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 internet.

Some doom and gloom merchants have already been quick to give their pessimistic verdict on the venture at the North West media web-site, How Do.

But all those with an interest in local journalism and vibrant, questioning local papers, will welcome the team’s initiative and bravery in setting up PIP Media.

Bosses at the mainstream media will, no doubt, be closely watching how their former employees fare as competitors. It will be interesting to see how they respond.

And there will be lots of questions about the business model for the venture – not least what the ‘on-line’ offer will be and how they aim to attract enough advertising revenue to succeed.

These are testing times for everyone involved in the media, but Sound Communication for one, wishes the first new paper, the Rochdale and Heywood Independent, every success.

We hope it is the first of many more such journalism-led ventures.

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 a direct effect on the quality of information provided to local communities.

Their answer is to press for taxpayers to fund alternative sources of news, information and entertainment.

At one stage earlier this year, Manchester city council also seemed to be considering investing public money in local journalism, following repeated and prolonged cuts at the Guardian & Manchester Evening News Group.

That promising initiative seems to have disappeared – no doubt prompted by the looming spectre of public spending cuts.

Obviously, politicians would be on a sticky wicket in  justifying the investment in local newspapers, or community-based alternatives, when ‘front-line’ services are under threat.

But ask yourself what role, if any, your local council could play in helping provide unbiased, impartial local news coverage? Would municipal media represent the dead-hand of the state?

Would petty officialdom and their mountains of bureacracy always threaten to stifle controversy, the exposure of wrong-doing and the lively cut and thrust of debate about local matters, which is the lifeblood of the best local newspapers?

Does he who pays the piper always call the tune?

If not – and its a big ‘if’ – with the advent of the world wide web, can new mechanisms be constructed which guarantee both the independence of local journalism and its future sustainability?

Perhaps that is the real challenge for local newspaper journalism in the age of the internet and post recession.

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 Matters column of  Thursday 27th August 2009, written by Employment Law Consultant, Paul Davidge, for this shocking headline:

“Is the issue of mental health driving employers mad?”

Whilst this headline was, no doubt, the product of an exodus of journalistic sub-editing talent caused by the Guardian Media Group’s swingeing cuts, we do not think there is any excuse for this kind of glib, ignorant and insensitive description of an incredibly serious subject.

It’s not funny. And it’s not clever.

We hope the writer, Mr Davidge dissassociates himself from this kind of drivel. Perhaps he should seek a public apology?

The Manchester Evening News – once one of Britain’s great regional newspapers – should be thoroughly ashamed of themselves.

• Interestingly, the on-line version of the column does not contain the offending headline. Thankfully.

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 it may suit Grayling’s political purposes – and attract easy media headlines – to launch such an outburst, it is so way off-beam as to be faintly ridiculous.

So we shall move on.

However, one aspect of The Wire, currently showing on BBC2, which does stand comparison is in its depiction of the current state of  the media.

The fictional Baltimore Sun is closing offices, losing gifted, connected staff and missing important stories as the money men in charge grapple with the onset of the internet.

Swap Baltimore for Bury, Birmingham, or Basildon and the story is the same. Same pressures, same environment, same profane language.

The Wire’s depiction of frustrated but ambitious reporters itching to get out, supine management, declining editorial standards and a supremely cynical City editor, Gus Haynes (pictured above) is strikingly authentic – even for Britain.

As one senior North West journalist commented the other day: “It’s so accurate, it’s almost uncanny. Completely spot on.”

So if you want to find out what life is really like on your local newspaper, tune into The Wire next Monday night. You won’t regret it.

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 brings to an end 154 years of printing in Liverpool.

Both the Liverpool Echo and its stable-mate, the Daily Post will now be printed on presses at Trinity Mirror’s huge plant at Hollinwood Drive in Chadderton, Oldham, in Greater Manchester.

Trinity, publishers of the Daily Mirror, say that the move out of Liverpool will mean “a better, brighter Echo for readers and better long-term prospects for the staff and the business.”

But union leaders accuse the Echo of “hypocrisy” and say it is betraying Liverpool by taking jobs out of the city and harming the Merseyside community which the paper serves.

