If the Teesside Evening Gazette is anything to go by, Trinity Mirror’s (LSE: TNI) strategy to localise its network of regional newspaper sites down to post code level could prove a commercial success. At the same time as its reversing its individual newspaper brands out of their aggregated “ic’ identities, the publisher is launching a gamut of ultra-local sites for each, comprising blogs, local reporting and user-generated content - in the case of Gazette Communities, some 23 extra sections covering individual suburbs in the north-east.

Gazette editor Darren Thwaites, speaking at the Society of Editors Scotland conference (reported by Press Gazette): “They have attracted new advertising and proved such a success that Trinity [Mirror] has launched print versions of the microsites. We have new advertising opportunities and it has generated great content that we can reverse back into the paper. I have been able to expand my team on the back of the commercial value of the microsites. We’ve got a combined 50,000 unique users across the sites and the more established ones are growing by 25 per cent a month.”

Press Gazette: “User-generated content is making up a large proportion of the microsites, and the paper aims to recruit 160 bloggers, including charity workers, teachers and youth leaders, by the end of the year.”