'Since integration we've seen traffic grow by 90 per cent' Nottingham Evening Post dep editor

After nine months of gradual restructuring the Nottingham Evening Post has just entered the final stages of its newsroom integration.

Following a three-month pilot phase, the Post's journalists will return to a revamped newsroom - complete with central hub and video studios - on April 1.

But integration is about more than 'redesigning your newsroom and picking up a video camera' the Post's deputy editor, Martin Done, told Journalism.co.uk - it's about changing everything.

What changes has the integration process made to your news content?

For our exclusive stories, ones that have taken a lot of journalistic endeavour, time and investigations, we very much have a strategic approach as to how we release them on the web and in the paper.

But with breaking news, because it's often already in the public domain, we have no qualms about breaking that news online during the day, getting reader reaction to that breaking news and then building the story up for the next day's paper.

We very much see one feeding the other [the print and online versions] - the last thing we want to do is cannabalise the paper.

We've changed the emphasis of our conferences: we always begin them now by discussing what's the 'live', what's happening now. We have two print editions, but we added an extra two digital editions, which allow us an extra outlet for content and gives the newsroom focus.

What have been the benefits of integrating the newsroom?

Since we took over the website [merged web and print teams] we've seen traffic grow by 90 per cent to about 250,000 users a month - that's without any rich media tools.

This is the first time in decades we've seen audience growth, and as soon as staff realise we can grow our audience that becomes exciting for them - it almost feels like a fresh start.

We don't have any specific online titles [for staff]. If you have a separate web team, you'll be taking resources away from the paper and that team will always be limited to a small group and what they can do online. As we see the decline of the paper and growth online, we see this as a way that we can shift gradually from one to the other.

Are there any benefits from integration specific to regional newspapers?

Regional newspapers are all about community. In the past newspapers have been about being a sermon - what we can have now is more of a conversation. That conversation allows us to build communities. All our stories, that we are legally able to, have comment facilities and we can feed those comments back into the newspaper to reflect people's views.

We hope with our strong regional brand people will come to us first [for news]. Our overall vision is to be the place where Nottingham meets to find out news and discuss it online.

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