross (mostly unedited) submitted to the so-called community pages each week.now mutiply by about ten.

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    • February 17, 2011 at 10:19 am
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      I personally CAN’T WAIT to hear about the latest goings on at my local WI branch, what sort of biscuit etc, shame on you naysayers.

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    • February 17, 2011 at 10:24 am
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      And who will fact-check all that free copy? I’m with RT.

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    • February 17, 2011 at 10:39 am
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      As ELVIS sort of says, it’s nothing really new – readers have been submitting news to community pages for aeons, this is just doing it via a website instead. However, I doubt it will be ten times as much – judging by the news section on Clevedon People, all its stories are written by staffers: http://www.clevedonpeople.co.uk/news All the bylines are either Clevedon-People or Local-Andy. What is interesting is that Northcliffe is willing to throw away the Clevedon Mercury brand to give these new websites a boost in print.

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    • February 17, 2011 at 10:48 am
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      Dear holdthefrontpage, I would like to respectfully request you take a different approach to your normal ‘run the press release and move on’ journalism and actually revisit this story in a few months and see how much content is being contributed by readers.

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    • February 17, 2011 at 10:52 am
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      Dave That’s a bit of a daft comment. Nobody is claiming this is a golden age for journalism. You have the kind of space-filling stories like the custard shortage from the Whistable Times (owned by Northcliffe, incidentally) because there are so few journalists left to dig out anything better. The Local People sites certainly aren’t the solution to the problem though. The amount of money chucked away on billboards promoting these online white elephants could have been better used hiring a few more reporters. They have been running long enough now to make a fair judgement, and they are simply not working .

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    • February 17, 2011 at 12:44 pm
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      A fair amount of people on here hold local readers in pretty low regard. Elvis thinks it’s ‘dross’, but what’s the point of a local paper that doesn’t run community news? There are plenty of ways for people to get news from outside their area, but when it comes to what’s happening outside their front door there’s a void. You can’t have a dig at these hyperlocal sites for having the imagination to fill it just because you didn’t.

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    • February 17, 2011 at 1:22 pm
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      Partnership? They’re all owned by Northcliffe! This is about as much of a partnership as my hand has a partnership with my bum cheeks when I’ve got an itch. If you want hyperlocal partnerships look at Birmingham Mail’s Your Communities (nominated in this year’s MMA) where a local paper *has* formed a partnership with hyperlocal sites. Not just that, but *independent, grass-roots* hyperlocals run by people who give a damn about their community and want to do something rather than being a shockingly poor attempt by a large media organisation at cashing in on the hyperlocal movement (aka their own inability to provide local news) and then plastering it with irrelevant adverts! Give us a break, eh, Northcliffe?!

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    • February 17, 2011 at 2:33 pm
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      Good to see Northcliffe moving ever closer to the point were it no longer needs reporters, photographers, sub-editors. How I wish there were some local individuals with the cash to invest in proper local newspapers. The sooner the provision of local news is out of the hands of these jokers, the better.

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    • February 17, 2011 at 3:11 pm
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      Has anyone actually read the paper yet? Would be interesting to see a Steve Dyson review.

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    • February 17, 2011 at 3:24 pm
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      On a day when the editor was presumably aware the websites and paper would be the focus of attention, these are the headlines and/or intros on the top three stories on the home page at the moment : 1) Googles on for GE Oil & Gas global expansion at Nailsea By Carol_Deacon at 11:02 on 17/02/11 NAILSEA’S biggest employerGE Oil & Gas is benefitting from a global expansion of energy exploration. GE Oil & Gas has invested more than nine million dollars at its High Street site which employs 450 staff since 2009. And on Friday a new hyperbaric testing hall and a refurbished electrical and electronics assembly plant was officially opened by North Somerset MP and Defence Secretary Liam Fox. 2) Clevedon and District Round Table has donated £3,000 to the 1st Nailsea Scout Group appeal to raise funds for its training and activity centre. 3) REGARDING the article by in the paper on February 3, I am concerned that a control order forcing all dog-walkers to keep their pets on a lead at all recreation and sports grounds in Nailsea would be too harsh a measure for the vast majority of responsible dog owners – particularly those for whom mobility is an issue. Who needs subbing, house style of any of that old dead tree journalism stuff? This is the future!!!

