Manchester Evening News publisher Reach is preparing to launch a new county-wide website for Lancashire, creating five jobs.
Lancashire Live will compete with Newsquest’s Lancashire Telegraph and JPI Media’s Lancashire Evening Post for online coverage of the area, which includes Preston, Lancaster, Blackpool (pictured), Blackburn and Burnley.
Job adverts for a publisher, an advanced content writer, a football writer and two live news reporters for the Lancashire Live are now online.
In one ad the title is described as a “site and social media offering that aims to showcase life in Lancashire and tell the stories that need telling”.
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The advanced content writer will build up “Best in Lancashire” content and work write up recommendations of things to do, while the football writer will focus on covering Preston North End, Blackburn Rovers, Burnley FC and Blackpool FC football teams, the ads say.
Press Gazette understands Reach has not yet decided where the website will be based, although the job ads say staff will be “working from the heart of the county”. A timeline for the launch is also yet to be confirmed.
In the past four years Reach (formerly Trinity Mirror) has launched five city-wide websites for Belfast, Leeds, Dublin, Glasgow and Edinburgh, where it previously had no print newspaper presence.
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Edinburgh Live launched most recently in September, also with a team of five. The first of the “Live” websites was set up in Birmingham last year, where the online team split from the Birmingham Mail newspaper.
In Lancashire, JPI Media also owns daily the Blackpool Gazette and weeklies the Lancaster Guardian, The Visitor in Morecambe, and the twice-weekly Burnley Express.
Newsquest also owns weeklies the Westmorland Gazette and Burnley Star.
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