Marc Reeves has seen how regional and local journalism in the UK has transformed over the past 20 years. He is now leading Trinity Mirror Midlands digital properties, which is reported to be out-competing BBC in their targeted local markets.
In this episode, we explore the state of local journalism.
Podcast Transcription
Vahe Arabian: State of Digital Publishing is an online publication community providing resources, perspectives, collaboration, and news, for digital media and publishing professionals in new media and technology, in the subscription world. Our aim is to help industry professionals get back more time to work on what really matters, monetizing content and growing reader relationships. In episode nine, I speak with Marc Reeves, who's the editor of Birmingham Live, and editor-in-chief of Trinity Mirror Midlands, and we speak about local journalism where they've been able to transform from being just print-only to being purely online and they've actually penetrated Birmingham and actually pacing BBC. Let's begin.
Vahe Arabian: Hi, Marc, how are you?
Marc Reeves: I'm very good, thank you. Very good indeed.
Vahe Arabian: That's good. How're things on your end? I read that you guys recently started an offline campaign push for Birmingham Live.
Marc Reeves: We did, it kicked off yesterday. It's a lot of traditional media advertising. We've got the sides of buses in Birmingham, we've got poster sites, we've got interactive digital boards in the city center, some radio advertising, and other kinds of activity. Which is good to see because in my experience in regional media over many, many years, one of the frustrations has been that launches or relaunches don't always get the marketing support I think they deserve, but we might what have got this right this time, which is very encouraging to the team, 'cause they've put a lot of work into it.
Vahe Arabian: That's awesome. You don't usually see a lot of local publishers having the capability and push to do this. It's really promising to see. I guess for those people who don't know much about Trinity Mirror Midlands and just about you in general, if you could provide a bit of a background, just to start off with.
Marc Reeves: Yeah, sure. Well, first of all, the holding group our owners are Trinity Mirror plc, which is the largest publisher of regional media in the UK. It also owns a number of national titles, as the name suggests, including the Daily Mirror, which is one of the UK's oldest tabloids. That is notable because it is more left-leaning than any of the other British tabloids that you see, like the Daily Mail or The Sun, but nevertheless, Trinity Mirror recently acquired another national newspaper group, the Daily Express and the Sunday Express and the Daily Star, which is right leaning. So, that deal was done only very, very recently, so it's going to be interesting to see how that goes.
Marc Reeves: But my focus is on the regionals. I've always worked on regional media, regional newspapers, and in Trinity Mirror Midlands, which is a sub-business of Trinity Mirror, we publish three daily city newspapers, one here in Birmingham and one in Coventry, one in Stoke, which are outlying suburban cities about 30 or 40 miles from Birmingham, which is the regional capital, as well as a clutch of smaller, weekly titles. Some free, some paid for, and of course, the web presence of all of those entities is where our focus is on more and more. If I could say pretty much completely now because that's where the future lies for us.
Vahe Arabian: I read this that you guys are, with Birmingham Live, you got more traffic than BBC, is that correct? That you have more unique visitors than the BBC at the moment?
Marc Reeves: Yeah, this applies to a number of Trinity Mirror titles.
