How a French news outlet is geolocating news for apps

Credit: Image by Alexander Kirch, Dreamtime.com

French regional daily newspaper and website La Nouvelle République has developed mobile apps that push local news and sport to readers based on their location.

Geolocation technology has been around for some time and is utilised by a number of news outlets, such as BBC News, including in its responsive site which is currently being rolled out on mobile.

The publisher of the French title, which covers the west central region of France and includes cities Tours and Poitiers, is an example of a commercial newspaper brand that is customising news for its audiences based on location.

The Android and iPhone apps push news about the region, city and hyperlocal area the user of the app is in.

The website also offers readers local news based on manual rather than automated selections, allowing users to drill down to their local and hyperlocal area.

The geolocation options are made possible based on the fact that every article is tagged with a location within the La Nouvelle République CMS.

The website, which relaunched in January, runs on a CMS from eZ Solutions, which has been customised by developers from Novactive.

Novactive produced a tagging automation tool that is integrated with the CMS and is designed to save "hours" and ensure standardised meta tagging of content, Stuart Wilkinson, vice president of marketing at eZ Systems, told Journalism.co.uk.

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