Tag Archives: local and regional media

Salford Star: Council newspaper costing £27,797 a month – what impact on local news?

Figures released by a Freedom of Information request made by the Salford Star suggest that Salford Council’s Life in Salford magazine is costing £27,797 per month, the title reports.

The Star asks what the production of the magazine and the council’s expenditure on it mean for local news outlets – the Salford Advertiser has recently withdrawn free home delivery from more postcode areas, while the Star “struggles to get back into print”:

While the Salford Star and the Salford Advertiser are only available free online, an estimated two thirds of Salford’s population do not have access to the internet.

The only free printed information people are now getting about their city comes courtesy of Salford City Council and its Life in Salford magazine. With no criticism of the Council, no debate, no accountability, low quality content and bucket loads of public money showered all over it…

Full story at this link…

Econsultancy: ‘How small newspapers can make money from Twitter’

Ben LaMothe expands upon an idea he had at last week’s news:rewired conference of local newspapers making money through building focused, well-researched Twitter networks.

Newspapers are selling their Twitter streams as an targeted advertising platform. If you’re a small newspaper and you sign up 10 businesses to a Twitter advertising scheme, charge them £100 per week, you could end up with a few thousand pounds worth of advertising revenue.

As your Twitter following grows to a certain point, adjust your rate to reflect the growing audience. If it drops, to a certain point, adjust it down.

Full post at this link…

Press Gazette: MEN shifts part-paid, part-free strategy

The Manchester Evening News is cutting down the number of days on which the paper will be freely available.

The MEN will now be available only as a paid-for edition on Monday to Wednesday and Saturdays. A mixture of free and paid-for copies will still be distributed on Thursdays and Fridays.

The paper began its experiment with distributing free copies in the city centre and paid-for editions in outer areas in April 2006. But uptake of the freebies has recently leapfrogged paid-for sales.

Full story at this link…

TechCrunch: Google to acquire Yelp – a missed opportunity for local news?

Google will buy local business reviews site Yelp for at least $500 million, according to TechCrunch.

The search giant is already building a directory of local businesses with its Place Pages, which makes use of its maps and local search tools. Yelp already has data on this and ratings and reviews of local businesses from users.

As media blogger and author Jeff Jarvis points out via Twitter, Google can strengthen its positioning in the local advertising market and has spotted an opportunity in online communities around local business that other media, including newspapers, may have missed.

Full story at this link…

Bing’s Local Lens app – potential for local news journalists?

Via Lost Remote, a demonstration of a new application from Bing (Microsoft’s search property). Local Lens is a ‘neighbourhood blog app’ and can plot hundreds of blogs within a specific area on a map. The most recent posts will also be displayed and tweets can be overlayed on the map too.

The app is currently in beta and so only covers a group of US cities at the moment. The Los Angeles map is at this link and shown below:

Map from Bing's Local Lens application

But there’s potential here for tracking how local news and issues break and spread on blogs, as well as creating a visualisation of local social media reaction to an event or report.


#aopforum: Live coverage on microlocal media discussion

UPDATE – the liveblogs seem to have stalled – we spoke too soon, so below is a tweetstream from the event so far featuring Guardian local launch editor, Sarah Hartley; Birmingham City University senior lecturer, Paul Bradshaw; and Trinity Mirror head of multimedia, David Higgerson:

For those of us unable to attend today’s Association of Online Publishers (AOP) forum on microlocal media (hyperlocal/ultralocal/local – whatever you want to call it), we’re lucky to have the liveblogging skills of journalist Caroline Beavon, who will be covering the sessions as they happen from 2:30pm.

Guardian Letters: GMG, Coventry Telegraph and Cumberland news respond to Monbiot on local press

Les Reid, political correspondent for the Coventry Evening Telegraph; Mark Dodson, CEO of Guardian Media Group’s regional media division; and Neil Hodgkinson, Cumberland News and News & Star editor, have responded passionately to George Monbiot’s criticism of the UK’s local press earlier this week.

In his Comment is Free piece entitled ‘I, too, mourn good local newspapers. But this lot just aren’t worth saving‘, Monbiot said:

“For many years the local press has been one of Britain’s most potent threats to democracy, championing the overdog, misrepresenting democratic choices, defending business, the police and local elites from those who seek to challenge them. Media commentators lament the death of what might have been. It bears no relationship to what is.”

“They [local newspapers] continually uncover stories that need to be told. They campaign for and champion the underdog with a tenacity that would shame many in the national press. Their community relevance is what keeps local titles alive,” writes Dodson in response.

“In Greater Manchester our journalists stand up in court at least three times a week attempting to have reporting restrictions lifted so that stories can be told in full. I know that other regional press publishers share our commitment to real local reporting.”

Full letters at this link…

George Monbiot: Local newspapers are dying – but are they worth saving?

George Monbiot’s latest Comment is Free contribution is sure to spark debate.

Entitled ‘I, too, mourn good local newspapers. But this lot just aren’t worth saving’, Monbiot, apparently prompted by his local newspaper, writes:

“For many years the local press has been one of Britain’s most potent threats to democracy, championing the overdog, misrepresenting democratic choices, defending business, the police and local elites from those who seek to challenge them. Media commentators lament the death of what might have been. It bears no relationship to what is.”

Full post at this link…

MEN: Manchester Evening News launches iPhone news app

The Manchester Evening News (MEN) has become one of the first UK regional titles to launch a news application for the iPhone.

The free-to-download app, which was launched on October 2, has already been downloaded 1,000 times, according to an MEN report.

MEN, which has a mobile site, will tap into smartphone users with the app and also encourage users to share news items on Twitter and Facebook.

A short video of the app, which was developed by Spreed Inc – who also created Canadian newspaper the Globe and Mail’s iPhone app, can be seen below:

Full story at this link…