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Regional publishers hail online boost

Regional newspaper groups are hailing last week’s ABCe figures for newspaper companion websites as a positive sign for the industry amid the gloom of declining print sales.

While average daily circulation in the first half of 2011 was down year-on-year for all but three daily titles – two of them in Norfolk – the ABCe figures for regional websites showed a different picture.

They showed that Trinity Mirror’s network of regional sites increased its average number of daily unique users by 53pc compared to the same period in 2010 while Newsquest sites lancashiretelegraph.co.uk and swindonadvertiser.co.uk each posted increases of more than 40pc.

Editorial bosses at both companies have highlighted improved content as a key factor behind the increases.

Trinity Mirror’s regional editorial director Neil Benson said: “Over the past year, our newsrooms have produced more unique content for our web sites, playing to our strengths of local news, local information and football.

“We’ve been working hard on strengthening the engagement with our audience, through smarter use of social media and tools such as live blogs.

“The other key element driving our growth is a more refined approach to video.

“We now focus on a higher volume of short, sharp news videos alongside the production of regular, studio-style shows – principally around football – that are helping us to attract a bigger, more loyal online following.”

Newsquest’s managing director of digital media Roger Green added: “The increase reflects the success of our group’s efforts in creating compelling content while making it easier than ever to find, as well as to share and to talk about through social media platforms such as Facebook and Twitter.”

Roger said Newsquest content and functionality is increasingly being accessed on a range of devices.

He said: “Although the PC is the principal platform for consumption and interaction with our media brands, there has been a notable increase in the use of smart phone and tablet devices.”

The number of visitors accessing the Newsquest network of websites using smart phones and tablets grew by more than 236pc in the six months ending June 2011 compared to the same six-month period in 2010.

Jan Pitt, the ABC’s group executive director of client services said: “The regional newspaper groups continue to see healthy year-on-year and period-on-period increases for their online activity.

“The year-on-year audited figures show that regional newspaper online networks grew their daily average unique browsers by 25.2pc. This is a great showcase for their importance as a source of local news and information in their communities.”

15 comments

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  • September 5, 2011 at 2:20 pm
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    Don’t understand why newspaper execs are crowing about growth in web users. My own, fast diminishing local paper is so bad I rarely buy it now – and I can always depend on any stories I might be interested in being available FREE on its website. Trinity Mirror and Newsquest are just giving away precious content while their newspapers dwindle and die. How this is good for business is a mystery to me.

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  • September 5, 2011 at 2:23 pm
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    I’m afraid that you are spot on!
    Lets see the massive revenue growth then.

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  • September 5, 2011 at 2:41 pm
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    Local newspapers carry very little in the way of news in the print editions. The web is king, as far as beancounters are concerned. Except, they still haven’t figured out how they can monetise it, and they never will.

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  • September 5, 2011 at 2:52 pm
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    201 stories, 148 pics and 579 faces. Content of the weekly paper I work for in a typical week. Some of it has got to be news, Sly Dig.

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  • September 6, 2011 at 9:09 am
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    Tjhey will start to charge to view papers on line its obvious. The printed versions will dissappear altogether, only snappy headlines to catch immagination shown unless you purchase/download paper. Zero print costs, less staff, electric etc.
    Are you really all that thick you cant see this? The only worry is getting a journalist clever enough to write snappy headlines these days!! LOL

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  • September 6, 2011 at 10:23 am
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    Yeah we is all ded fick John innit .

    We ain’t seen nuffink like what yous sed about that internet fing.

    Ta for putting us in the pikchah.

    Idiot.

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  • September 6, 2011 at 11:18 am
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    The test is: How much revenue is being created by all these hits? The answer is, I suspect, very little, compared with what is lost. So ‘free’ news on the internet is killing newspapers with proprietors destroying their own cash cows – and the jobs of thousands of talented staff. We have to move with the times but too many newspaper groups have been chasing website hits while paying little attention to the quality of the newspaper motherships. It would make sense if these sites were bringing in enough cash to make up for that lost by newspapers but they are not and are never likely to do so. Reducing newspaper staffing to skeletal levels is sure to speed up their decline because as quality deteriorates, circulation is bound to fall at an even faster rate. The Sun is the only paper to have tackled the internet revolution with any great intelligence – by keeping some of its best stories for print, while teasing them on their website. To many managers have become obsessed with internet hits without giving serious thought to what is best for their company or group, never mind their individual newspaper or newspapers. Have they left it too late to wise up.