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    • February 17, 2011 at 4:47 pm
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      So, in a nutshell, they’ve closed the Clevedon Mercury but will continue to claim its ad revenue with a drivel pamphlet. Happy days.

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    • February 17, 2011 at 4:54 pm
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      I have read the comments on here with increasing anger today. First point, no one, I guess, has seen the new paper. Second, my understanding is that all the stories written by journalists in the former Mercury will still be there … but now there might be reaction etc from readers/web users. What’s wrong with that? I get really fed up reading the dross from these know-it-alls, a fair few I wager reperesent the failures of the past 10 or 20 years. You see all this ‘it’s crap now, it was great in my day’ is totally bogus. In fact, if it’s crap now, it was even more crap then because A There were about 10 x the staff doing half the work and B Circulation was declining then as now. A lot of these wingers will say that ‘standards were great 20 yers ago but no one can sub now’. These are the same embittered old hacks who, 20 years ago, were saying it was crap then. The fact is, the journalist of the modern newsroom is more resourceful, more able and more hard-working than any of these characters who moan on this website. Not one of them EVER comes up with any kind of imaginative model for the future other than ’emply more people’. Well, I have a message for you – employing more people in the past was a big fat failures. As for the web/paper model, why not give some credit for trying something new. There’s nothing wroing with ‘user-generated content’ (I don’t like the phrase either) … in fact, I refer you to the ultimate UGC page, the letters page of The Times!!!! My message to you smart asses – come up with some ideas yourself then you have the right to berate the people trying hard to make it work today. If you can’t, go back to writing your ‘novel’ or whatever pointless activity you are now engaged in.

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    • February 17, 2011 at 4:59 pm
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      before anyone wise asses say it – I know there are typos.

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    • February 17, 2011 at 5:06 pm
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      Fred: 1) Calm down. 2) My objection is dressing up crap like that seen on the website as something bold and progressive. No, I haven’t seen the paper yet but since it reportedly dovetails so neatly with the website presumably I don’t need to.

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    • February 17, 2011 at 5:17 pm
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      So all the above people can get irate about it – tell them to calm down too. You haven’t seen the paper so, not surprisingly, you are breaking the first rule you should have learned at journalism college – don’t assume anything. Pathetic

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    • February 17, 2011 at 5:46 pm
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      Fred, I have seen the paper and I’ve worked for Northcliffe in the past. As I’m now a magazine editor, I don’t consdier myself to be a failure, so am not writing in bitterness, but disappointment. I know Northcliffe through years of experience. After this and other ‘bright and shiny’ announcements about online partnerships will come further announcements of redundancies. What few staff remain at the centres accept this as a given.

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    • February 17, 2011 at 5:50 pm
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      You’ve seen the paper? It doesn’t get delivered until Fridays. Heaven help your magazine – you just make it up obviously!!! Pathetic 2

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    • February 17, 2011 at 6:44 pm
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      You’ve made a fair few assumptions yourself Fred, not least people’s ages, experience in the industry etc. I have fewer years service than you might expect, but I have still had plenty of time to to see how much Northcliffe have ripped out of my title. Remember, assume makes an ass out of u and me. Etc.

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    • February 17, 2011 at 7:25 pm
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      No assumptions from me … lots of people talk about ‘whejn i was in northcliffe’ or whatever. You made the assumption the paper would be no good without seeing it

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    • February 17, 2011 at 7:28 pm
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      Fred – I used to work for Northcliffe and have friends in Clevedon, so of course I’ve seen the paper. The old one of course, not the new version. The circulation of my magazine has remained steady for several years, unlike the circulation of local newspapers sadly. Your reaction to anyone who has a different opinion to yourself is embarrassing and offensive. If you are the face of local journalism, then heaven help us all.

