AddThis SmartLayers

Newsquest to appoint second manager to oversee community content roll-out

Regional publisher Newsquest is creating a second new role to oversee its new Google-funded initiative to help people submit stories to its newspaper titles.

As reported earlier this year, the publisher won  €398,000 (£345,165) funding from the technology giant to develop a tool to help members of the public submit ready-for-publication content, enabling its journalists to spend less time repackaging such content and more time on original reporting.

Newsquest has since appointed a community manager to oversee the rollout of the ‘Loquial’ project in the North of England with Simone O’Kane taking up the position this week.

It is now looking to appoint a second manager, covering the South of England, and the role is being advertised on HoldtheFrontPage here.

Simone, pictured, has rejoined Newsquest after working in PR and running her own digital content business.

Her role will be to work with the group’s editorial teams to develop their own sourced of community content from contacts and members of the public.

She said: “This is a fantastic way for publications to be achieving more in-depth and quality news reporting from professional journalists whilst working closely with community contributors that can submit the easy to generate content.

“I am pleased to be helping to build relationships within the community to ensure a successful future for the industry.”

Newsquest editorial director Toby Granville added: “Simone is doing a brilliant job building relationships between the community and editorial teams to get high quality contributed content.

“This is key to freeing up our valuable journalists’ time to focus on the sort of high impact, in-depth reporting that remains central to the strength and trust of our brands.”