Blog Preston's impact report covering July 2024 - September 2024
As we head into the Autumn we wanted to share how we're getting on at Blog Preston in our latest quarterly update after a busy summer! It's our 15th year of operating and we shared some plans in January for how we're marking it.
As a Community Interest Company we thought it's important to tell you how things are going, so here's a snapshot for you:
?? Despite the well-documented challenges of growing digital audiences for news with Meta and Google making things a bit sticky for news publishers of all sizes, our views to Blog Preston grew by 60 per cent year-on-year with 2.31m views between July to September. In fact, September was our largest month of views to the site in nearly four years. ??
?? We launched our new-look what's on section, including having an event listings section for the first time. We've had more than 250 events listed by individuals, venues and organisations in the city since it went live during late July - events of all size and scale from huge festivals to small-scale arts events to community days. It's free for anyone to list an event (we do vet the events for approval before they go-live though). This is alongside our continued increase in what's on, arts and culture coverage?led by Kate Rosindale . Our crowdfunder enabled our new-look what's on section and expanded coverage (178 additional stories about arts/culture in the city so far this year). Our thanks to Preston-based 3manfactory for developing the new section.
?? We've also been working to get out and about to more events than ever before, with BBC Radio 2 In The Park being the single busiest 72-hour period of views to Blog Preston in its 15 years (try uploading stories on a soaked mobile phone, we tell you!), plus we've had extensive coverage of Encounter Festival, Preston Pride and more. Videos and photos from these events, such as this Facebook and Insta reel from Pride the other weekend, are regularly our most engaged with on social.
??? Our first foray into podcasting launched, a collaboration with the Lancashire Post and bringing former BBC Radio Lancashire presenter John Gillmore to the 'airwaves'. The Parched Pea Podcast launched in July. The six episode series explored some of the people who make the city tick and gave time and space for their stories to be heard,. It's had more than 1,000 downloads so far across the podcast platforms and very strong listen times. Our thanks to Preston BID and Preston Markets for their support. We're looking at running a second series if we can find support to do so.
? We announced our partnership with The Nose Bag fanzine, which will see some long-reads and Preston North End coverage on Blog Preston for the first time.?
??? We're putting increasing efforts into what we call accountability journalism, ensuring organisations, businesses, those with influence, face scrutiny in their decision-making and activities. This means we might not be everyone's flavour of the week, but it's important for ensuring we have a fair, robust and accountable city. From our extensive reporting on the situation at Eldon Primary School, to our in-depth focus on the Guild Hall, to multi-millionaire's facing questions over their comments?and the blight of some social housing conditions in the city.?
?? We've been using a tool called smartocto to understand more about the stories which really get Preston going. You won't be surprised to know problems on the M6, crime and more are often the most-read, but what do people spend the most time reading. Below you'll see the 15 stories which have had the most impact for us during the period based on the time spent reading them, how many people read them and how widely shared they were.
10.?The 20 roads in Preston and South Ribble with the most pothole reports and the total repair bill
What's to come?
?? A continued focus on what we do with social video across Instagram, TikTok, YouTube and Facebook. It is increasingly how a younger audience engages with what's going on around them.
?? We will be applying for some funding to increase our investigative and accountability journalism in the coming months.
??? We'll be focusing also on more business-related stories (celebrating some of the people who run businesses in and around the city) in the coming months too.
?? We've already made some tweaks to our site to improve uptime and reliability, and reduce some of the advertising you see. This is ahead of a major upgrade to the site later this year/early next as it is in need of some TLC.
Many thanks to everyone for their continued support, and for reading too. Please keep the feedback and story tips coming - [email protected] - if there's anything you ever want to discuss.
Ed, Kate, Luke and the rest of Team BP
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