AddThis SmartLayers

Daily to provide content for rival newspaper under new deal

Chris-Styles-new-1A content-sharing deal between two traditional rival dailies will see one provide news from its patch for the other in exchange for “a substantial amount of money”.

The agreement between the Teesside Gazette and The Northern Echo will involve the former providing a mixture of content – page leads, picture stories, shorts and briefs – via email to the latter.

An email, seen by HTFP, explaining the deal to staff at the Middlesbrough-based Gazette from editor Chris Styles, pictured above left, revealed the service will effectively replicate the “quality and quantity” of content published about Teesside by the Echo in its “regional pages and a small amount in the main book”.

The Gazette will send a selection of material to the Darlington-based Echo every day, except Saturdays, for it to choose from.

The deal does not include “big” news stories such as murders, major road crashes and robberies, which the Echo will continue to cover itself.

The Echo will also retain reporting staff on Teesside after the service begins on Monday.

In the email, Chris added: “We will also not be supplying stories which are exclusive to us and have significant audience value prior to publication.

“The agreement specifies at least an hour’s delay in them publishing the stories leading our desktop and mobile sites.

“It also specifies they must rewrite the web headline and intro to avoid us being penalised by Google.

“The agreement does not include sport or advance content. Any arrangement we have with the Echo over pictures – aside from the specified daily amount – will continue as before.”

It has not been revealed how much money the Gazette will receive in exchange for the content.

In December both dailies united to back a campaign aimed at giving positive publicity to the town of Stockton-on-Tees, which is due to be the setting for the second series of Channel 4’s controversial show Benefits Street.

Chris told HTFP: “It makes complete sense for publishers to co-operate when there is a mutual benefit.

“Our working relationship with the Northern Echo goes back many years and we are happy to build on it with this latest arrangement.”

Echo editor Peter Barron added: “Newsquest and Trinity Mirror have a long-established, mutually beneficial collaboration on Teesside.

“The Northern Echo has been printed at Trinity Mirror for years and pictures are regularly shared so this is a sensible extension of that collaboration.

“The Northern Echo will retain its own reporting staff on Teesside and we plan to review the arrangement as it progresses.”

22 comments

You can follow all replies to this entry through the comments feed.
  • April 9, 2015 at 9:11 am
    Permalink

    Bit late for an April Fool jape, isn’t it?

    No, seriously, this is some sort of sick joke, surely?

    Report this comment

    Like this comment(9)
  • April 9, 2015 at 9:47 am
    Permalink

    Hunter Thompson had a phrase for this: When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro.

    Report this comment

    Like this comment(6)
  • April 9, 2015 at 9:50 am
    Permalink

    I don’t think this will catch on or lead to further mergers and consolidation, restructuring and rationalisation.

    Might be wrong though?

    Report this comment

    Like this comment(2)
  • April 9, 2015 at 10:03 am
    Permalink

    It should be the Echo giving the Gazette stories, not the other way round. The quality of the articles in the Evening Gazette is beyond poor. Sad times.

    Report this comment

    Like this comment(9)
  • April 9, 2015 at 10:45 am
    Permalink

    Read this twice. Don’t know why but it saved me having to read a different story.

    Report this comment

    Like this comment(11)
  • April 9, 2015 at 11:26 am
    Permalink

    Swapping the odd pic with rivals makes sense but this is both news organisations effectively raising the white flag by neutralising the sales war.
    And what’s a substantial amount of money? Can’t be that substantial or it would make even less sense!

    Report this comment

    Like this comment(3)
  • April 9, 2015 at 11:29 am
    Permalink

    Given the Gazette’s tight focus (and discounting the Boro stories) I can only assume the Echo’s pages will be full of talk of parmos.

    Report this comment

    Like this comment(8)
  • April 9, 2015 at 11:30 am
    Permalink

    Good news for a Trinity Mirror title, extra revenue for the company from content that would be online anyway. The BBC and other websites would have cut and pasted from the Gazette’s site. Will see if there’s more deals in the pipeline as TM North East syndicates a lot of its own content to nationals , magazines and TV.

