The Evening Standard’s new website, Standard.co.uk, will not focus on breaking news but instead concentrate on the ‘issues’surrounding London, the paper’s managing editor, Doug Wills, has said.
The site will include the major London stories of the day, columns from the Standard’s regular writers and a City podcast by market commentator Mickey Clark.
Until now, the Evening Standard’s web presence has been the entertainment-focused ThisIsLondon.co.uk, which it has shared for the past year with its free stablemate, London Lite. In July 2005, the paper dropped breaking news from the site.
Wills told Press Gazette that the site aims to complement the newspaper, but will not be used as a portal for breaking news.
He said: ‘There was news on ThisIsLondon.co.uk, but not in this form. This is the first time we have put together a London issues site.
‘It’s not a breaking news site, but it will be reporting on London news of the day. Any news of the day that’s reported in the Evening Standard will also be reported in the website, but it is going to be a channel that will reflect the paper – it’s not going to lead the paper,’he said.
The site will act as a platform for the Evening Standard’s campaigns, allowing readers to participate in online debates and polls.
‘That’s going to be at the heart of the site,’Wills said. ‘If there are campaigns, features, stories in the paper which are very much about London and are looking for readers to respond and have a voice, from now they’ll be able to have that voice on the website as well as in the paper.”
Users of the new site will also be able to sign up for the Eros cashless payment card that the paper introduced this week.
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