Good news stories about regional journalism can be hard to find. But for the Belfast Telegraph and Sunday Life in Northern Ireland, more than a dozen industry awards across a wide array of disciplines made 2024 a stand-out year.
The Belfast Telegraph was the biggest winner at the 2024 Regional Press Awards in April, where its eight wins included News Brand of the Year, News Website of the Year and the inaugural Best Live Coverage award.
And its two-part podcast “Killing Edgar: The IRA Murder of the Lawyer Edgar Graham” won silver in the News Documentary Special category and was a finalist in the Investigative Report category at the prestigious New York Festivals Radio Awards the same month.
Named UK Regional News Media Organisation in November at the Society of Editors’ Media Freedom Awards, meanwhile, it was praised by the judges for outstanding achievement in defending the public’s right to know.
All this suggests the 154-year-old title — which serves a uniquely competitive marketplace in which three local dailies go head-to-head both with Irish dailies and UK-wide daily titles — is more than fulfilling its promise to “Tell it like it is” with “Real stories worth paying for”.
But in a declining UK news media sector — where news media (newspapers and magazines combined) advertising fell from 39% of total UK ad spend in 2007 to just 6% in 2022, according to one estimate published last year — there’s an obvious question: how?
According to Eoin Brannigan, who joined the Belfast Telegraph and Sunday Life as editor-in-chief in 2020 from the Irish Daily Star — where he spent 19 years, the final three as editor — the answer lies in a combination of what he calls signature journalism, strategy and trust.
Signature journalism
“Signature journalism is what makes you stand out and builds you an audience. Often, when people think of the regional and local press, they think of councils and courts — and in Northern Ireland, politics,” he explains.
“And we are that. But we are also a half-way house between regional and national, which means very often our news, our politics, is national and even international.”
The Belfast Telegraph employs some of Northern Ireland’s most trusted and respected journalists, such as Sam McBride, Allison Morris and Suzanne Breen.
And it has been widely praised for its coverage of many important stories — such as the Police Service of Northern Ireland data breach, the pollution of Lough Neagh and the Renewable Heat Incentive scandal in the past couple of years.
So, signature is about quality. But that doesn’t just mean doing lots of long, deep dives.
“Much of our success is from engaging local audiences with the local stories local media should tell. One of the pitfalls to avoid is concentrating on courts and council and forgetting the entertaining, lighter stuff. You need a mix,” Brannigan explains.
“You can’t just concentrate on premium journalism. It’s about realising the different appeal to your audience of covering local businesses — which we find is popular, or high finance. And we’ve found that there’s a real interest in our kind of what I suppose you might call consumer-facing business journalism.”
Having the right mix of content and constantly refreshing it, rather than simply curating or re-packaging it, is key to driving people to the website where an array of content formats are on offer to encourage visitors to subscribe — a critical part of the title’s digital-first strategy put in place by its owner, Mediahuis.
Strategy
Mediahuis, the European multinational media group headquartered in Belgium, acquired Belfast Telegraph’s publisher Independent News & Media (INM) in 2019 — the year before Brannigan took up his current role — then re-branded INM as Mediahuis two years later.
Today, Mediahuis publishes some of the island of Ireland’s most popular titles — which also include the Sunday Independent and Irish Independent. Cumulatively, its titles there reach millions of people daily and combined subscriptions of all the titles it owns there are 90,000.
The Belfast Telegraph and belfasttelegraph.co.uk reach 174,633 adults daily across print and online (TGI NI 2024).
With its experience, skills and resources, Mediahuis has invested in the former INM brands to significantly enhance their operational and digital capabilities. The group’s declared assumption is that daily newspapers will soon disappear and its stated aim is a target of reversing its titles’ current 70:30 print:digital revenue split to 30:70 by 2030.
As a result of Mediahuis’ backing, the plan the Belfast Telegraph is now working through is more strategic and with a longer-term vision than it might otherwise have had.
Its paywall, which went live soon after the Mediahuis acquisition, has just over 12,800 subscribers in November 2024 — making it one of the biggest subscribing local media brands in the UK.
