Yorkshire Evening Post teams up with The City Talking to reach a younger audience

The Yorkshire Evening Post announced a collaboration with the free monthly title The City Talking that combines the distribution of the two newspapers in Leeds.

Helen Oldham, managing director across the Yorkshire titles and Scottish dailies portfolio at Johnston Press, told Journalism.co.uk the collaboration had been in the planning stages for some time.

She said she had been working with Hebe Media, the publishers of The City Talking, to "reach a slightly younger and a slightly hipper audience than we're currently reaching with the Yorkshire Evening Post".

She said the monthly newspaper published 10,000 copies and the team-up with the Yorkshire Evening Post would push their total distribution to more than 25,000.

The City Talking "will look and feel exactly as it does now", she said, but the newspaper will be distributed through the Yorkshire Evening Post channels starting from September 19. The two titles will be available as part of a package once a month on a Friday.

The price of the Yorkshire Evening Post will remain the same, and Oldham said readers will get a "greater added value" by receiving The City Talking with their paper.

She said the collaboration was part of a wider plan to make the newspaper more appealing to a younger audience.

"We are in the process of making changes to the content of the Yorkshire Evening Post," she said, "however this is an enhancement to what we already have planned."

"We're constantly looking at how we evolve the content in the Yorkshire Evening Post, and it's really part of that ongoing process."

Oldham said The City Talking has a different take on life in Leeds. The monthly local started out online and became a print title in 2013, publishing two-page features with a focus on arts and culture, independent retail, and sport.

The title began a conversation on their website last month around a potential application by the city of Leeds to become European Capital of Culture in 2023.

The City Talking gives space to "the underbelly of arts and culture in the city", said Oldham. "I think they have their own slightly edgier approach to content and design.

"It's a product which we couldn't have envisaged... It's really bringing something new and exciting to our readers."

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