GloucestershireLive is breaking new ground with the introduction of a new live brand for Herefordshire.
The new Herefordshire Live brand was announced days after CheltenhamLive launched as a dedicated channel on GloucestershireLive.
The expansion is part of a wider announcement from Reach Plc that will deliver a local news brand in each county in England and Wales by the end of the year.
In the South West we are also launching live brands for Wiltshire and Dorset and bringing in new reporters to provide special service to Weston-super-Mare and North Devon.
At least 16 new jobs will be available throughout the Southwest. They will go live in the next few days and all can be found on our construction site.
Across the country, there will also be new live brands in Norfolk, Suffolk, Oxfordshire, Shropshire, Rutland and Darlington, as well as additional staff for the editing of MyLondon.
The move will create a total of more than 50 jobs in Reach Plc. Since the beginning of 2020, more than 170 new jobs have been created for Reach’s regional live locations.
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Jacqui Merrington, South West Audience and Content Director, said, “GloucestershireLive is now well established in its market as we respond to what our audience wants to read and we have built a relationship with our readers.
“We already cover the top news in Herefordshire and we look forward to getting to know our readers better and developing a world-class news, sports and entertainment service in the county.”
The decision follows a period of rapid growth for Reach’s regional online brands. Comscore data, released in March, shows 72% of adults in the UK get local news from Reach, up from 67% a year ago. 88% of adults consuming local news in the UK spend time on Reach’s live network.
Reach also has a track record of starting locations in new areas from scratch. In 2020 alone, the company launched 19 new regional locations, including YorkshireLive, which launched in March and had the largest news audience in the county in just six months.
Moving to full English and Welsh coverage at a local level is key to Reach’s customer value strategy, which has attracted more than 6 million registered customers in just over a year.
Lloyd Embley, Editor-in-Chief of Reach said, “Over the past 18 months we have significantly increased the number of new websites we have launched as part of our live network, many in areas where we don’t have established print titles.
“Thanks to our redesign of editorial operations over the past year and our customer value strategy, which ensures that we build closer relationships with our readers, we have created a sustainable model for exclusively digital digital journalism.
“The response from new readers to the 2020 launch has been overwhelmingly positive and gave us the confidence to have the entire map of England and Wales ready by the end of this year.
“This is incredibly exciting and strengthens our position as the leading news publisher in the UK with an unprecedented ability to reach audiences through both our national and regional journalism.”