They say the 90s began in 1989, with the fall of the Berlin Wall and the kicking in that year of ferment, protest and revolutions both political and cultural.
Sometimes currents and ripples become waves. Autumn 2009 certainly feels like a watershed right now for the Manchester media. We’ve already lost the Metro Manchester pages, while the online services seem be gaining a foothold, however slippery.
Last Friday I attended the leaving drink for 39 staff (a number I was given by more than one attendee) from the Manchester Evening News; outgoing editor Paul Horrocks was also there to make it a round forty.
The Old Grapes was the venue, the choice of an after-work snifter for many a MEN hack in the days when I worked in the Deansgate offices (1989 to 1998), and that too felt appropriately ‘yesterday’ – the boozer is owned by Liz Dawn, the Coronation Street actress.
And well, well, the subject of our chatter, alongside the ”got anything lined up?’ conversations – was the news announced that same day that the London Evening Standard is to go free.
It felt like the sound of the tectonic plates shifting. Forbes‘ reports a possible merger with London Lite, something denied by the Standard’s new owners.
The departing hacks in The Old Grapes were realistic about the way the world is going. They can see it all around in the rise of the Web.
One told me he’d been offered a job that week by a North-west B2B mag publisher editing a number of titles, with a salary range offered of £16-24k, a wage a graduate might be glad of, but not a seasoned journo with long experience.
That process, it was agreed, makes a victim of quality – another swore he’d seen a headline with the word ‘flies’ spelt as ‘flys’ in a local paper.
You can forgive the old sweats their moans and grumbles. I pointed out, probably unhelpfully, that the more mature among them had enjoyed the good days – the decent pensions, the ‘lunch at desk’ expenses, the 6 weeks’ holidays and not that long ago (I had one) the extra one-month’s paid sabbatical every four years to match those of the dons and writers at The Guardian.
Former MEN features editor Ken Wood helpfully pointed out that the high peak of circulation had been all the way back in 1969.
But if we are approaching the end of forty year end game, there was booze-fuelled speculation about what that future holds for the MEN: weekly only? Fully free?
On a basic level, many of us in Manchester PR agency world are intrigued how the paper will look once shorn of so many heads; some familiar by-lines will not disappear, thanks to some budget for freelances. But will there still be plenty of pages to pitch our stories?
Coincidentally, the same day I had been up to see The Times’ Northern man Russell Jenkins in his News International eyrie at 111 Piccadilly. He’s the only journo there, covering Liverpool to Hull, apart from a gaggle of News of The World-ers. The Sun’s Northern reporter who works from home is presumably building a fine collection of pyjamas.
Change is in the air in Manchester. The Conservatives – government-in-waiting according to the polls and the media – open their first party conference in the city this week, with an election only 6 months away.
Change? In politics? There is a tendency among the non-committed to feel that the more things change, the more things stay the same - ‘whoever I vote for, the government always gets in’.
But the kind of changes we are seeing in this city’s media are not the same – the trends making my former colleagues in the newspaper and magazine sector redundant are irreversible.
But while those changes are as unmistakably clear as a 72 point headline, when it comes to finding sustainable financial models for the new media replacing newsprint, and when we can see chunky numbers of decently-paid journalist jobs again, wherever we are headed is pure guesswork.
As Mao Tse Tung said when asked about the impact of the French Revolution…”It’s far too early to tell.”
Tags: manchester evening news, Manchester media, Manchester politics, Manchester public relations
