This year’s Southern Field Days will feature a move into online for Allied Press Ltd’s rural division with the launch of its rural website.
Following the company’s move to brand all its rural titles as Rural Life, the new website will link all rural news together.
Allied Press group advertising manager Paul Dwyer said it was an exciting venture and the launch at field days was the perfect opportunity to gauge feedback from the rural community.
"We feel that we’ve got such strong rural editorial content and we haven’t been doing our rural readership justice in terms of online. By launching this specialist rural website we’re going to be giving our rural audience a lot more options," he said.
"It’s an extremely important part of who we [Allied Press] are."
Allied Press’s publications are delivered to every rural mailbox from Bluff to Kaikoura and the West Coast.
The website would mean farmers had access to news from other rural titles as well, and would also have both online and print options, Mr Dwyer said.
"We recognise how important giving our readers this option is and how important our commercial relationship with our rural community is. Take a look at this edition of Southern Rural Life, for example; it’s 112 pages with an 88-page Southern Field Days tabloid."
The website will feature news from the Otago Daily Times, Southern Rural Life and Central Rural Life, as well as rural stories from the North Canterbury News rural pages and Allied Press’ eight other community newspapers.
Video content will also be available on the Rural Life website, from the rural reporting team and The South Today.
"We’ll be doing video at Waimumu, which we’ll be playing on our site via the new website."
The rural website will be able to be accessed via the Otago Daily Times website, www.odt.co.nz or via its own URL rurallife.nz from February 9.
