Mirror’s Anti-Search Cheer Leader Kelly Upped To Digital Content Director

The charge The Mirror associate editor Matt Kelly has led against search engine optimisation has earned him a promotion – to the newly-created role of digital content director for Trinity Mirror’s national newspaper division, responsible for developing and boosting the revenues of the division’s growing roster of sites. He’ll report to Mirror editor Richard Wallace.

Kelly was heavily involved in the web relaunch of Mirror.co.uk earlier this year, the launches of the 3am.co.uk and Mirror Football spin-off vertical sites and is an outspoken critic of search traffic-led online news culture.

A biker, Kelly began his public crusade against search news culture in a paidContent:UK interview this summer and tried to muster industry-wide support for putting content over searchability in a World Editors Forum speech in Hyderabad last week (full transcript here)…

“The game is up,” he said. “The days of leading the newspaper industry by the hand, down the path of mythic riches, are coming to a rapid close.