Trinity Mirror is closing two news websites covering the counties of Hampshire and Buckinghamshire from next week.
Get Hampshire and Get Bucks will shut down from August 1 and redirect to sister website Get Surrey, according to a spokesperson for the publisher, who said no jobs were affected by the closures.
Both brands will retain their presence on Facebook to complement continuing print titles in the area, including the Buckinghamshire Advertiser & Examiner and the News & Mail series, which covers Aldershot, Fleet, Farborough, Camberley and Sandhurst.
Staff are understood to have been told about the closures in an internal message from regional managing director Simon Edgley, according to Hold the Front Page.
Edgley said: “As you know the Trinity Mirror digital strategy is to grow an audience of scale built on local, loyal readers for our key sites.
“Our newsrooms are built to be digital-first and driven by analytics. In the South East we have an enviable record of audience growth.
“Thanks to the clever, hard work of editorial, page views in June across the key sites, Get Surrey, Get WestLondon, Kent Live, Croydon Advertiser, and Essex Live were more than 50 per cent up on 2016.
“Following a digital portfolio review, we do not believe that we are in a position to grow the sites Get Bucks and Get Hampshire to the audience size required to deliver on our digital revenue ambitions. We have, therefore, regretfully come to the decision to close these sites from 1 August.
“Get Hampshire will redirect to the successful GetSurrey site which had 5.5m page views in June and where there is a proven appetite for these stories. Get Hampshire and Get Bucks will retain their presence on Facebook to complement our continued engagement with our readers in print.”
Get Surrey has 82,000 daily unique browsers, according to ABC figures to the end of June. Get Hampshire, set up in 2008, and Get Bucks, launched in 2016, are unaudited.
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