How the Belfast Telegraph showed you can be both popular and premium in an online world
Journalists at some of the UK’s leading regional news websites have shared some of the secrets behind their successes.
While titles such as the Belfast Telegraph, Manchester Evening News, Kent Online and Press and Journal publisher DC Thomson have adopted very different approaches to online journalism, all share one mission: To create a sustainable future for their reporting.
Their successes were celebrated at the Regional Press Awards, held in London in March, with the Belfast Telegraph taking home website of the year, while WalesOnline and the Manchester Evening News, both published by Reach, were highly commended.
Changing during the pandemic — the Belfast Telegraph’s story
The Belfast Telegraph told judges that the newsroom’s digital offering is now ‘the cornerstone of the mission’ — which for 150 years has been to connect the people of Northern Ireland with informed journalism.
“Our site leads the way for digital audiences in Northern Ireland with a mix of original premium journalism, breaking news, rolling coverage, analysis and comment, strong visuals and popular content,” the Bel Tel’s awards entry said.
Such a statement was made possible thanks to a reinvention of the Tel’s journalism during the pandemic, as the newsroom, owned by MediaHuis, pivoted to focus on creating a sustainable future for online journalism.
And they did so by doing one of the things many critics of local journalism say is impossible — combining at-scale journalism with premium content too.
“We invested in and combined premium in-depth journalism that people want to pay for with stories that attract large audiences on search and social media,” The Telegraph’s entry said.
“This strategic focus on quality regional journalism with audience engagement that delivers reach and traffic growth is unique in the digital Northern Ireland news landscape and the reason why, just over two years since the successful launch of our paywall, we are delivering traffic growth while close to 8,000 people are now subscribing for intelligent digital storytelling and unique and exclusive journalism from authors they want to read.”
The numbers presented tell their own story. Page Views were up 5% in 2022, with an average of 14m page views a month, and 850k weekly users on average.
The titles has generated 12,000 subscriptions since January 2021, with just under 8k ‘under contract’ in October last year — the time at which entries to the Regional Press Awards were submitted.
While the newsroom transformation is without doubt a whole team effort, the role of audience editors cannot be underestimated.
“Audience Editors champion our users and make sure our stories are delivered to the right audience, at the right time, on the right platform. They focus on delivering strong presentation, curation and user experience across our main channels,” judges were told.
“The team leads a mobile-first approach and owns the post-publication activity, including push notifications and data visualisation strategies.”
Homepage and app usage was up 3%, social 11%, search 3%, newsletters 10% and video +4%.
For the team, coverage of the 2022 Assembly elections in Northern Ireland demonstrated the newsroom’s new digital focus, aligned with commitment to quality journalism, in action.
It included agenda-setting exclusives during the campaign, all of which were ‘digital first.’ Two-day coverage of the results included live blogs with rolling updates at every count, visualisation of the first preference votes and transfers for every candidate across 18 constituencies, visualisation of live results for Northern Ireland as a whole, rolling social coverage with bespoke results cards, at-a-glance shareable articles and in-depth analysis, and breaking push notifications and additional newsletters.
More than 1.8m page views were generated to coverage over the two days, as Sinn Fein secured an historic win at Stormont, with traffic in May 2022 up 19% year on year, and 20% month on month.
But by no means were the elections a one-off for the new-look Bel Tel website.
“Among other highlights were special week-long initiatives on Belfast and on the environment, our immersive mobile long-form project on the Queen in NI, and the production of high quality, impactful timeline videos to mark the 50th anniversary of Bloody Sunday and the Queen’s death,” the team said.
“Throughout the year we continued to innovate and evolve how we package and present our content to a mobile audience, particularly on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter, and how we deliver the right mix of stories during a cost of living crisis.”
