Regional publisher Trinity Mirror is launching the next phase of its ‘digital first’ strategy with a fresh set of changes to newsroom practices.
‘Connected Newsroom’ aims to build on the introduction of the ‘Newsroom 3.1′ strategy first introduced at Trinity’s North East titles in April 2014 and subsequently rolled out across the group last year.
It will mean increased use of audience data along with the introduction of individual and team audience goals to ensure editorial resources are focused on the most popular content.
The move will see “a handful” of redundancies at the group’s Manchester, Huddersfield and Welsh titles and also some new roles created, but the publisher says the strategy is “not about cutting or creating jobs.”
In a statement, the group said the key aim of the initiative was to facilitate local audience growth, with “increased use of analytics and trends analysis to focus on producing content that audiences want to read.”
Separate announcements were being made this afternoon at individual TM centres, which also include Merseyside, the North East and the West Midlands.
Editorial director for regionals Neil Benson, left, said: “Across Trinity Mirror we are at the forefront of the essential transition that is needed to adapt to changing consumer behaviour in the media industry.
“Our regional daily businesses have been leading the way with the evolution of the digital-first newsroom which has had a significant impact on our audience growth, making us the fastest growing regional publisher in 2014 and the first half of 2015.
“We are now introducing the next iteration – the Connected Newsroom. The ambition is to grow our local and engaged audience by sharpening our focus on providing content that is relevant to our audiences through the channels that suit them.
“This will be achieved by extending the digital-first approach, concentrating on local core content, driven by audience analytics and trends analysis.”
Trinity Mirror North East editor-in-chief Darren Thwaites announced the proposals as they affect his own region in an email to staff that has been seen by HoldtheFrontPage.
He said: “The proposals involve changes to some of our working practices and the focus of some roles to reflect the changing needs of our audience. However, we believe we can achieve our objectives in the North East without the need for any redundancies.”
The key proposed changes for Newcastle include:
- Using local audience data to switch resource from the least popular to the most popular content, while preserving “essential brand values.”
- Introducing individual and team audience goals to ensure journalists are “working on the right stories at the right pace” and sharing workloads fairly.
- Re-focusing the role of content editors to ensure audience goals are managed effectively, and changing the focus of writers to match audience needs.
- Creating a sports managing editor role from within existing resource.
Added Darren: “It’s important to note that while we need to change and adapt the way we operate, we don’t regard any proposed changes to roles as fundamental and we do not consider any roles redundant.”
The changes will start to be introduced from the end of this month across Trinity Mirror’s regional businesses in Merseyside, Cheshire and North Wales, Manchester and Huddersfield, Wales and the North East.
The new-look newsrooms are expected to be fully in place by the start of 2016.
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Editorial directors regionals
Content editors
Editor in chief
Sports managing editor
And that’s just in a couple of paragraphs!
How many layers of managerial structure do they need there?
…And they talk about managers managing managers
Remind me please,what do these people actually do?
And who does the real work?
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“We are introducing the next iteration…” You what? I’m quite happy with the iterations as they are, thanks, so you know what you can do with that. When do these people start to lose their grip on the English language? What is all this really saying? More salacious showbiz rubbish online? Honestly.
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* shudder
We all know what this means. 10 reporters laid off and the editor’s mate given the role of digital discombobulations editor.
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Nope! Tried reading it.
Can’t.
What I did get rhymes with rowlocks..
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What impact will this have on investigative journalism? Big stories that get a lot of attention don’t drop out of nowhere, they start with quite dull articles that lead to whistleblowers coming forward etc. Watergate wasn’t splashed in a day. I worry these won’t be published under the new system as this will be focussed on articles that are instantly popular.
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using local audience research etc etc … in other words we will publish only the stories that people would like and not those that might upset them.
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@Left of the dial
Be careful what you wish for, Archants ‘investigations unit ‘ is a case in point, a team with new pencils and trilby hats and with a nine month life expectancy ( it’s review period runs out just before Christmas, the traditional slaying time for ‘ restructures ‘ and ‘ review ‘ periods nicely in time for fresh starts in January) producing laughable ‘ investigations ‘ along the lines of council tax higher the bigger your house is shock horror! Or North Norfolk population mainly old folk scoop!
And jobs for the boys?
Friends slipped in to top table positions?
As if! Whatever next!
Nothing like that’s happened in Norfolk and Suffolk I can tell you
Definitely No friends from the pay per view digital world and none with any print or newspaper experience brought in there , move along please
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Introducing individual and team audience goals to ensure journalists are “working on the right stories at the right pace”
That sentence should chill the bones of every journalist. If you’re not being read, you face the tin tack. Shocking.
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‘Hey boss we’re going to blow City Hall wide open with this story…
…because that’s where the winner of Huddersfield’s biggest booty and Kim Kardashian lookalike twerking competition works!’
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Why is a new look newsroom like a No 63 bus?
There’ll be another one along in a minute.
