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Johnston Press unveils first phase of website improvements

Larger and higher quality images, a quicker video player and faster loading of pages are among the new features introduced by a regional publisher to its titles’ websites.

Johnston Press has unveiled the initial stage of a “planned roll-out” of improvements to its sites over the course of 2015, undertaken by the company’s digital product team.

Under the first phase of the series of improvements, journalists now have the option to add YouTube videos, embedded tweets, pull-quotes and article summaries to their web stories.

The upgrade offers the ability to display multiple images within the same online article, and promises better links across sites with “clearer onward journeys”.

Embedded tweet and pull-out quote featured on the website of The Star, Sheffield, as part of JP's website improvements

Embedded tweet and pull-out quote featured on the website of The Star, Sheffield, as part of JP’s website improvements

A new html5 video player, ensuring videos are loaded and played much quicker on mobile and tablet devices, also features.

Readers on mobile devices are also given clearer tools for sharing articles on social media, with a toolbar pinned as they scroll down the content.

A spokeswoman for Johnston Press said: “These changes are part of a planned roll-out of improvements which will improve the user experience and we’ll be unveiling some additional improvements throughout the year.”

Wednesday’s ABC figures revealed a total of 950,679 unique daily users visited Johnston Press websites, a percentage increase of 32.7pc, during the second half of July 2014.

The social media sharing toolbar and an embedded YouTube video on the Yorkshire Evening Post's website

The social media sharing toolbar and an embedded YouTube video on the Yorkshire Evening Post’s website

24 comments

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  • February 27, 2015 at 9:30 am
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    Congratulations to Johnston Press, they have finally worked out that visual content matters.

    Now where did they put all those photographers ? Remember them ? Those worthless people who can produce the “higher quality images”……

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  • February 27, 2015 at 9:47 am
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    Loads more ‘unique daily users’, ‘improving the user experience’. Nothing about how much it will cost or increased revenue.
    Once again print being sacrificed on the online altar.
    The website butterfly will rise and die.
    Long live print.

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  • February 27, 2015 at 10:29 am
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    JP supremo Ashley Highfield should be promoted to doing Tweet of the Day on BBC Radio 4 alongside those old pals David Attenborough and Michael Palin.

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  • February 27, 2015 at 10:38 am
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    Just got to accept these sites aren’t aimed at us. I’m only in my 40s, but I don’t watch any videos/ TV/ films on mobiles or tablets or equivalent, I watch stuff on a big screen. So people like me are bound to be sceptical, but the future isn’t us sadly. I’ll nick from the Bob Dylan I think

    Your old road is
    Rapidly agin’
    Please get out of the new one
    If you can’t lend your hand
    For the times they are a-changin’.

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  • February 27, 2015 at 11:32 am
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    Will the ‘planned roll-out of improvements’ include anything that might improve the editorial content of the content of the sites – you know, the stuff people actually read, the stuff that might bring them there in the first place – or is that just a naive attitude? Still, it’s good to know that pull-quotes facility is improving.

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  • February 27, 2015 at 12:19 pm
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    @ Mr T – are you actually stating that the web is going nowhere? Clearly you live under a rock. Also is all this going to be done in India as well? Nice to know another UK based company is squeezing its profits from overseas workforce’s.

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  • February 27, 2015 at 12:53 pm
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    Scoops right. Take a look at the ABC figures (except JP who are too scared to publish them). Still going down, down, down. Just as old hacks condemned as perpetual moaners predicted, usually before they quit if they could.
    There is a new media world out there and though I love papers I think young hacks in 20s will embrace and enjoy the future. They had better, by time they are 30 there won’t be anything else.
    Jobs warning: There won’t be so many jobs in the brave new world. That is the whole point of it!!

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  • February 27, 2015 at 1:27 pm
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    ‘Higher quality images’..from where JP?..remember you’ve got rid of all your photographers,as usual make it up as you go along

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  • February 27, 2015 at 2:27 pm
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    TrUtHsEEkEr, at least this sub-rock dweller knows how to use an apostrophe (workforces is a plural).
    You are probably a fan of the error-ridden, bad-written online fluffy pap masquerading as news.
    Newspaper websites are not making money. Print editions are.

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  • February 27, 2015 at 2:35 pm
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    TrUtHsEEkEr … to write in such a manner, you are obviously an online reporter.

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  • February 27, 2015 at 2:36 pm
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    “Higher quality images” to make up for the lack of quality reporting.

