Editor for In Your Area appointed as Tom Gibbon makes move from Gloucestershire Live
A senior appointment has been confirmed for Reach’s hyperlocal news service In Your Area.
Gloucestershire Live’s head of digital Tom Gibbon moves to take up the role of Editor, In Your Area working with Reach’s newsrooms across the UK to rapidly grow the hyperlocal news service.
Tom said: “I’ve had a brilliant nine years in Gloucester and have worked with some of the most talented journalists in the country here.
“I’m really excited to get started with In Your Area and feel extremely proud to have been given the opportunity to help shape such an innovative product that I believe can transform how people engage with local journalism.”
Tom started his journalism career on his hometown paper, the Banbury Guardian, in 2007, moving to the Gloucester Citizen in 2011 as a senior reporter and then joining the newsdesk.
He was appointed as Head of Web when Gloucestershire Live was launched in 2016, a role he has held ever since as the site has continued its growth, currently due to achieve 11.5m page views in February and 58 per cent up year-on-year.
In Your Area Editor-in-Chief, Ed Walker, said: “I am delighted to welcome Tom to the In Your Area team and know he will do a first-class job in ensuring the growth of In Your Area continues.
“His work in helping to build an audience of scale across Gloucestershire has not gone without notice, and his background in community news for Gloucestershire Live and before that in Banbury is just the kind of skills we need to ensure In Your Area flourishes and is an app where people feel they want to spend time.”
Read more: A bridge between newsrooms and communities
Tom will take up his new role in mid-March, guiding the Gloucestershire team through Cheltenham Festival first, and an announcement about a replacement for Gloucestershire Live’s head of digital will be made in the coming weeks.
In January, Reach announced the expansion of the In Your Area platform with 57 new roles being created across editorial, commercial, product and technical teams. The hyperlocal news app and service launched in 2017.
Read more: Society of Editors launches campaign against political parties launching ‘pretend’ newspapers
