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Newspaper enjoy web traffic spike for Royal visit

Two weekly newspapers in North London saw a sharp spike in web traffic after a visit by Prince Charles and the Duchess of Cornwall to open a museum in the area.

The Harrow Times and Harrow and Wembley Observer covered the visit live on their websites, with Times reporter Bruce Thain tweeting live from the event and tweets uploaded to a live blog alongside tweets from readers.

Both papers produced in depth coverage of the visit to open Bentley Priory Battle of Britain Museum after securing passes under the Royal Rota scheme administered by the Newspaper Society.

Observer news editor Mhairi Macfarlane said: “The royal visit at the opening of Bentley Priory Museum had great importance to us in Harrow as many local people campaigned to have a museum there – supported by the Harrow Observer’s Save Bentley Priory campaign.”

Group editor Martin Buhagiar added: “The live blog and Bruce Thain’s article following the Royal Visit were the most read articles last week on the Harrow Times website and so far have attracted 11,728 page views between them.

“We are always delighted to cover Royal visits and, because we are very much a web first newspaper, we really believe we do them justice both online and in print.”