06/08/2008

The blog of an Edinburgh-based press agency has been recognised as one of the fastest growing in the world.

According to Wordpress, one of the world’s biggest blog platforms, Deadline Press & Picture Agency was listed as the 94th fastest-growing at the start of the month.

The news comes as the agency is training its reporters to produce short, video packages, with a view to establishing itself as a place where newspapers can go not only for text and still pictures-based stories but video-based ones too, for their own online offerings.

There are 3.7 million blog sites that use Wordpress.

Says Scott Douglas, who founded Deadline eight years ago: "Until earlier this year, we were so focused on the traditional market of supplying stories and pictures to the daily newspapers that we had no web presence at all.

"The simple fact was that we had no need of a website. It would have cost thousands of pounds to produce and wouldn't have made an iota of difference to our business supplying the daily newspapers."

However, Scott said it was increasingly clear that Web 2.0 is
fundamentally changing the way news is sourced and delivered, while Wordpress and other blogging platforms offer a way to maintain a web presence which can be easily updated at any time.

Scott adds: "It came as a bit of a revelation to us that so many people had sophisticated websites with no content - yet we had a rich supply of content, but no website."

And video footage now being produced by the agency - currently being shown on YouTube - has netted a staggering 40,000 views since May. One video - of football fans making their way to Manchester for Rangers FC’s appearance in the Uefa Cup final - has notched up 12,433 hits alone.

Continues Douglas: "Our ambition is to grow and evolve these services in way that will help safeguard the agency as a trusted, reliable, professional and independent news gathering service for many years to come."

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