The Decline Of News Sites - The Audience Data Behind Reach Decision To Close 13 Regional Newsbrands

28th November 2023

Ten sites have announced they will no longer be updated from Thursday.

Eleven of the 13 local news websites being closed by Reach before the end of the year saw a double-digit percentage drops in audience in the past year.

Of the remaining two, one grew by 42% while the final website saw no change in its audience between October 2022 and 2023.

Reach announced at the start of November that it planned to cut 450 jobs, including 320 in editorial, and close a number of its smaller regional Live branded websites.

Those sites were revealed last week to include five of the seven Live brands launched in 2021 as part of Reach's drive to cover every county in England and Wales in print or online. They are the websites for Dorset, Norfolk, Oxfordshire, Suffolk and Wiltshire.

The rest started publishing in 2015 (Berkshire Live, initially as Get Reading before a 2018 rebrand), August 2018 (Staffordshire), spring/summer 2020 (Hampshire, Hertfordshire, Northamptonshire, Sussex) and January 2021 (Bedfordshire and Buckinghamshire).

Read the full detailed article at Press Gazette