The Opportunity
Reach plc, a leading publishing house with more than 70 news websites and print outlets across the UK, adopted Dataminr to increase the speed at which they can cover breaking news stories and make sense of the plethora of data sources that journalists have to work through. They needed an easier way to find the needle in the haystack.
Karyn Fleeting, Head of Audience Engagement at Reach plc, recognised the opportunity to give journalists in Reach newsrooms a tool that would provide the right information at the right time, allowing them to engage with local and national readers, drive traffic and break stories faster. Ultimately, this can lead to greater brand loyalty among target audiences who view local and regional publications as the authoritative source for stories that affect them.
“We use Dataminr to get a jump on breaking news before the story is widely picked up by our competitors,” Fleeting says. “Whether it’s local news in a city such as Cardiff or covering an entire county such as Lancashire, Dataminr alerts give our journalists critical information on the most relevant and important stories in their area. With the gift of time, journalists can then deploy the resources and publish stories that matter to our readers—earlier than anyone else.”
The Solution
Within the massive sea of real-time social media data, Dataminr detects the earliest indications of high-impact events and critical breaking information. As a leading Artificial Intelligence (AI) business that detects and distills relevant signals on breaking information, Dataminr transforms these early signals into real-time alerts, aligned with journalist’s top priorities and integrated directly within their workflows.
By using Dataminr to identify breaking events as they happen at both a local and national level, journalists at Reach experienced first hand the impact of real-time alerting on their publications.
Reach has more than 400 journalists in the UK using Dataminr across its portfolio of newspapers, which includes the Daily Mirror, Daily Express, Manchester Evening News, Liverpool Echo, Cambridge Live, Wales Online, Irish Mirror and MyLondon.
“Dataminr is integrated directly into our newsrooms. As a story breaks, our journalists receive real-time alerts and live updates on what is happening on the ground. Once it is approved by the editor, a journalist can then write and post the story faster than our competitors, all with ongoing updates to make sure the story remains timely.”
Key Benefits
- Keeping ahead of competitors: Dataminr’s real-time alerting technology allows Reach journalists to jump on breaking news stories, post timely updates on evolving events and create content that will engage readers.
- Streamline the newsroom process: the technology seamlessly integrates into the newsroom technology stack, combining with other tools such as CrowdTangle and Chartbeat to provide journalists.
- Allowing the team to prioritise resources: as the virtual eyes and ears in the newsroom, Dataminr helps local news teams to cover wide areas.
“The newsroom has evolved, especially at a local level, and we have adapted to these changes. At Reach, we have seen the difference technology can make. Dataminr is our virtual eyes and ears on the ground and helps ensure we don’t miss a thing.”
About Reach plc
Reach plc is the UK’s largest news publisher in the UK, with national and regional news brands and online outlets including the Mirror, Express, Star, Ok!, New!, Daily Record, Manchester Evening News, MyLondon, Birmingham Live, Bristol Live, Liverpool Echo, and other leading regional brands.
Last year the company sold 620 million newspapers, and has a network of over 50 websites, viewed by 110m unique browsers every month—a bigger online monthly audience than competitors including Mail Online and News UK. For more information visit reachplc.com
“We’ve been working with Dataminr for well over two years now and it’s used by most of our team, including the news team, general reporters, political reporters, the sports desk, the What’s On team and most of the video team.
We cover a large patch—a whole country, so, Dataminr helps us stay on top of breaking incidents across Wales, like traffic and travel, plus police and emergency incidents, especially in less populated areas. The platform gives us information on incidents before our competitors do, which enables us to dispatch reporters to the scene and work to verify information a lot quicker.”
- Chiara Rinaldi, Head of Audience, Wales Online
“Since the launch of MyLondon in November, our team has gone from covering Croydon, plus other parts of South London and West London to the whole of the wider city. Using Dataminr has been a huge benefit and is helping us to keep on top of breaking news happening across the capital, alerting us instantly to what is happening. With this information, we are able to cover stories ahead of our competitors and in a timely way that matters to our readers.”
- Chris Ballinger, Content Editor, MyLondon
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