The Manchester Evening News website is to be relaunched with a greater emphasis on social media and live reporting, Journalism.co.uk reports.

Its parent company MEN Media plans to have all its reporters signed up to Twitter in the next few months. The Manchester Evening News and its sister titles currently have around 20-25 journalists on Twitter, head of online content Paul Gallagher told Journalism.co.uk.

"It means that when we have an event like the recent royal visit, being covered by six different journalists, we can easily pull it together in a live blog at short notice because they are all set up to tweet," Gallagher said. A liveblog was recently used to cover eight different visits made by Prince Charles and the Duchess of Cornwall.

"Some of our journalists have been wary about using it and don't really understand the point of it at first. But then you explain to them that all you've got to do is send a text and it's that easy."

He added that the redesign would be a facelift of the existing site, with more features for live event coverage and Twitter feeds from specific blogs. A live section will direct readers to live event coverage.

The group has already started using CoverItLive software to liveblog local council meetings. Gallagher said that reporters using the software had enjoyed the interaction with readers and that he hoped that in the future, readers would be able to ask questions of reporters in the field through liveblogs.

Parent company Guardian Media Group last week announced the sale of MEN Media to Trinity Mirror in a £44.8 million deal.

Source: Journalism.co.uk