Reach PLC - Showcase team
Reach PLC - Showcase team
Content is hand-picked, edited and adapted from 50 of our publishers, ready to be surfaced on news platforms and presented directly to those who actually want to see it. Our editorial decisions and streamlining of curated content has resulted in our content reaching huge new and loyal audiences. Growth What originally started as just three journalists has now expanded to 14. By taking the initiative to create a team dedicated to content curation and adaptation we have seen impressive results. The team began with curating content for Google News Showcase, and following unprecedented success, has expanded to include curation for Apple News. Average monthly page views directly from our team is at around 100m and growing. A huge increase from around 300k at launch. We are currently achieving an average of 3.1m per day. Regionals are seeing a huge benefit - with the likes of the Manchester Evening News and Liverpool Echo regularly reaching over 400,000 page views per day via our referrals. Google News followers for our titles has now exceeded 600,000 - an almost 100% increase in the last year. Group wide, Google Showcase is our third highest driver of “super loyal” customers. This loyalty is being driven by the high calibre of the panels being written, and the skill of telling a story with a quality headline and just a couple of small paragraphs. While a relatively new addition, Apple News content is averaging at around 50m page views per month. Push notifications receive an average click-through rate (CTR) of around 7.5% - although this has seen to be as high as 12% for some titles. Our success is a direct result of identifying changes in methods of news consumption and harnessing them to work for us. And in doing so, preparing the next generation of journalists for work in the digital media. Training and development: Half the team are apprentices or trainees who have their NCTJ training paid for using money given to us by Google. This is helping with recruitment stability as we can bring people into the business who may not have considered journalism before. We are also developing the next generation of digital journalists who are learning - hands-on - the importance of audience and how curation is changing the face of news. Other staff members have joined us to gain digital experience - and have been able to further their careers as a result. Future-proofing By embracing third party platforms, we have made the previously unknown become an important and sustainable part of the business - and we believe - the future of journalism. The shift in news consumption habits is something that can’t be ignored and our team has managed to harness this and it’s making a clear impact. And those who graduate through our team are the next generation of journalists with a head start in digital journalism and audience knowledge.