UK Riots: Web traffic surge for local press

The Newspaper Society has a roundup of how the local press covered the riots on their patch and recorded a surge in web traffic.

The NS says local journalists providing readers with trusted and reliable information amid widespread speculation.

Here is the NS roundup:

On Tuesday rioting broke out on Wolverhampton’s Queen Street, where the Express and Star is based, and staff took photographs from office windows which were published in the paper’s first edition on Wednesday. The paper featured 19 pages coverage of riots in West Bromwich and Wolverhampton.

The paper’s website, which features picture galleries and video, recorded a record 853,000 homepage views on Tuesday and the paper was hoping to to go on and break the one million mark.

The Manchester Evening News was covering events online with news updates, video and picture galleries. The paper ran a live blog, updated by reporters throughout Tuesday night, which attracted record numbers of users, averaging about 20,000 throughout the night and peaking at 25,000. The paper’s lead story on the riots had attracted 100,000 page views at 2pm yesterday (Wednesday).

The Nottingham Post printed two special morning editions of around 10,000 copies on Tuesday and Wednesday after violence broke out in the city. On Tuesday, the paper’s website attracted 120,000 unique users - three times the normal level of traffic. The lead report on Monday night’s violence recorded 64,000 page views and a picture gallery of the aftermath recorded 120,000 page views.

In the west, the Bristol Evening Post also printed 6,000 copies of a special edition on Tuesday morning, featuring images taken by photographers who were on the scene of the riots the previous night.

Online, the paper ran news reports, videos, eye-witness accounts and picture galleries – attracting more than 90,000 unique users and 150,000 page impressions on riot stories.

Northcliffe’s This is Gloucestershire website’s coverage included two picture galleries of reader-submitted pictures which had received more than 473,000 page views as of 2pm on Wednesday. The site has not had traffic at these levels since floods hit the area in 2007.

The Gloucester Citizen’s news coverage had attracted around 15,000 unique users by 10am, having been posted just after 3am, more than three times the average traffic for a lead story over 24 hours. Readers were also logging on to use the website’s discussion forums.

The Birmingham Mail’s news team worked throughout the night on Tuesday and Wednesday to cover the unrest in the city, posting updates to the paper’s live blog and images and video to the website. The paper recorded more than 100,000 unique users on Tuesday – a record level of traffic for the site – and page views were up more than 300 per cent on average traffic levels. The Liverpool Echo's coverage also featured extensive video footage.

In London, local papers have been covering the fallout of the rioting after a series of violent incidents across the capital.

The Southwark News has today made an offer of a free ad to all Southwark-based businesses that have been damaged by rioting in a bid to help them back on their feet. The paper also published a poster urging people to support local businesses in the wake of the looting for readers to cut and put in their windows and printed an extra 1,000 copies to be hand delivered to shops.

Earlier in the week staff from local media titles reported from the midst of the riots. Croydon Advertiser reporter Gareth Davies was assaulted and robbed by rioters at 7.30pm but continued to stay in the midst of the chaos until 5am to cover the story.

He posted regular updates on Twitter and phoned updates back to the Advertiser’s newsroom which were posted online throughout the night – attracting around 40,000 page views as of 1pm on Tuesday.

The Croydon Guardian also ran live updates after hearing that trouble was brewing on its patch with reporters quickly on the scene to cover events first hand. The paper posted video footage and pictures on its website which attracted 23,000 page views in less than 12 hours.

Elsewhere in the capital, the Enfield Independent experienced a massive surge of traffic on Sunday with 203,000 page views recorded in 24 hours – the largest number for any Newsquest daily or weekly title that day. After the first disturbances in Tottenham on Saturday, the paper had launched a London Riots micro site with video, picture galleries and regular news updates.

In west London, the Ealing Gazette achieved a record number of page views for any single story from its Trinity Mirror Southern stable - 31,000 page views on its lead story on the riots.

The paper sent reporter and photographer to the centre of Ealing at 6pm on Monday and the pair worked into the night to keep the website updated. Like Gareth in Croydon, reporter Michael Russell was also assaulted when rioters pushed him to the ground and stole his camera.

In north London, the Willesden and Brent Times team were in the office late on Monday night posting updates to the website which saw a substantial rise in traffic. Reporter Tom Barnes went to the scene when rioting broke out on Harlesden High Street and followed looters for an hour as they broke into shops, getting reaction from horrified business owners.

In east London, Hackney Gazette senior reporter Emma Bartholomew went to Hackney Central to report on events on Monday evening as the mood in the area darkened and crowds gathered.