It has since introduced a registration wall to help further build the customer base and to date, just over 49,200 people have signed up. Separately, just over 76,000 people are signed up for the Belfast Telegraph’s daily newsletter.
A further 10,000 or so people are signed up to receive columnist Sam McBride’s Belfast Telegraph Uncovered — a newsletter that offers insight into how Belfast Telegraph stories come about, rather than simply regurgitating stories just published throughout the week.
Focus next is on encouraging registered users to subscribe, then growing the value of each subscription.
In Northern Ireland, one of only two UK nations where a local news title reaches more than half the population, the Belfast Telegraph had the third-highest reach among adults at 51%, behind the BBC and MailOnline respectively, according to latest Ofcom research.
In addition, there has been investment in developing existing and launching new formats. A recent redesign of the Belfast Telegraph’s print product will be followed by a print redesign for Sunday Life in 2025.
There are plans for a website redesign, too, with a focus on developing a more mobile-friendly user experience.
“I’m proud of how we’ve integrated Sunday Life (a standalone tabloid with its own editor and writers, identity, and a strength in crime and show business) content into the Belfast Telegraph website across the week,” Brannigan observes.
“It’s been a driver of our success online.”
Meanwhile, efforts to grow the title’s suite of newsletters — sports and weekend lifestyle newsletters are now planned, along with more podcasts — are now underway.
An upgrading of audio facilities to better support video is also on the cards for 2025. Meanwhile, potential to add other products — by leveraging what’s been done elsewhere in the group or introducing games or cookery apps — is under constant review.
“It’s all about preparing for when we’re not selling print products seven days a week, whenever that will be,” he explains.
“If you love print, it’s sad. But you’ve got to realise when the audience aren’t there — teenage girls, for example, don’t go anywhere near linear TV or Facebook let alone print. People are not going to come back. We have to find our audiences where they are.”
Trust
The final factor in the Belfast Telegraph’s recent success is trust — and with it, transparency — both of which Mediahuis hold dear.
As a group, Mediahuis is close to achieving The Trust Project accreditation.
As part of this, it has been strengthening standards and policies, publishing its editorial codes, and partnering the Edelman Trust Barometer to regularly monitor progress towards achieving greater trust and credibility.
And in the same spirit, it is placing trust and transparency at the heart of its emerging approach to AI — something Brannigan says they are monitoring closely, and encouraging journalists to understand through experimentation. However, he adds, there is no firm policy relating to when and how AI might be actively deployed at the title — at least not yet.
Access to an all-Ireland legal team via Mediahuis also enabled the Belfast Telegraph to play an important role making the local media case in a challenge against restrictions put on media freedoms in Northern Ireland — restrictions on reporting court cases, for example, and appealing decisions taken by the Information Commissioner’s Office.
And the title also benefits from its parent group’s Mediahuis Emerging Talent Programme (METPro), Brannigan is keen to point out.
This means it has had a METPro trainee journalist joining its editorial team each September for the past three years — his hope being to encourage journalists into the business who might not necessarily come to journalism via a traditional route.
Looking ahead, Brannigan says, while becoming part of Mediahuis has had many benefits for the Belfast Telegraph and Sunday Life, its future — like that of the regional press — is by no means certain.
“As I didn’t come up through the regional press — I’m a bit of an outsider, which maybe gives me a fresh perspective — I’d not claim to be a regional press expert,” he is quick to point out.
“But what I can say is that I’m working for a regional title and though we face our own particular challenges, we’re doing quite well. We have a group, and a group strategy, to fall back on — whereas if you’re one on your own, well, you just wouldn’t be sustainable.”
Looking back on the past year, Brannigan says one of the most rewarding things has been that pretty much every single part of the Belfast Telegraph’s editorial offering has been recognised by being nominated or winning an award.
Looking forward, he adds, there’s only one focus: to further develop and build on the digital-first strategy by going where the audience is while prioritising what that audience wants: great local, regional, national and international content.
This article was first published in InPublishing magazine. If you would like to be added to the free mailing list to receive the magazine, please register here.
