NottinghamWorld

NottinghamWorld is a digital-only city news website for Nottingham in the East Midlands, published by National World. It was launched in March 2023 as part of the publisher's expansion of its 'World' city brands into cities where it did not previously have a daily title, and it covers local news, sport, events and community stories for the city. The site sits alongside National World's national website and its other city titles, and it competes for readers in Nottingham with the long-established Nottingham Post, which is owned by rival publisher Reach plc. Its official website is nottinghamworld.com.

Overview

NottinghamWorld is an online-only publication. It has no print edition of its own, and its journalism is produced for the web, for search and social audiences and for readers who follow city news on mobile devices throughout the day. That distinguishes it from the weekly newspapers National World already owned in Nottinghamshire when the site was launched, among them the Hucknall Dispatch, the Mansfield Chad, the Worksop Guardian and the Eastwood and Kimberley Advertiser. The publisher stressed at the time of the announcement that the new city site would not affect that existing weekly portfolio in Derbyshire, Leicestershire and Nottinghamshire.

The site's remit, as set out in its launch coverage, is the city of Nottingham itself: its council, neighbourhoods, businesses, schools, courts, transport, culture and sport. In practice that means a mixture of breaking news, public-service information, what's-on coverage and sport, presented in the fast-moving format common to National World's other City World titles.

History and Founding

NottinghamWorld was announced on 9 February 2023, when National World said it would launch a news and sport website for Nottingham later that month, with sister sites for Leicester and Derby to follow in the coming weeks. The title duly launched in March 2023. It formed part of a wider pattern in which National World, in the two years after its takeover of JPI Media, set up 'World' sites in Birmingham, Bristol, Glasgow, Liverpool, London, Manchester and Newcastle, in each case entering cities served by existing Reach titles.

The publisher behind the launch had itself been created recently. National World was founded and listed on the London Stock Exchange in September 2019 as a media takeover vehicle set up by the newspaper executive David Montgomery. On 2 January 2021 it acquired JPI Media Publishing for £10.2 million. JPI Media had been formed in November 2018 to take charge of Johnston Press after that publisher was placed in administration, and its portfolio included The Scotsman, the Yorkshire Post and Belfast's News Letter, as well as the Sheffield Star and the Edinburgh Evening News. In April 2022 JPI Media was rebranded as National World Publishing.

The national site nationalworld.com had been launched in March 2021, and the city sites followed from the summer of that year. Nottingham, Derby and Leicester were the next wave, announced after a restructure in early February 2023 that brought the Blackpool Gazette, the Lancashire Post, The News in Portsmouth and the Sunderland Echo into National World's 'City World' structure.

Launch Leadership

When the East Midlands launches were announced, National World was recruiting an editor for NottinghamWorld, with further roles to follow. The site's launch editor was Caroline Barry, who had previously worked as a journalist at the Nottingham Post and whose writing had also appeared in other national and specialist titles. Barry led the site from its launch in March 2023 and later said she had grown it from the start through local knowledge of the city.

Barry left in August 2023 to become content manager and trainer at Enhance the UK, a disability awareness charity. In October 2023 Abigail Rabbett was appointed editor of both NottinghamWorld and its sister site DerbyWorld, after the two editorships were merged. Rabbett had joined National World in May 2023 in a group-wide customer loyalty editor role. Before that she had worked for Reach plc, where in 2021 she had become, at the age of 23, the publisher's youngest editor when she took charge of Norfolk Live and Suffolk Live, later adding Cambridgeshire Live. Above the city editors sat Nancy Fielder, editor-in-chief for National World's Cities division, to whom the East Midlands titles reported.

The City It Serves

Nottingham is a city and unitary authority in Nottinghamshire, in the East Midlands, on the River Trent. It is the region's principal business centre and is home to two universities, the University of Nottingham and Nottingham Trent University, whose students form a large and visible part of the city's population and economy. Major employers and brands associated with the city include Experian, Boots, Capital One and Paul Smith, and the city has historic associations with lace-making, Raleigh bicycles and the legend of Robin Hood.

For a city news site, that mix produces a distinctive news agenda. Council decisions by Nottingham City Council, development in the city centre and neighbourhoods such as the Lace Market, Sneinton, Radford, Hyson Green, Wollaton and Clifton, university life, transport including the city's tram network, and the fortunes of its shops, venues and night-time economy all supply regular stories. NottinghamWorld's role is to cover that agenda digitally, in competition with the Post and with local broadcasters, rather than through a printed daily paper.