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Newsroom 3.1, Connected Newsroom, iteration… FFS. Does anyone have any faith in anything TM does? * resounding silence ensues. There are no words anymore…
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You have to respect TM for giving it a go and for at least having a plan. Yes this will lead to even more focus on crime, footy, road accidents and takeaways failing hygiene tests. But their websites and digital output is now streets ahead of Newsquest, while Johnston seems almost to have given up.
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Fair play for trying. Again. But how many times do you have to fail before someone says ‘okay, step aside, this just isn’t working’.
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Sex and showbiz are the internet’s twin peaks and “drive audience.”
But it’s not a particularly good agenda for the future of regional journalism, is it?
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Barry Chuckle: ‘You have to respect TM for giving it a go’.A go? You mean another fine plan (mess) Barry – they have about three a year and, whoops, there go more jobs as they reshuffle so much they must be dizzy. I’ve just had a big session of your surname!
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No wonder the bosses are so dismissive of the BBC’s plan to step up its local court & council coverage. Council in particular is the sort of stuff that never ticks the audience boxes, but it’s far more important than sex ‘n’ showbiz. These days I am far less anxious for the industry as it goes down the Take A Break route & much more afraid for the communities TM, NQ etc claim to serve.
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I don’t understand a word of this. Can someone tell me if there is an English translation available?
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The most read stories on our website are far and away breaking stories – road crash, fire, crime etc
so the person on call or by phone (random chance) will have great figures by accident rather than by any use of effort or skill.
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It’s a great worry that people who spout this nonsense are in charge of journalists. Hardly sets a good example, does it? I do wish they would stop talking about newsrooms when they actually mean news factories. A bit more honesty needed from above so let’s also stop pretending that getting rid of subs and photographers is anything but cost cutting. It certainly isn’t progress. My generation has never resisted sensible change. After all, we started off using typewriters, em rules, pencils and paper layout pads!
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I do wonder what planet some HTFP commenters live on.
What do they think regional media bosses can do?
They could double the editorial staff and it would not make any difference to sales. People are now used to getting their news free and digitally.
There won’t be any daily regional papers in 20 years so they have to try something and plan for a digital first and then digital only landscape.
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Pity ‘the handful’. A throw away line to a suit but a wife, two kids and a mortgage for some poor soul.
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Mark, I’ve said a few times on here and to be fair I think most agree, this isn’t about print vs digital, it’s about journalism vs content.
If you worked as a print journalist in a newspaper, any newspaper, no matter how underfunded it was, and your editor sent you out to get a story, and you came back with a photo of the sunset over the river Thames and said ‘why don’t we put that on page three under the headline ‘what a lovely sunset’, you’d get a well earned slap around the head.
If the web was merely a platform for well written, well researched news and features with good quality video and pictures then that would be great – I’m genuinely all for that.
But it’s not, it’s a 21-year-old reporter doing a vox pop on their own phone and asking people what they think of the rain.
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I’m with submerged. I could not work out what any of it was supposed to mean – it was just waffle
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This has since been translated for me. So journos are measured by how many hits they get on stories and penalised for getting few. So tackier and dafter the better then? Or if you are lucky enough to have a decent footy team in your patch – lots and lots of footy
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I was pulled up on here a couple of weeks back for suggesting something about digital the wasn’t befitting of what media companies are…..businesses.
Now tell me what use to a business is a story nobody reads?
Even what we consider to be a great investigation, lovingly worked on for hours, more often than not has little uptake.
I have seen campaigns played out in front of dozens online. Splashed on every day in print with no increase in sales…..because it’s a good story.
It’s like saying you bang your head on a wall to see how nice it is when you stop! Why do it in the first place.
Yes we can hark back to the values of journalism, but we are not in an age where we can do that.
We don’t have scores of reporters meaning someone can take days working on a single piece while the others take up the slack.
And the consumer is voting. Newspaper sales have been falling, like it or not, before we ‘went digital’, because we didn’t give the consumer what they wanted.
Now we have the data to do that, and must do so.
Also for those who ‘don’t understand’ this announcement I pity you, genuinely. Either you’re no longer in the industry, work in newsrooms that are not keeping pace, or you have your head in a big expanse of sand somewhere
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More reshuffles than a Las Vegas casino
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‘give the consumer what they want’
Except they’re not consumers, because it’s all free.
May as well write it on a bus stop.
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Jeff Jones – a consumer doesn’t have to purchase, simply use, so yes people who use websites are consumers.
Second, if they don’t pay a ‘cover price/subscription’ they don’t deserve something they might find useful or entertaining?
They are the very reason we can make some cash out of this, probably best we have them on board
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Consumer – “a person who purchases goods and services for personal use.:
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And when (fiddled figures apart) is any of this GENUINELY going to make money? Meanwhile the golden goose of print has been sidelined, to put it mildly
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Not to get into a stupid back and forth but:
Consumer: A person or thing that eats or uses something
Using a website/internet = consuming
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the first regional website to link to hardcore porn is going to see its figures go through the roof….my money is on some poor journo working 15 hour days uploading cat galleries to suddenly link to big british hooters.
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