Johnston Press has announced 21 new editorial roles over the next nine months in response to a “positive 2017 performance.”
The roles will cover social media, video production digitally-optimised content, video production, and management of digital content teams. A further ten digital sales roles will also be sought.
Two new head of audience roles have been created to manage central team’s in Leeds and Edinburgh with an emphasis on “socially-driven and trending content”, according to a Johnston Press spokesperson.
The publisher claims its news websites averaged 108m page views per month and more than 25m unique users on average per month last year.
Johnston Press said in December that it was making a £1m profit a month on the i newspaper and that its regional titles posted a strong digital performance.
The Yorkshire Evening Post grew its web traffic 46 per cebt year-on-year while the Sheffield Star boosted traffic to almost 10m monthly page views.
Martin Little, director of digital content at Johnston, said: “I am excited that we are able to start 2018 announcing investment in new digital talent.
“Our plan is to accelerate audience growth even further this year with more relevant, trusted, quality content for readers and effective and impactful solutions for our advertisers.”
The company twice received funding last year from the Google-backed Digital News Initiative (DNI) fund.
It received grants focused on “maximising the editorial and commercial digital proposition, while strengthening engagement with readers through harnessing data,” and its pitch for a “pop-up publishing system” also received backing.
Johnston Press stands to employ 30 local democracy reporters under the BBC local news partnership.
Over the last two years, the publisher has made substantial cuts to its operations in Scotland and Northern Ireland, with titles in the North West of England also recently affected by redundancies.
Picture: Johnston Press
Email pged@pressgazette.co.uk to point out mistakes, provide story tips or send in a letter for publication on our "Letters Page" blog