    Report this comment

    Like this comment(1)
  • April 9, 2015 at 11:42 am
    Permalink

    So what kind of content will this actually generate? If the Gazette won’t supply ‘big’ stories, nor exclusives, nor those with ‘significant audience value’, what is left? Dross. A classic example of publishers thinking journalists just fill the space between the ads – and it doesn’t matter what that content looks like….

    Report this comment

    Like this comment(1)
  • April 9, 2015 at 12:37 pm
    Permalink

    Digger. “Exclusive” means “story nobody else wanted”.

    Report this comment

    Like this comment(0)
  • April 9, 2015 at 1:04 pm
    Permalink

    Has Peter Barron lost the plot? I buy the Echo because their Teesside journalists are fantastic. I hope they continue to feature or I will stop buying. Does anyone think to consult readers before making these decisions? What an absolute disgrace.

    Report this comment

    Like this comment(9)
  • April 9, 2015 at 3:01 pm
    Permalink

    This says more about the downfall of the once mighty Northern Echo than it foes about the Parmo Gazette. But it could have been worse, at least the Echo didn’t get into bed the Hartlepool Mail for its “news”.

    Report this comment

    Like this comment(2)
  • April 9, 2015 at 3:04 pm
    Permalink

    Buy content from the opposition? Why not just pay a couple of freelances?

    Report this comment

    Like this comment(4)
  • April 9, 2015 at 3:09 pm
    Permalink

    What long-term agreement between Trinity Mirror and Newsquest?
    Having worked with both groups that is total hogwash.
    This is a cheap and nasty deal that totally undermines the basic challenges to all reporters: get your story and pictures as an exclusive, if you can’t get them exclusively then get them first, and if you can’t get them first, then make sure your coverage is better than your direct opposition.
    This is just a sell out of all the basic morals that reporters have always held firm. Messers Barron and Styles have been away from the coalface too long to understand.
    How gutting for a Teesside reporter to see their story sold for a couple of bob to the Northern Echo to help boost their readership in Middlesbrough.
    I take it that this move shabby deal cuts out the local news agency middleman?
    By why stop here – why doesn’t the Echo just produce the Teesside Gazette, or does that cut across the rules of monopoly?
    As for those Echo jobs being safe in Teesside…watch this space.

    Report this comment

    Like this comment(7)
  • April 9, 2015 at 5:06 pm
    Permalink

    The big question is how much is the Echo paying? Considering all the cost-cutting they have had to make – as regularly reported on HTFP – can poor impoverished Newsquest afford this?

    And if they can, might money not be better spent employing more reporters/photographers of their own?

    Report this comment

    Like this comment(2)
  • April 9, 2015 at 5:37 pm
    Permalink

    TM Staffer – did the boss tell you to write that?

    Report this comment

    Like this comment(2)
  • April 10, 2015 at 9:08 am
    Permalink

    At least they’ll be paying for any stuff. Local tv and radio shamelessly plagiarises everything which regional papers prints!!!!

    Report this comment

    Like this comment(4)
  • April 10, 2015 at 4:20 pm
    Permalink

    Slate, all my own views. I come from agency background so possibly more commercially minded. You can write as much award winning copy as you want, but if it doesn’t get hits or make money in other ways your paper doesn’t have a long-term future.
    If this was a deal with the BBC there wouldn’t be the same complaints.
    No I’m not management, just someone who has 20+ years left until I retire and welcomes anything that keeps me in a job til then.

    Report this comment

    Like this comment(1)
  • April 11, 2015 at 8:02 am
    Permalink

    Fair point, TM Staffer. Appreciate where you’re coming from, but for a dinosaur like me this idea is simply unnatural and goes against everything newspapers have been about.

    Report this comment

    Like this comment(2)