It’s been clear, for at least three years now, that local papers, which have been laying off editorial staff, should probably welcome in the amateur news sites sprouting in their patches.
Now Trinity Mirror’s Birmingham Mail is doing it.
It’s created Mail Communities, a section of its webite divided in to typical “hyperlocal” indexes for 38 areas, with a mix of news authored in-house, picture galleries, Fish4 property listings and links to posts written by a selection of local bloggers…
Twenty-five blogs including Digbeth is Good, The Lichfield Blog and Bournville Village have agreed “for their content to be used by the Mail, in print and online, correctly credited and with links back to their site”, Trinity Mirror (LSE: TNI) says. “In return, RSS feeds from the hyperlocal sites will appear prominently within the Mail Communities section, and the Mail will make relevant pictures available for those sites taking part.”
Right now, though, it looks mostly like simply linking out to the blogs’ stories via their incoming feeds, than anything more major.
There’s no ad revenue-sharing partnership here or anything like that. But the blogs “will also have a say in how a proportion of the Birmingham Mail Charitable Trust