Plans have begun to launch The Pevensey Gazette in August, a hyperlocal broadsheet newspaper specifically geared to the regional and international promotion of Pevensey as a historic location.—Bay Life, 13 June 2017
The production team behind the newspaper explained that they were ‘chuffed to bits’ to be mentoring graphics design graduate Chloe Hedges, who works locally, as part of the planning.
The six week internship, a first for the group of hyperlocal newspapers, will include mentoring by a tutor working with Chloe whose award winning teaching company has been working with design graduates for 30 years.
The interview team that chose Chloe as the first intern to work with the Pevensey Gazette, following local interviews two weeks ago said, “we were particularly impressed by how Chloe approached the interview, in particular, her work with vector based applications such as Illustrator impressed us, and also her emerging sense of the need to convert her graduate skills into a small scale commercial setting following her successful graduation with a degree in graphic illustration”.
Following the interview, Chloe commented, “thank you so much for this opportunity with creating some graphic design to put in the newspaper. I really appreciate it”.
The internship is due to begin in two weeks time, with the launch of the Pevensey Gazette to take place at the beginning of August.
The newspaper which will see the production team making links with Wealden Council, English Heritage and key regional stakeholders, is aimed at an international audience and will be promoting Pevensey castle, the Museum, Court House and Gaol, local restaurants, public houses and tea rooms as well as aspects of the unique Elizabethan High Street in Pevensey.
The editorial team will also be promoting the potential restoration value of the redundant Mint House dated around 1340 which has a history of legendary status in Sussex with stories that date back beyond resident Court physician to Henry Eighth, Dr. Andrew Borde.
The production team commented, “our target audience is the untapped visitor market which we will sell simply, because in our view the commercial value of Pevensey as a visitor destination is not supported locally with an organisation that has any understanding of how to utilise modern digital tools, either in print and online”.
“We noticed with astonishment that there is no social media feed at all related to the Court House Museum and Gaol.
“All such local treasures have their own Facebook pages. For example. Here in Pevensey there is not even a Facebook page for the organisation behind the promotion of these precious assets.
“Someone has put up a personal Facebook page without realising that unless the page is set up as an organisation that the algorithms behind Facebook do not register the page as an organisation or promote the page as an organisation”.
“Essentially” commented the team, “this makes the exercise pointless, with the result that the page can not not even record the number of people that like the museum. As far as Facebook is concerned, with regard to the page, there is no museum.”
When the team researched the question they found, “this explains why the neighbouring Museum in Seaford, housed in a Martello Tower has 3,507 likes and the Museum in Pevensey has none. It would appear that no-one has even realised the situation. Without doubt those 3,507 likes have a demonstrable relationship with the visitor footprint to Seaford Museum”.
“Developing a social media profile is one of the starting points in terms of creating audience interest online, these tools are now part of the lifeblood of small museums across the country ”
“How can the organisation hope to be taken seriously promoting what is quite possibly the smallest court house in England and a total treasure house of information, when there is not even knowledge in the organisation to set up a Facebook page?”
At one of the first fact finding sessions, the team identified that coaches arriving at the Cattle Market Car park found the signage, profiling and promotion of the historic values of the location “haphazard and without any real evidence of an understanding of the kind or information architecture that characterises the promotion of key historic locations in other parts of Sussex”.
The team saw a French coach arriving with people ‘just milling around without a clue about where to go or what to do”.
The plastic looking banners offering snippets information about work being undertaken at the Museum, tied on fences, were described as ‘laughable, like washing hung out to dry, blowing in wind”.
Commenting on the situation they said “we can not do anything about the fact that the people running the Court House, Museum and Gaol do not even know how to set up a Facebook page as an organisation, or understand information architecture”
“Without question in our view though, there is an untapped visitor destination market here without a local organisation knowing how to promote the precious assets properly in print, and without even a social media footprint.”
“Where does the organisation responsible think that people go first when they are researching a day out in Pevensey?
“We expect key regional and national stakeholders to be interested in what we are doing”
“We can deliver for Pevensey a broadsheet newspaper to a national standard, our target audience is the large French coach we saw arriving a couple of days ago with all the people alighting simply arriving in this historic location without anything in their hands to spark interest, or promote the location.
The team said “what we can deliver is a broadsheet newspaper that is also available online asa digital version with a potential subscription base across the world.
“We will be delivering French and German schoolchildren the opportunity to study the delights of up to the minute Pevensey on their laptops and digital tablets so that when they arrive in Pevensey, they have been appraised of the fantastic opportunities that Pevensey presents as a day out.
“If there are special offers in the tea rooms, or aspects of English life specifically of interest to them in Pevensey, they will be there for them to see in the newspaper both in print and online.
“If they have a dongle on board, they will just switch on the newspaper with the digital version on the coach as they cruise into the cattle market car park.
“They will know about all the delights, up to the minute, which one is where, if it is open that day, if there are any events happening that day and discover and any special offers in local establishments targeted towards specific groups.
“We believe that we are looking at an open goal commercially that clicks and we simply do not understand why no-one has understood or taken advantage of the web and social media with what is clearly a commercial opportunity of value.
“We also believe that we can bring more visitors to Pevensey”
The team added, “working with Chloe will be great and we are looking forward to working with her graduate skills, particularly since so much of what we do with our national production value hyperlocal newspapers is vector based with applications like Quark and Illustrator.
“Getting this short internship on her CV might be the best move that Chloe could make as a graphic design graduate.
“Who else is Sussex will be able to say that they worked with the first hyperlocal newspaper for the historic location of Pevensey for six weeks, pitching her vector based skills to an international audience with the digital version of the newspaper as well?”
“Put that on her CV and possibly she will get some potential employers on the phone asking her to tell them more”.
