A regional editor has credited a push to get his journalists out on the streets more for a readership boost that has pushed his title close to the top of the online audience charts.

The Birmingham Mail’s Graeme Brown said the strategy was responsible for its Birmingham Live sister website coming second in the latest figures by market research firm Ipsos.

They showed the online title’s audience increased by more than 23pc month-on-month between May and June from 6,603,000 unique users to 8,142,000.

Graeme, pictured, hailed what he called a “new discipline” in his newsroom for the growth as his journalists sought to tackle industry-wide online engagement issues, including changes to Facebook algorithms that Mail publisher Reach blamed in May for a slump in digital revenue.

He told HTFP: “This growth has been hard-earned and is a real team effort – from reporters and photographers to content editors and the audience team.

“There’s no secret it’s tougher to access digital audiences than it has been – Facebook’s retrenchment and the well-publicised tinkering with Twitter, or X I should say, gives us all a lot to think about.

“But we have sought to take the challenge head on – by putting our readers at the heart of our coverage.

“We have brought about a new discipline around reporting in communities, which means the people of Birmingham and the Black Country have been seeing a lot more of our reporters and photographers.

“Some examples include visiting the Birmingham estate where residents fear the £2.2 billion project might ‘kill off’ elderly neighbours, Nathan Clarke spending two hours cycling around Birmingham after a spate of deaths and Jamie Brassington meeting a homeless man living under a bridge.

“There’s also the bits you don’t see. Our audience team, overseeing dozens of social media pages and more than 40 newsletters, have really analysed what our readers want from us and responded with the stories they are interested in.”

For the third consecutive month, the Mail’s sister title the Manchester Evening News topped the charts with 8,427,000 unique users, although it experienced as 12pc decline during the period.

The latest figures, covering around 200 regional and local titles, also showed a double victory for Newsquest’s Colchester Daily Gazette, which topped the charts both in terms of average length of visit and average number of page views.

Readers spent more than 13 minutes on average on the Gazette’s site, viewing almost 26 pages as they did so.

The full list showing the total number of unique users is below. Scroll down for the table showing average number of page views per user and average minutes per user tables.

Table 1: Overall audience (unique users)

Table 2: Average number of page views per user

Table 3: Average minutes per user