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    • February 17, 2011 at 9:04 pm
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      So my point is that the paper should not be criticised before it is seen, you say you’ve seen it, I make the point it’s not out and you say you’ve seen the old version??? Frankly I am sick of former newspaper people harking back to some imaginary glory days. What IS offensive is people on the sidelines chipping away at the efforts of former colleagues. As for offensive, what about ‘full of amateurish drivel’. ‘The vast majority of the Local People sites are utter tripe’ ‘The sooner the provision of local news is out of the hands of these jokers, the better.’ ‘The sooner the provision of local news is out of the hands of these jokers, the better.’ ‘ dressing up crap like that seen on the website as something bold and progressive.’ All said by people on this forum who have not seen the new paper. I suppose that’s fair comment in your book. Well here’s my fair comment … by all means criticise – I’m thick skinned – but I have yet to hear the semblance of a good idea other, as I have said, than take on dozens of new staff which most industries would find impossible at the moment. So criticise away but please offer something constructive and if you must criticise, at least make sure you have seen the thing you are criticising. It’s so easy to ridicule … less easy to find the answers.

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    • February 18, 2011 at 11:18 am
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      I agree with Fred. It’s easy to carp when people come up with new innovations but there seems to be little in the way of feasible alternative suggestions. Philip John – how do you suggest these websites make any kind of money without advertising? They can’t run on thin air.

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    • February 18, 2011 at 12:41 pm
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      I agree with Fred. It’s easy to carp when people come up with new innovations New innovations. FFS. Frank Littlewood nailed that in 1971, first week at Richmond.

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    • February 18, 2011 at 2:33 pm
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      Think everyone needs a chill pill here. It’s clear that not all of the journalistic skill will be thrown down the toilet in this move, but it seems a bit like the ‘Big Society’ to me – streamlining things and diluting quality, not to mention opening the floodgates to any amount of business plugging, being dressed up as ‘giving it back to the people’.

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    • February 18, 2011 at 2:46 pm
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      Yet another one … ‘diluting quality’??? I am going to wager you have not seen this new paper. Yet again there is this presumption that somehow standards were much higher years ago. Believe me, they were not. The only difference is that there were more people then so if anything, standards were lower. If I thought for one minute (I don’t) that the whole paper was UGC then that would be one thing but my sources tell me the new paper will still have normal stories as it ever did but there will also be opportunities for comments to appear alongside the relevant stories. Nothing wrong with that. An integrated website and paper seems to be perfectly sensible as well.

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    • February 18, 2011 at 3:15 pm
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      I’m not presupposing that everything will be UGC, and I know that the reporters are hard-working and conscientious – i just feel that judging by what the people sites offer (and, as has been noted before, the paper does indeed dovetail with the website), and by what it actually looks like, the quality journalism that is there might well be covered by an avalanche of fluffy UGC and local advertising, without as much care for the way it looks or comes across as it used to.

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    • February 18, 2011 at 3:15 pm
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      I’m not presupposing that everything will be UGC, and I know that the reporters are hard-working and conscientious – i just feel that judging by what the people sites offer (and, as has been noted before, the paper does indeed dovetail with the website), and by what it actually looks like, the quality journalism that is there might well be covered by an avalanche of fluffy UGC and local advertising, without as much care for the way it looks or comes across as it used to.

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    • February 18, 2011 at 4:00 pm
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      OK, well can I suggest you wait until you see the paper then do a critique. Yet another person making guesses and assumptions. For all I know, the dovetailing’ could be simply to do with having one ‘brand’ for readers and advertisers to relate to. I don’t think it follows that the website and teh paper will resemble each other in content. From what I can see, the paper has normal stories like all others.

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    • February 22, 2011 at 11:26 am
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      @Dave: Through multiple revenue streams, including adverts. They have to have some common sense about it though. The classic example is the old coal mining town who’s local paper web site had a massive leader board ad slapped across the top for Bupa. Ha

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