Irish Enterprise Awards 2021

44 EU BUSINESS NEWS / 2021 Irish Enterprise Awards , Best News Media Platform 2021 As this award joins its other prestigious accreditation, this young news platformcontinues to makewaves in online newsmedia and in its county. Focused on regional news for the county of Cork, Cork Beo has beenmaking its voice heard across the nation. Jan21436 Having launched in May of 2019, Cork Beo set out to inform and entertain the people of Ireland’s largest county. Cork is a changing region, with many industries strengthening and more new ones migrating to within its boundaries by the day; furthermore, its population has jumped from 85,000 to 210,000 since those boundaries changed. In the midst of this, Cork Beo has enjoyed engaging with and supporting its communities across the board and seeks to amplify the new energy invigorating the area. Becoming the voice of a region on the rise in Ireland, Cork Beo’s delivery of in-depth coverage on local news and events has gained it a steadily growing readership that has similarly strengthened with the backing of time and hard work. It is the newest of five big digital news brands for Reach in Ireland, which also publishes the Irish Mirror and Irish Star newspapers and RSVP magazine. In addition, it has effectively made its mark by focusing on the issues that directly impact its target area. It sheds light on local issues and strikes a balance between informative and fun so that readers can both be entertained and kept in the loop on the most important happenings in their locality. It makes good use of colour, imagery, opinion pieces and recommendations, all with a personable tone that gives Cork Beo a unified and accessible voice. Its aim has been to become Cork’s primary media network, a place where the community can come together over local issues and feel like their voices are heard and valued. A year after it was established, it now takes a moment to reflect on how far it has come, humbled by the level of support its community have rallied behind it. It has been an ‘action packed and news rich’ starting year for this budding news platform, one that bodes well as a foundation for its ongoing success. It launched straight into a busy summer in 2019, and then found itself having to tackle very different challenges indeed in the summer of the following year. The constant slew of challenges made it effective and adaptable, developing flexible processes and bettering itself at every turn, finding new ways to serve its community in news terms. Its team has expanded to four full time journalists, all of whom have helped it to reach the heights of success it currently enjoys – one of its most recent wins being having more than 2 million users on the site over the course of one month (January 2021), an incredible achievement for such a young platform. Its readers appreciate the fresh approach it brings to news dissemination and how it keeps its work cemented in the county itself. It gives those who live in, work in or travel through Cork a dedicated place to find their information without trawling through national news sites, and in this way it also helps national brands break into Cork in a way local people respond to. Furthermore, it was the first platform in Reach’s portfolio to launch with a commercial partnership in place before going live. In this way, it has been excellent at securing further brand partners and campaigns and able to apply this to make the pivots necessary for its flexible operational model. Covid-19 necessitated one such pivot away from tourism and visitor focused content and towards bringing life science and national news to the fore. Its parent company, Reach, showed it is committing to making positive changes for the long-term with the appointment of a new head of diversity and inclusion, something that will positively affect Cork Beo. This focus on diversity and inclusion and the establishment of a wellbeing panel specifically for the Irish business that promises to better look after employees, are all changes that are just as positive internally as they are in customer facing spaces. Cork Beo is using the bolstering from these changes and the growth it has enjoyed in just two years to keep its exemplary work exemplary. Furthermore, it wishes to reflect the beating heart of the local area even better; over the rest of 2021, its platform will be focusing on highlighting positive changes, identifying leaders, entrepreneurs and innovators who are leading Cork into the future. Company: Cork Beo Contact: Grainne McDonald Website: https://www.corkbeo.ie/