She stayed on the scene for three hours speaking to onlookers and gathering reaction as police blocked off areas in a bid to disperse troublemakers, posting an update on the Gazette’s website just before 12am

The South London Press was working on gathering reaction to disturbances and attempting to sum up what the experience meant for the capital.

• The NS roundup doesn't include the Camden New Journal whose journalists Richard Osley, Tom Foot and Dan Carrier did a fine job of keeping readers informed with accurate updates via Twitter while covering the rioting in Camden Town and Chalk Farm. The CNJ also put up a series of pictures of the rioting by David Gould on its website along with news stories.
  
  

• Journalism.co.uk reports that a hyperlocal site set up by an MA journalism student at Brunel University claims to have received more than 1 million page views in a day, after live blogging the riots across London. Editor of the West Londoner, Gaz Corfield said the live blog "went viral" with traffic mainly driven through Twitter and Facebook, as well as links left in comment threads on national newspaper websites.

Local media still most trusted says new study

Local media continues to be the most trusted medium, according to new research on the importance of community to people in Britain commissioned by the Newspaper Society.

Forty-five per cent of people said local media contained content they trusted compared to 37 per cent who cited television, the next highest medium.

Eighty-one per cent of people agreed that the recession has made supporting the local community more important and local media plays a key role in stimulating pride in their local area.

The research, Loving Local, is published today and involved a study of nearly 5,000 adults by Crowd DNA on behalf of the NS. It found that 82 per cent of respondents were proud of their area – a rise of 11 percentage points on three years previously - and that local media fuels this sense of pride much more than any other medium.

Seventy three per cent of respondents said local media was relevant to having a sense of pride in their area – nearly four times higher than the internet (19 per cent), the next highest medium.

Local media (73 per cent) was cited as the best medium for making people feel part of their community, followed by the internet (22 per cent), TV (11 per cent), and national newspapers (five per cent).

Georgina Harvey, NS president and managing director of Trinity Mirror Regionals, said: “There is growing evidence of the importance of the need for a sense of place and belonging... life is truly local. And no-one can deliver that sense of community and belonging like the regional press.”

To see the Loving Local micro site click here.

New blow to local press as council sells web ads

Windsor and Maidenhead Council is to appoint an independent advertising agency to sell advertising space on its website which, the Newspaper Society claims, will compete with independent local media for revenues.

A member of the council's cabinet will vet and approve each advert and an independent advertising agency will work on a commission basis. The plans were approved at a meeting in March.

The worrying move for local media publishers comes as a new code is imposed limiting the frequency and scope of council publications after complaints that they were unfair competition for the local press.

Lynne Anderson, head of communications at the Newspaper Society said: "Local authorities must not use public funds to compete for readers and advertising with the only voices which can hold them to account - independent local newspapers and their websites. This would never be tolerated at a national level and should not be tolerated locally.

"The local media is reliant on advertising revenue to fund its journalism - revenue which has been under severe challenge as the industry fights its way out of the economic downturn. The local council should be supporting local businesses, not competing with them for vital advertising revenues."

Source: Newspaper Society.Full story in Slough Observer.

'Newspapers at risk if copyright law not enforced'

The national and regional newspapers industry has responded to the Hargreaves’ Review of Intellectual Property and Growth, launched by David Cameron last year, by warning that the press is at risk if copyright law is not properly enforced.

A joint submission from the Newspaper Society and Newspaper Publishers Association points out that UK newspaper publishers invest over £1bn per annum in developing high quality content which is republished across a multiplicity of distribution platforms.

They argue that this investment must be underpinned by effective legal protection "so that publishers can be confident of their ability to use and disseminate the content created by them and their employees in any appropriate way, allowing the freedom to innovate and develop".

The NS and NPA say: "In our view, copyright law remains fundamentally fit for purpose. We take issue with David Cameron’s premise that the fact that Google did not inaugurate its business in the UK can be ascribed to the UK copyright regime."

They also claim: "A thriving publishing industry depends on fair remuneration for use of creative and journalistic content. It is copyright law that allows for this, but without proper enforcement the industry is at risk. Without effective, enforceable IPRs online there is a risk that the ‘virtuous circle’ of investment, returns and re-investment will be undermined. We are concerned, for example, that currently the UK courts do not award damages sufficient to discourage misuse."

The NS and NPA argue: "More needs to be done to enhance the credibility of alternative methods of resolving IP infringement cases, such as mediation services or ADR. Curtailing copyright infringement requires a combination of proper law enforcement, technological measures and public education."

• Joint NS/NPA Submission to Hargreaves Review