30 June 2021

S4C has announced that the channel is to expand its digital news team to eight full-time members of staff.

Six months on from the launch of the Newyddion S4C (NS4C) app and website, two new journalists will be joining the team.

Meleri Williams and Nia George, who have just completed a post graduate course at the Cardiff University School of Journalism, are joining the three existing digital journalists.

Also Lydia Griffith has been appointed to the post of senior reporter in order to assist the news service's editor and deputy editor.

Molly Sedgemore, winner of the S4C News Scholarship, joins the team for a period of three months to work at the news service and develop her experience in the field of journalism.

Since launching in April, the app and website has published hundreds of original stories and has been working in partnership with other news outlets including Golwg and ITV Cymru as well as publishing stories from Newyddion S4C produced by BBC Cymru. Since its launch, the NS4C app has had 5,000 downloads.

A number of the service's exclusive stories have gone worldwide with the item on that famous stumble on the steps of the Red Lion pub in Pontrhydfendigaid receiving 177,000 views on Twitter.

"I am very proud of how the service has developed in the first six months," said Ioan Pollard, editor of S4C's digital news service.

"The team has worked hard to ensure that we are the first to break news stories while offering our users a high quality news service at their fingertips, any time of the day.

"The partnership element of sharing and curating stories has been key to the success of the service and I'm very grateful to our partners for working with us to share expertise and resources.

"It's nice too that the service can play a leading role in developing young journalists and I'm pleased to see the team growing and to be able to offer the opportunity for journalists to work on an innovative and exciting digital service."