Birmingham Post bloggers provide newspaper splash

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The Birmingham Post has splashed its print and online editions with a news story sourced from the 'army' of bloggers it recruited as part of its online revamp in February . Last Thursday's business blog post by Birmingham University professor David Bailey - on car part manufacturer StadCo - went on to form the basis of a Saturday online and front page news story .

The article was the second splash to run in the paper after taking a lead from the newspaper's tight circle of bloggers.

According to Joanna Geary - who has overseen the paper's blogs since their revamp - such stories show the success of the new network.

"It proves that you still need journalists to write stories, but that there is value in having people who are out there in the community or in the professions, who are interested in keeping an eye on things," she told Journalism.co.uk.

"It's not a case that one could replace the other, they're very much complimentary, which is really exciting."

Editorial staff are being encouraged to look to the blogs for leads, Geary added. The newspaper is also developing a new alerts system to flag up potential story material from blog posts.

"At the end of the day, a good story is a good story. If someone sees that there's a potentially good story that's been generated by the blogs, there's no reason not to follow it up," she said.

In the last week the Post's blogs have been within the top 10 blogs across all of Trinity Mirror Regionals' sites, she added.

In the build-up to the relaunch of the Post's website earlier in the year, the paper consulted Birmingham's blogging community on the development of the new site and sought to recruit a 'small army' of bloggers to participate.

The paper currently has 34 bloggers across three sections - news, business and lifestyle - but is aiming for stronger relationships between contributors, the paper's journalists and the blogs section, Geary added.

"I'd prefer editorial staff to be bloggers and a lot of them are starting to find uses for it," she said.

"We're having more and more people put in inquiries about blogs and about Twitter, I don't see us stopping with the bloggers we have at the moment. We're still very open to getting more journalists on board."