MEN Lite fails… so Manchester Evening News gives itself away
Former Guardian editor Peter Preston, broke his newspaper’s guidance with a column puffing the Manchester Evening News’ decision to give itself away in the city centre; he neglected to mention the Observer and Manchester Evening News are both part of Guardian Media Group.
Nevertheless there is no shying away from the MEN’s decline: by 2025 it will be dead, reports Preston. In truth it would close long before circulation hit zero. But the real story here is the failure of MEN Lite, an edited version of the paper available free in the city centre… they couldn’t give it away.
Regional chief operating officer, Mark Dodson (who famously said: ‘We have to face up to the fact that we are in the advertising business not the newspaper publishing business’), believes he’ll be able to give away 50,000 (they currently sell less than 7,000) to Manchester’s 150,000 city centre commuters.
Yet the real problem for the Manchester Evening News is editorial. The paper has simply failed to engage with the city, is out of touch and hates what Manchester has become. The MEN is terribly curmudgeonly, loathes public art and ignores the city’s popular culture; something others would die for. The letters page is dominated by those who simply sign themselves ‘pensioner’ (‘I’m poor’; ‘where’s my pension gone?’; ‘we’re all poor’; ‘oh my back’.
But tomorrow’s pensioners will not be like todays and if the Manchester Evening News doesn’t do something to connect with those under 65, it will deserve to die.
Contact Stephen Newton
Comments (One comment)
About ten years ago, when Time Out launched in NYC, the venerable and brilliant Village Voice freaked out (to use the correct business term) and went free. The paper’s never been the same since and, of course, Time Out is still there and so are half a dozen new freesheets plus, of course, Craig’s List.
The local newspaper business is thrashing (another technical term) – innovating in an arbitrary (not to say desperate) way – and attempting to deal with the kind of competitive challenge they never expected to touch them.
Local newspapers were pretty sure their privileged position, deeply embedded in local communities and economies, was essentially unassailable. The logic was that no one had the resource to rebuild local media provision from the ground up so – even through the dot.com boom and crash – local newspapers were the golden media sector. Even two years ago the local press in Britain was sailing along on cushy 30%+ margins. Not any more, though. Oh dear.
Steve / April 25th, 2006, 11:30 pm / #
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