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Teesside Evening Gazette to recruit 1,000 citizen journalists for hyperlocal sites

Posted: 24/09/08 By: Laura Oliver

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Screenshot of Teesside Evening Gazette's community websites homepage

Trinity Mirror's Teesside Evening Gazette is aiming to increase the number of contributors to its hyperlocal network of news websites to 1,000 over the next 12 months.

The postcode-based community websites, which were rolled out from January last year as 'cousins' to the paper's Gazette Live website, feature content written and posted directly by a combination of non-journalists and the Gazette's editorial team.

While the 22 sites currently have around 400 registered contributors, the paper is planning to recruit a host of new bloggers and community correspondents, Darren Thwaites, editor of the Evening Gazette, told today's Regional Media Research Forum's Insight Day.

New contributors will be approached by the Gazette's two community coordinators, who are responsible for moderating and posting additional content to the sites.

Investment is being made to grow the number of staff assigned to the series of sites, which now attract 150,000 unique users a month, he added.

Geotagging of content on the TS postcode sites is being experimented with to produce maps of local news and information, such as changes in petrol prices, said Thwaites.

Monetising the sites is also a key priority, as the advertising revenue currently being generated from the project is largely a result of reverse publishing, he said.

"We're making money off these sites but the key reason behind this is five print products from the best areas demographically. However, key to these print products is the quality of the content on the websites," he said.

Targeted and low cost advertising deals for local businesses could be trialled on the sites, he added.

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