22/06/2007

A ‘hyper-local’ newspaper - serving the G41 district of Glasgow, with a population of around 25,000 - has branched out, into podcasting.

Though the numbers are small - in terms of sales and visitors to its  website, where the podcasts appear - G41’s ambitions are big. Published by a not-for-profit social enterprise called Southside Media, G41 is printed by Johnston Press and comprises an editor and an advertising
sales and design manager.

G41 was founded 18 months ago, with the stated aim of “giving people local news and information that helps them get active in their communities.”

It recently celebrated moving into a new office - a former soup and sandwich shop in the city’s Pollokshaws Road that was refurbished and transformed courtesy of a grant from Communities Scotland, obtained through Southside Housing Association.

Says editor, David Eyre: “We took the opportunity to invest in a couple of up-to-date computers - instead of the recycled Pentium IIIs we were using before. That's given us more scope for audio editing. We're hoping to have video podcasts soon as well.”

Eyre is a former BBC Scotland reporter.

He added: “The website is growing every month. In July last year, we had an average of 24 unique visitors a day. So far this month, we've been getting a daily average of 142. In May, we had 32,654 page impressions, up from 5367 last July. We think that's pretty good, considering the site's hyper-local nature.”

He added: “The idea behind the website isn't just to replicate the content of our G41 newspaper - although it is available there to download as a pdf. It's to give people some tools that can help them share theirexperience of the community. We've got over 80 registered users now who can post stories and upcoming events, create their own blog, publish photos and raise issues in the G41 forum. It's not as busy as we'd like, but it's getting livelier every month.”

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