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  • February 27, 2015 at 2:41 pm
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    While I’m totally cynical about anything that JP does given its previous record Mr T should wake up and get real. Print is dying, wherever you look. Newspaper circulations are declining drastically, month on month, year on year. We live in a digital world. More and more people get their news via a tablet whether they are 20 or 70. Tablets sell to the so called older generation in equal numbers to the younger generation – ask any retailer – because they are easy to use. I used to buy a printed newspaper years ago but found there was so mich I didn’t read that I now check my news online. It’s so much easier.
    Mr T, if you don”t adapt, you die, simple as.

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  • February 27, 2015 at 4:22 pm
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    I wouldn’t call you cynical at all. I’d call you something unprintable. You’re probably one of those who thinks any journalist over the age of 50 is unemployable.

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  • February 27, 2015 at 4:50 pm
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    Good. A better web site. Any chance of some better stories and fewer repeats? Ta.

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  • February 27, 2015 at 5:36 pm
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    Maybe this will prompt the JP newsrooms to blow the dust off the video production suite JP spent thousands on. The one in my office has never been used, 8 years and counting.

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  • February 27, 2015 at 6:59 pm
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    I wonder how the broadband in my rural part of the East Midlands, with its small country towns, will cope.
    Probably not as my local councils, both district and county, have schemes to help with rural provision.
    I also wonder about the residents I serve, especially as there are many more elderly than in other parts of the country.
    It is partly why the local JP papers there still do well, thanks also to the excellence of its surviving journalists who still have those strong links to their local communities.
    I can only hope JP doesn’t fix what isn’t broken.

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  • February 28, 2015 at 10:37 am
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    I am not a viewer of JP websites, so cannot really make comment on them, but I wish JP would do one job to completion before moving on to the next ‘soundbite’ that it thinks may add readers. The costly relaunch of the YP clearly failed, with the awful (-8.9) ABC figures, and no doubt the EP will fair no better: it could do with a boost, being down a shocking -15. Within that redesigned title there are still ads containing old branding, in fact the family notices intro was designed before creative staff were made redundant. The talk of higher quality is a joke: the company has let talented and experienced staff go. Where is higher quality coming from? Can they really believe it is from UGC and new technology? Check your titles every day, and make sure they are spot on first: it’s the content readers are paying for.

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  • February 28, 2015 at 5:06 pm
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    Weekend news reporter coverage on JP weekly webs looks pretty thin if non-existent to me. Does anyone gather news at weekends? I think they used to?
    Not much good having great webs if you are behind the news. Digital first remember Ashers! Get some more staff in.

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  • March 1, 2015 at 3:39 pm
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    Get out of your ivory tower Ashley, tour the offices and you will see there are barely enough reporters to scrape a paper out. A better website is a great idea. It can only work if you have enough staff to feed it live, good quality material seven days a week. Can you arrange that?
    Don’t ask your middle managers. They will tell you what you like to hear. “Everything is all right.”

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  • March 1, 2015 at 3:43 pm
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    Mr I, I guess I’ve obviously led you to believe that I’m some upstart whippersnapper. Please don’t jump to conclusions. I’ll give you some clues. I spent 36 years as a journalist on local newspapers before I was one of a number made redundant. Unfortunately I qualify for my free bus pass and free prescriptions later this year. If you cannot accept the reality of what is happening then I have sympathy for you. I don’t believe that anyone over 50 is unemployable but unfortunately employers seem to think that it is OK to ditch years of experience in favour of cheaper, younger labour. That is why I and others are no longer in what is a shrinking industry. Rest assured we are unlikely to be having this debate in five years’ time when there will be precious few printed newspapers existing. Get out while you can.

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  • March 2, 2015 at 6:04 pm
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    |”Print is dying, wherever you look. Newspaper circulations are declining drastically, month on month, year on year. We live in a digital world. More and more people get their news via a tablet whether they are 20 or 70.”

    It may be, but printed products are still responsible for 90 per cent of newspaper revenues (give or take).
    And those rapidly increasing digital profits… they do not take into account any of the journalist cost which produced them.
    Not difficult to make a profit if you have no costs!

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  • March 2, 2015 at 10:44 pm
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    Young people who think they are proper newspaper journos need to build a time machine. They are e mail retypers to feed websites. A shame, but their IT skills are more valuable nowadays.

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  • March 3, 2015 at 12:35 pm
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    Webworker hits the nail on the head. We no longer have the staff to cover weekends, take pictures, film and upload videos or even go and see people, so how do we fill these improved websites?
    Ashley and his team don’t seem to realise that meeting the immediacy of the web requires more not less staff. l can’t be uploading stuff and doing the next job on the diary at the same time.

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