Manchester Evening News live blogging local council meetings

The Manchester Evening News has been using a range of multimedia tools to live blog council meetings from across the Greater Manchester area.

Meetings of the local authorities in and around Manchester are attended by a reporter from the MEN or one of its sister weekly titles.

Reporters then use Twitter to file minute-by-minute updates from mobile phones which are streamed on MEN Media websites using CoverItLive technology.

The MEN has so far covered meetings of the Association of Greater Manchester Authorities and the Greater Manchester Police Authority and intends to extent the service to provide coverage of every full meeting held by the ten local authorities across Greater Manchester.

Paul Gallagher, head of online at MEN, told the Newspaper Society: ‘It’s helping to further engage people who are interested in this sort of thing rather than getting mass audiences.

‘It has been a really positive thing for all the people concerned; the journalists, the councillors and the readers. Everyone has been really pleased with it.

‘What we are building up to is for a reader to be able to post a question on the blog and for the reporter to stand up in the meeting and say ‘Mr X in Salford would like to askâ€¦'”