Regional press should harness power of third party websites, says digital editor

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Regional press should look to third party websites to increase the reach and popularity of multimedia content, the digital editor of a daily newspaper has said. The Evening Leader 's Christian Dunn told Journalism.co.uk that local news providers should not be afraid of hosting content on external sites, but should see them as way to drive traffic to their own websites and to reach new viewers.

The North Wales Newspapers title, which has been experimenting with photo-sharing site Flickr , has seen a steady stream of traffic to the Leader's main website from the paper's images posted on the external site , Dunn said.

Slideshows created from the pictures, he added, had attracted thousands of views after only a few weeks on the site.

Dunn said the site, which currently hosts 1,518 news, sport and features images from the paper, enables photographers to upload and publish their pictures more quickly – a feature particularly useful for covering sport.

While the Flickr groups contain images of local sporting events, pictures from Football League games appear on eveningleader.co.uk and not on the image sharing site to comply with the paper's licensing agreement.

This week the paper has created three Flickr groups open to the public to submit images, which it hopes readers already using the site will join.

Pictures from the groups may feature in the print edition, while the paper's picture editor Rick Matthews has agreed to oversee one group for aspiring photographers on the site.

Dunn hopes these features will encourage readers to participate and provide another source of content and means of distribution for the paper.

"I think it’s really important for regional newspapers to take full advantage of sites such as Flickr. Not only do they offer fantastic services, which we can harness, but they also allow our brand to reach a far wider readership than ever before," said Dunn.

"Flickr Groups are another way the web can provide content for our print products - giving our readers an alternative method of getting in touch with us and further breaking down the traditional barriers between newspapers and members of the public."