A RAY of hope for local newspapers this week as five redundant journalists team up to start their own publication.
The five were all employed by the Manchester-based MEN Media before their papers were either shut-down or centralised miles away from their readers, in the wave of cost-cutting prompted by the recession and growth of the [...]

WHAT next for local newspapers struggling to cope with the impact of the internet and the loss of advertising revenue due to the recession?
One answer comes from politicians in Wales who are calling for public funding for new community newspapers.
They believe, with some justification, that the widespread closures and redundancies amongst local newspapers have had [...]

SOUND Communication today proudly announces its (slightly intermittent) Annual Media Awards….
And already the nominations are flowing in.
Step forward the Manchester Evening News, the first print publication to win a prized gong.
For the most crass, offensive and distasteful contribution to the subject of mental health awareness, we have no hesitation in nominating the MEN’s Business [...]

SHADOW Home Secretary Chris Grayling has been rightly castigated for his intemperate remarks which compared Liverpool and Manchester with the American city of Baltimore depicted in TV’s cult series, The Wire.
Grayling suggested that the level of lawlessness in the two Northern cities was comparable to the fictional bloody, drug-ridden slums of the US city.
Although [...]

THE presses will roll for the last time at the Liverpool Echo on Saturday morning as printing is transferred 40 miles outside the city, to Oldham.
More than 100 jobs have been axed in the cost-cutting move by owners Trinity Mirror, which on Thursday announced half-year profits of £49.1million.
The closure of the Old Hall Street plant [...]

CONGRATULATIONS  to journalists at Trinity Mirror in the Midlands for averting threatened compulsory redundancies at their newspapers.
The threat of a one-day strike by journalists this Thursday, seems to have brought Trinity bosses to their senses.
The strike has now been called off after Trinity, publishers of the Daily Mirror, agreed to withdraw compulsory job losses in [...]

A FASCINATING insight into the workings of Government is provided by the right-wing Spectator magazine in its blog ‘Coffee House’.
It tells how Cabinet Minister Ed Balls, a close confidante of Prime Minister Gordon Brown, rang up the magazine’s political editor, Fraser Nelson, to complain about an earlier article which had branded the Children’s Secretary “a [...]

THE Pope’s outburst about condoms and AIDS has understandably caused a firestorm of controversy.
An online petition protesting at the Pontiff’s position has now been started by the excellent global campaigning organisation, Avaaz.
It is clear about what Pope Benedict actually said about condoms on his flight to Africa, where 22 million people are infected with HIV.
As [...]

ANY self-respecting journalist will shudder at the prospect of getting a terse ‘no comment’ from the subject of their latest exclusive.
It’s bad for the reporter (s/he looks easily fobbed off); bad for the story (it looks unbalanced); and bad for the subject (s/he/it looks like they have something to hide).
Our advice to any client, almost [...]

LOCAL newspapers have become amongst the first victims of the global recession with major job losses, pay freezes and closures announced.
Some commmentators are already predicting that the future for local papers is bleak, almost terminal, as they are hit both by the economic downturn and the march of the internet.
Editorial quality is always one of the first [...]