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Reader help as Midlands title eyes online revamp

The Birmingham Post is getting a new website – and it wants readers to shape its future.

When Trinity Mirror decided to hang on to the morning daily after it was up for sale earlier this year with a clutch of other regional titles, the company alluded to an IT upgrade and new look website for the regional title.

And now Post readers can contribute their ideas for how they want the new site to look.

Editor Marc Reeves said: “We’re at the really early stages – what we’re doing on the Post is taking a look at what we offer our readers.

“What we are trying to do is make sure everything we do online is making the most of that. It’s just asking customers what they want.

“And we have learned there are some really clever brains out there who want to make this work.”

Post reporter Joanna Geary writes an online blog – Thoughts of a twenty-something regional newspaper journalist… – in which she appeals for readers to air their views on the future of the Post’s site.

Marc added: “We have got a good means for developing ideas and getting it under way. We can come up with a shopping list of 50 things we want to do and then see which ones we can actually do.

“The fact is business people make up the majority of our readership so we have to bear that in mind. There’s also the political coverage that drives our readers.

“It’s all part of the mix and it’s quite a challenge. My main thing is to get it right.”

The paper is currently training two of its reporters how to be web journalists with a view to launching the site early next year.

If successful, further journalists will undergo internet training.