The Lancashire Evening Post is to revolutionise the way its newsroom works in a bid to get closer to readers and extend its reach into the community.

The Johnston Press-owned newspaper has been chosen to pilot a project to create a digital ‘newsroom of the future’ which will see staff producing audio and video content for the web and mobile phones as well as for the main paper.

Four new staff who already have skills and expertise in digital news production are being recruited, and they will be role models for existing staff to be trained to use the new technology.

Editor Simon Reynolds told HoldtheFrontPage: “At the moment we don’t harness all the content we have as cleverly as we should do.

“Some stories work better on the web than they do in print, and vice versa.

“The intention is to learn a lot from this project and shape our coverage by the demands of readers.”

Instead of just producing a printed article for each news story and then repurposing it for the paper’s website www.prestontoday.net, LEP journalists will look at each story on its merits before deciding how best to present it.

This will mean that in future readers may receive an SMS alert about a particular story or download audio or video clips instead of solely reading a printed version.

The project has been made possible thanks to a “significant investment” by Johnston Press.

This is on top of the £200,000 that is already being spent on a three-year research project at the neighbouring University of Central Lancashire, which is exploring how to take full advantage of new digital developments.

Although separate to what is happening at the LEP, both projects will operate side by side, with the LEP newsroom acting as a testing ground for the best ideas.

Simon said: “This is a chance to interact with readers like never before.

“It will also help to improve the paper itself, which will remain our focus.”