The National Union of Journalists claim the move will fatally undermine the paper’s editorial credibility as a champion for Merseyside – a charge which editors are acutely sensitive to.

The union fears that, although there will be improvements in the quality of the paper used and the reproduction of colour photographs, the quality of news in the Echo and Post will suffer from earlier deadlines – 7am in the morning for the Echo.

NUJ Regional Organiser Chris Morley said: “Effectively, the paper will be produced the day before – it will be 24 hours old. Changing the paper to get in a late-breaking news story will be almost impossible.”

However, two editions of the Echo will still be produced – but it’s likely that only the front and back and one inside page will be changed.

The NUJ also fear that the demise of the Daily Post will be hastened because it will be in direct competition with the Echo from 10am every morning, when the first editions are expected on the streets of Liverpool.

Already, separate reporting staff from both papers have been merged into one. It is expected that the separate papers will follow suit.

UNITE the union, which represents the sacked printers, faced an uphill battle to try and save the jobs and keep printing on Merseyside. Trinity argued that it would cost £24million to replace the ageing and out-dated presses at Old Hall Street – compared to just £6million to invest in the extra capacity at Oldham.

UNITE Regional Secretary Paul Finegan said: “We were always up against it from the start, because we couldn’t argue with the figures. Trinity paid lip service to consulting us.

“Over the years, the Echo has been one of the most profitable parts of the regional business for Trinity – but they creamed off massive profits without investing anything back into Liverpool.

“They left the cupboard bare and then, when hard times hit, it’s the workers who pay the price.

“I’m confident we could have rallied the people of Liverpool behind a ‘Boycott the Echo’ campaign, just like Liverpool fans did to The Sun over Hillsborough.

“But although we lobbied MPs and local councils and got great public support, we did not want to kill off the Echo – we still have 200 members working there. So has the NUJ. A boycott was never really an option.”

Will Mr Finegan be buying the new Echo then?

“I haven’t bought it since the day they announced the move to Oldham,” he admitted. “I had friends and colleagues there who have now just been thrown out of work.”

This article first appeared at Liverpool Confidential

Trinity shares surge

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 an effort to maintain the company’s massive profits.

But the closure of a series of Trinity weekly titles in the Midlands has still gone ahead -  just like at other Trinity regional and local newspapers nationwide.

The Birmingham victory is a small but important step forward in the campaign to stand up for local newspapers, which are often the lifeblood of local communities.

Unfortunately, we cannot find any report of the NUJ’s victory in the Trinity titles, the Birmingham Post and Mail.

However, it is to be hoped that the news that  job losses are not inevitable in the recession will spread further afield and help encourage other union members to unite and campaign against the cuts in local newspapers.

Meanwhile in Liverpool, Trinity Mirror will next week switch daily printing of the Liverpool Daily Post and Echo from the city, along the M62 and past the centre of Manchester to Oldham, as another cost-cutting measure in a series which have already included job losses, pay freezes and newspaper closures on Merseyside.

• Trinity Mirror made a £196million profit in 2007 and  has paid out £520million to shareholders in the last ten years.

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 liar”.

It is not for us to pronounce on the rights and wrongs of the complex dispute over debt between the pair. Readers can make up their own minds.

But it is quite astonishing that Labour’s Mr Balls, who is in charge of the nation’s schools after all, should take the time and trouble to phone up a Conservative journalist and angrily demand that a blog post be withdrawn. Allegedly.

It may reveal something of the judgement and mind-set of those who wield power on our behalf that such tactics can even be considered appropriate. Whatever happened to freedom of the press?

Secondly, and much more importantly, it also reveals that senior figures in the Government have still failed to come to terms with the power of the internet. They just don’t get it.

As Nelson rightly observes:

Five years ago, you could lie like this on the radio and get away with it. Space is tight in newspapers, no one would devote hundreds of words and graphs – as we did – to expose a lie for what is. But the world has changed now. Blogging has brought new, hyper scrutiny. Blogs have infinite space, and people with endless energy, to expose political lying – no matter how small. Your claims can be instantly counter-checked, by anyone. If you stretch the truth, you can be exposed – by anyone. And if you plan to base a whole election campaign on a lie, as you apparently intend to do, then you’re in for a rude awakening.

