The Connected Newsroom builds on the successful Newsroom 3.1 strategy which was first introduced in the North East in April 2014 and subsequently rolled out to all of Trinity Mirror’s regional daily businesses, says Trinity Mirror.
This is a key part of the strategy to further adapt the business to the changing media landscape. The latest ABC figures released in August reconfirmed that the company is the biggest and fastest growing regional publisher in the UK, with six out of ten of the biggest regional digital news sites, says the company.
The key principle of the Connected Newsroom is a continuation of the digital first approach introduced in Newsroom 3.1, but with the ambition of growing a local and engaged audience. This will be facilitated with an increased use of analytics and trends analysis to focus on producing content that audiences want to read, when and how they want to read it. All editorial teams will be focused on these audience goals, which will also be achieved with a mobile-centric approach and greater use of video.
Neil Benson, Editorial Director for Regionals at Trinity Mirror, 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.”
The changes will start to be introduced from the end of September across Trinity Mirror’s core regional businesses in Merseyside, Cheshire and North Wales, Manchester and Huddersfield, Wales and the North East. Birmingham and Coventry introduced similar changes earlier in the summer.