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  • September 6, 2011 at 2:47 pm
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    I’m glad Northcliffe aren’t in on this back-slapping exercise.

    The way to make money from news websites is surely to relegate news beneath adverts and allow PR firms and press officers to upload their own ‘stories’ in place of the paper’s actual content.

    Oh, right.

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  • September 6, 2011 at 3:46 pm
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    I don’t think it’s as simple as saying that because stories appear on the web for free then people will stop buying newspapers.

    It’s clearly a generational thing as people buy PC’s, Ipads, kindles etc they want to consume their news in a different way and they wouldn’t continue to buy newspapers in any event so there is little point in getting protectionist about news content.

    If a news website doesn’t carry enough news people won’t visit those sites, it’s simply not good enough (as some newspaper sites have tried) to say ‘buy the paper for the full story’ that kind of attitude is laughable.

    Also the real financial problem for the newspaper industry has little to do with their news content, it’s about people stopping advertising their homes, jobs, motors and ads in print and putting them on digital platforms which can do much more than the print product.

    That will be the real killer of the print industry.

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  • September 6, 2011 at 4:02 pm
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    The EADT and Star have received a lot of attention for these “excellent sales”. Have they anything to do with the fact there are free copies available at my local railway station? While we moan about giving away news for free on our websites, some papers seem to have started bulk sales again and are givcing away the paper for nothing. Fair enough, but let’s then not celebrate their excellent sales.

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  • September 7, 2011 at 10:14 am
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    Let’s have a list of what percentage of INCOME is from websites against newspapers.
    That’s more meaningful and important. I think you will find it is very low and the papers are subsidising the websites.
    Media firm directors simply won’t admit there is no REAL money is websites, especially on weekly papers.
    In truth they can’t, because they have gone too far down the road of destroying the sales of local papers with their glorious obsession, based on little or no prior market research.
    If directors were serious about websites they would put proper levels of dedicated web staff in, instead of expecting newspaper reporters (and it is them not anyone else) to pick up the tab. It’s all half-cock right across the country.
    news staff are not anti-web. I think it’s great. But it ain’t gonna make anyone’s fortune at local level.
    You didn’t read it first here.

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  • September 7, 2011 at 10:22 am
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    websites are great for immediate news, but not the sort of worthy but essentially rather dull stuff that weeklies have to fill with (fact of life!). That’s why advertisers like a weekly hit in a paper and not a website.
    Managers can’t seem to grasp that fact.
    The danger is that circulation of papers will fall so far because of web obsession that advertisers will give the papers a miss too.
    Then we shall all be in deep trouble, because there is no serious money in websites for small local papers. Honest Guv!

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  • September 7, 2011 at 10:48 am
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    I think there was an opportunity for serious money to be made from local newspaper websites if only sales managers and company directors could have seen it.

    It would have required a major change of attitude coupled to a modest level of foresight.

    But the glacial pace at which this industry moves has allowed shrewd and ambitious entrepreneurs to dive in and corner the local website advertising markets way ahead of the corporate behemoths’ plodding efforts.

    And now it’s very likely too late to catch them up.

    Shame, but there we are.

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  • September 7, 2011 at 2:54 pm
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    What are these money-spinning local websites Hacked Off? Have you any links? They seem to have passed me by and I would like to see what we are up against.
    (Local newspapers could do themselves a favour, by the way, of getting the basics right and making their clunky websites support quality journalism and fresh, new ideas).

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  • September 8, 2011 at 2:30 pm
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    There’s plenty about if you care to look.

    I’m sure they don’t make the sort of margins the corporates would view as acceptable. Most publishing chief exectives wouldn’t get out of bed for anything less than a 20% return on sale.

    But then their unyielding insistence those double-digit margins are maintained is exactly the reason why the industry is in such a tailspin now.

    Any talk of investment in talent or innovation is seen as an affront to the received wisdom that the only way out of this mess is to cut, cut, cut.

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