Whether Balls is in fact ‘lying’ is, for the moment, besides the point. What matters is that the internet has opened up politicians to intense public scrutiny by the crusading, the campaigning and even the slightly deranged. Politicians cannot control it. Nor should they try.

But they must learn to deal with it.

Sensibly.

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 the controversy raged, both the BBC and the Times also seemed fairly categoric.

But then a familiar phenomenon took place. It became a process story: about the Vatican’s press office.

Even Radio 4’s current affairs flagship, Today sounded as though it was concentrating on the performance of the Pontiff’s spokesperson.

With senior clerics weighing in, it seemed a bit like shooting the messenger, rather than a serious debate about the effectiveness of condoms in helping combat the spread of AIDS.

Tell you what: Instead of blaming the Pope’s press office, why not change the message?

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 whatever the circumstances, would always be: “don’t say nothing, at least say something”.

To stay schtum or refuse to comment can sound the death knell for reputation.

We thought this lesson had been well-learnt by the media-savvy corporate world – until this week.

That was until the giant computer company Fujitsu, the employment agency Kelly Services and Her Majesty’s Customs and Revenue all combined to commit the cardinal sin.

In triplicate.

The occasion? The story which appeared exclusively in the Liverpool Daily Post about 20 agency workers with Fujitsu, who were sacked with just half an hour’s notice after up to eight years service – and without getting a penny in redundancy payments to their names.

We declare our interest at this point: Sound Communication is project managing this North West TUC campaign and produced the press release upon which the Post story was based.

We had been speculating about how the three organisations involved might respond to the accusation of the “exploitation” of the agency workers, working on the multi-million pound Government contract.

This is how the Post prominently reported it:

“Fujitsu, which employs 116 of its own permanent staff at the office which handles tax returns for HM Revenues and Customs, last night refused to comment.

HMRC also refused to comment and Kelly Services did not respond to a request for comment.”

Unfortunate that the well-staffed press offices of all three organisations could not manage to formulate a single sentence in reply to the 20 agency workers. For it leaves the strong impression that the sacked staff were the hapless victims of corporate greed and naked exploitation.

Or as one of the workers remarked to us: “No wonder they didn’t say anything: they can’t defend the indefensible.”

• You can sign-up to Support the campaign for fair treatment for agency workers here

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 things to be sacrificed it seems, as newspaper ‘bean counters’ cut jobs and titles to reduce costs and maintain profits for their shareholders.

Here in the North West, for example, 43 journalist jobs are going at Trinity Newspapers on Merseyside, publishers of the Liverpool Echo and Daily Post; the Guardian Media Group, publishers of the Manchester Evening News, has closed local paper offices all over Greater Manchester and the Newsquest-owned Bury Times is now being moved to Bolton! The same story is being repeated all over the country.

All this when many have long bemoaned the apparent lack of commitment to in-depth reporting from newspaper managements which seem obsessed with celebrity and short-termism.

And at the same time as the axe is being wielded, print journalists are under mounting pressure to master the skills of podcasting, blogs and video-making for YouTube, as their newspaper’s editorial activity effectively shifts on to the internet.

It almost goes without saying, of course, that much of this is not being reported – by local newspapers.

But all is not doom and gloom. Readers of the Bury Times in Greater Manchester have been amongst the most active in protesting about the death of their own local paper.

A group on the social network, Facebook, now has more than 700 members, including the town’s two Labour MPs and its Euro MP. The Facebook group has also had some success in gaining publicity for their cause - and apparently causing great embarrassment amongst the bosses at the parent company, Newsquest.

Whether the Facebook friends will succeed in saving the BT remains to be seen. But the campaign shows that local readers are prepared to stand up for their own local paper and that social networks can be extremely effective ways of enlisting online support.

We can only hope that the cuts in local papers will encourage the birth online of a rash of new locally-based news outlets to rival them.