Coverage and Beats

The site covers general news for Nottingham, including council and public-service reporting, crime and court stories, health, education, transport and weather, together with community stories from across the city. Its what's-on and events coverage reflects the launch promise made across the City World network to inform and entertain as well as to report, with guides to things to do, places to eat and drink, and events in and around the city.

Sport is a central part of the offer, as it is for every National World city title. In Nottingham that means principally Nottingham Forest, who play at the City Ground, and Notts County, who play at Meadow Lane, as well as cricket associated with Trent Bridge and Nottinghamshire. Launch coverage of the sister East Midlands titles made clear that dedicated football writers were part of the model, with group sports editors supporting the city sites.

Place in the National World Network

NottinghamWorld is one title within a large portfolio. Following its acquisition of JPI Media, National World operated more than 100 newspapers and websites around the United Kingdom, with flagship titles including The Scotsman, the Yorkshire Post and the News Letter. The City World portfolio was led centrally, with a cities editor-in-chief, a publisher for the division and publishing editors responsible for groups of cities, aligning content, audience development and revenues across regions.

That structure matters to how NottinghamWorld works. Stories, formats and audience techniques developed on one city site can be reused on others, group specialists in sport and audience development support local editors, and national stories from nationalworld.com sit alongside city material. At the same time, National World presented each city site as led by a locally based editor, arguing that local leadership was necessary to capture the voice and identity of each city.

Funding and Business Model

NottinghamWorld is a commercial, advertising-funded website. It does not charge readers a subscription in the manner of a paywalled title; its publisher's model for the city sites was to build large digital audiences and sell advertising against them. At the Nottingham launch, the Cities editor-in-chief said she expected the site to pass a million page views a month in a short space of time, as other city sites had done, illustrating the scale of audience the model required.

National World also pursued new advertising technology for its portfolio, announcing a partnership with DanAds in 2022 to develop a self-serve advertising platform intended to connect its readers more directly with local businesses. Advertising sales for the East Midlands launches were handled within the group's existing commercial operation; for the sister Derby title, a former Derby Telegraph field sales manager who had become a National World media sales director took charge of advertising at launch.

Audience and Competition

The audience NottinghamWorld set out to win was already served. Nottingham had a daily newspaper tradition embodied by the Nottingham Post, owned by Reach plc, whose website covered the same city news and Forest and County sport. National World's strategy across the country was explicitly to battle Reach for online readers in major population centres, and Nottingham was one of the clearest examples: a city where National World had weekly titles nearby but no daily or city site of its own.

The site also entered a city that had seen other recent local news launches, in a period when independent and co-operative titles were appearing in several English cities. Its offer to readers was therefore not simply news itself, but a digital-first alternative voice for the city, produced by a large national group rather than by the incumbent publisher.

Digital Presence

NottinghamWorld publishes at nottinghamworld.com. Like the other City World sites, it is designed for continuous updating, search discovery and social distribution, with news, sport, what's-on and lifestyle material organised by topic for readers arriving from search engines and social platforms as well as for regular visitors to the homepage. Video and pictures form part of the format across the network; the group's city sites were launched with video journalism support, and its digital content director described the East Midlands launches as a further opportunity for its digital-only editors and reporters across the United Kingdom.

Readers can also reach Nottingham stories through the wider National World network, whose national and city sites cross-promote one another. That network effect is a core part of the 'World' idea: a reader who arrives for a national story can be directed to city coverage, and a city reader can be offered national news, sport and entertainment from sister titles.

Ownership Change and Availability

In May 2025 National World plc was acquired by Media Concierge, the London-based media group led by Malcolm Denmark, in a transaction valued at £65.1 million. Media Concierge bought the shares it did not already own for 23p per share, the deal became effective in late May 2025 after High Court approval, and National World was delisted from the London Stock Exchange and became a privately owned company. The former National World business was subsequently renamed Iconic Media Group. The acquisition made Media Concierge one of the United Kingdom's largest regional news publishers, with a portfolio of more than 100 regional titles.

NottinghamWorld remains available online at its official website, where readers in Nottingham and beyond can follow the site's news, sport, events and community coverage for the city. It stands as one of the products of a specific moment in British local journalism: the attempt, in the early 2020s, by a revived regional publisher to build a national network of digital-only city titles in places its print history had never reached.