Out With A Bang

Given that we’re all trying to fight the good fight out here in the digital wilderness – and as such the mood seems to be one of being eachother’s ‘critical friend’ – it is interesting, and wholly commendable, to see TrinityMirror holding true to their promise of rolling out their ****banter.co.uk ‘brand’.

We’ve mentioned it before; it does – clearly – follow someone else’s lead in offering premium quality local football content that endeavours to be both deadline-free and geography-lite…

http://outwithabang.rickwaghorn.co.uk/?p=80

So, sure enough, to coincide with the start of the new Premiership season, here’s comes www.newcastlebanter.co.uk www.sunderlandbanter.co.uk and, indeed, www.birminghambanter.co.uk

Each proves true to Trinity’s word in that they appear to enjoy a “very discreet” relationship with their mother newspapers; it will be fascinating to watch how, content-wise, the two dove-tail together deadline-wise… are Trinity starting to nibble away at their own newspapers in terms of servicing ****banter first ahead of the back pages of the Echo, the Post, the Chron or the Mail?

Or are their reporters now serving two masters with two different sets of content demands?

But much like their local offerings out of TS10, in fairness to Trinity having talked the talk, they are now actually walking the walk…

If I were to be a critical friend, I’d want to see a ‘mother’ hub; a generic ‘Banter’ portal that would pull-stroke-aggregate all my Banter content in under one roof; from there I would look to syndicate it on – upwards and sideways…

But I’d want a ‘junction box’; a single, elegant connection point through which I could bolt my long tail up into a global sports portal.

In theory – if I was the Daily Mirror sports desk – I’d be wanting first dibs on all the Everton, Liverpool, Newcastle and Sunderland content that was being pumped out by my country cousins; after all, that’s what a ‘family’ is for – to look after eachother in times of financial and staffing hardship…. so pump that content into my digital football desk 24/7 please… let’s use that content twice…

And as welcome as the Birmingham site undoubtedly is, they are Championship… in the all or nothing model that football offers, the big trick is being first to complete a full Pemiership or a full Championship network, be it either 20-clubs or 24 clubs strong.

For now, I suspect that remains slightly beyond all of us.

And having followed Trinity’s trail of url acquisitions this summer, I’m clearly intrigued as to how they propose to ’staff’ both www.norwichcitybanter.co.uk and www.ipswichtownbanter.co.uk …

Right now, I can only see that happening in one of two ways – a content share deal with Archant via the Eastern Daily Press and the East Anglian Daily Times – as you might propose with, say, Northcliffe for a Banter gig out of Stoke City and Hull City – or else you start to whistle up some freelance copy…

All credit to them for giving it a go, but their next challenge is probably the biggest – defeating the inelegant geography that haunts the best intentions of every provincial newspaper group.

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