Guardian waves goodbye to holed safety net
The sale of the Manchester Evening News to Trinity Mirror is no great surprise, but it is a sad day for the city when its evening newspaper decamps to Oldham.
The Guardian has not treated the MEN well in recent years and while the sale to Trinity Mirror will inevitably lead to further restructuring, one has to hope that the in the longer term the title will benefit from being owned by a business that’s actually committed to regional newspapers.
As the Guardian admits, the Manchester Evening News has always been a financial safety net. That it was so quickly jettisoned once it became unable to cover the national title’s losses, will leave a bad taste in many sentimental mouths.
And not only was the MEN no longer profitable, its sale has raised little, which means the Guardian will remain in financial crisis for some time to come.
Meanwhile, the Guardian has axed sections of the Observer — stuff people might buy the newspaper for — and invests money chasing people who think a 24-page supplement is all they need to learn Arabic.
We have wall-to-wall news, but its the same news repeated over and over and without depth. Newspapers remain the perfect media to go beyond the headlines and the Guardian should sack the silly supplements and wall charts, etcetera and reinvest in journalism that people will want to read and be prepared to pay for.
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