A hyperlocal website which promises to “breathe new life” into local news has been launched by a regional publisher.
Trinity Mirror has announced the launch of InYourArea, which allows users to type in their postcode and receive the most relevant news and information for their area from a variety of sources.
The site also offers hyperlocal traffic and travel updates, weather, things to do, property prices, planning applications, public notices, crime statistics, police updates, retail news, food hygiene ratings and more.
TM says that all sources used for the standalone site are reputable and verified, ensuring no “fake news” publications can find their way into the results.
Darren Sher, head of emerging products at Trinity Mirror, said: “There is a wealth of hyperlocal news, data and information in many different places, but it’s fragmented and difficult to access in a user friendly way. InYourArea will change that.
“It has the potential to be for local news and information what search engines were for the internet: a gateway to vast amounts of data and information that is currently hard to access but highly relevant to people’s lives.
“InYourArea will breathe new life into local news and information, making it more discoverable, relevant and visible than ever before.”
InYourArea is also experimenting with a native advertising platform which will allow them to tailor their ads for specific areas or outlets.
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In your area giving you local news ” from a variety of sources….”
So it’s basically an online local handy numbers type directory
Presumably scraping other companies and providers sites, Facebook, twitter,linked in and instagram amongst them rather than providing their own sources of news then?
TM waving a white flag in terms of being a news provider now coming across as an online news hub
Last week it was providing the most accurate weather forecasts in the world ever , this week it’s other people’s news today!
The poor old ‘head of emerging products’ will be a busy chap coming up with a recycled initiative every week then expecting the sdvreps to flog some local ads around it
And they say real, quality local journalism in this country is dying
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‘ what search engines were for the internet”?
Correction Mr emerging products man :
What search engines ARE for the internet
Not sure how technically challenged he thinks TM readers are bit all the aforementioned info can be readily and easily found with a few clicks,seems like a commercially led solution to a problem which doesn’t exist
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The word I taught my son this week was ‘bunkum’.
Courtesy of Trinity Mirror I have an example.
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So how does this square with Trinity Mirror’s decision to remove the search function from its regional newspaper websites? I’ve never seen any justification for that ….
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Localpeople v2.0 – that project crashed and burned as well after having money poured into it before the execs lost interest, when will the newspaper groups do something truly innovative instead of returning to the same old unproductive ground time after time ?
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Well, I’ve just entered my postcode and the site says it can’t find it….
Oh, hang on; I’m actually on Anglian Water’s website listing current works taking place on the mains network.
Which is also called In Your Area.
Is that what they mean by digital-savvy?
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Same in this empire @webmonkey where flash in the pan ideas are just that and where ad revenue is moved from one area to the next to hit a target and win some kudos before the reps become disillusioned and give up on it.
Local on line directories,call them what you will,are old hat and hark back to the 80s so let’s hope the new director of all things innovative and emerging has better revenue and user generating initiatives to launch than this tired old chestnut as it has the hallmark of failure written all over it.
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Outstanding! Just typed in my postcode (north Cumbria) and received updates from: Essex County Council, Flintshire, the Liverpool Echo, a local website in Newry, Co Down, and Brighton & Hove.
Utterly irrelevant news, but at least it wasn’t fake. Keep up the good work TM!
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What miserable lot you commenters are. Here’s a genuinely interesting piece of innovation, something we should be applauding, whether it’s successful or not, and there’s nothing but scorn on here. Good luck to TM with this.
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I think you missed the point of my post Zenithar how is a local news aggregator innovative? Apart from further enabling tm to automate content harvesting and cut jobs and quality?
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Unfortunately this is a deeply flawed website. I typed in my postcode and selected a number of nearby areas in which I’m interested in events from. The site then came up with a number of items from my highlighted interests…but NOT the areas near me. For instance one item was from Bradwell somewhere in East Anglia not Milton Keynes. Bancroft brought up an item about the actress of that surname not the area. There was mention of a church called St Nicholas in Bradwell – the church in Bradwell, Milton Keynes, is St Lawrence. Methinks Trinity Mirror have got a lot of work to do in making sure they get the right place names with the right content otherwise this will sink like a lead balloon. Back to the drawing board….
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Sorry Zenithar , this is a tired old recycled idea ( I can’t call it an initiative) and certainly isn’t ‘ a genuinely interesting piece of innovation’ for the reasons I and others have stated above, TM really ought to put this kind of idea on the shelf and refocus on clawing back their latest huge revenue losses
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The idea’s not bad (if not original – see TheBrummie/TheStaffie etc – but it’s clunky as hell right now. It’s essentially just looking for the word in a list of feeds, meaning the reader gets the complete opposite of localised news. It’s like throwing a load of newspaper pages from across the country into a room and asking the reader to look for ones which are remotely relevant to them. After all, nothing says localised news like a report from a newspaper website 150 miles from your address.
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