Northcliffe launches community app

Northcliffe's community of hyper local sites now have an I-Phone app to provide communities with the ability to plug into local news whilst on the move.

The company launched its network of the community websites last summer and now has 70 local websites covering the South and South West of England.

They cover areas with between 10,000 and 50,000 inhabitants that typically do not have a dedicated local online proposition.

Source-New Media age

Northcliffe creating digi specialists

Northcliffe are about to launch a team of dedicated digital publishers according to this report from Hold the Front page.

A new specialist team is to be created to drive forward the 'thisis' network of more than 200 newspaper companion sites.

adding that

The people who currently manage these sites on a day-to-day basis are based mainly in individual Northcliffe centres and attached to specific titles.
Now their roles are to be brought together in a dedicated digital team of around 15 who will be part of a new division of the company to be called Northcliffe Digital.

Northcliffe trials semantics

Fascinating story from Hold the Front page which reports on a new initaitive from Northcliffe.

The compnay has begun the roll-out of a new system of linking to related stories in its online articles. Called "topic pages," the initiative has been launched thisisbristol.co.uk and will be rolled out across the rest of the thisis network of newspaper companion sites over the next few weeks.

The pages will will automatically generate internal links in stories from key words and phrases after the pages are reviewed semantically.

The system is beiong trialled in Bristol

More bad results

The trail of bad news from the industry continues today with DMTG group reporting profits down and plans to cut costs worldwide by £100m in the face of declining advertising revenues.

Perhaps most worrying in the figures were the results for Northcliffe media,the groups regional arm,which saw profits down 32% and an alarming drop in revenue from advertising particually property classifieds and recruitment.