Metro Life is dead

Staff at Metro's Manchester office have just been told to clean out their desks. They were responsible for Metro Life, the local arts and culture section that previewed gigs and club nights, art exhibitions and poetry readings and films, and ran book and restaurant reviews. I used to write for it myself, so I'm not claiming any sort objectivity here when I say that it was a often a thin slice of clued-up and enjoyable writing that seemed oddly out of place at the center of a free newspaper that in terms of actual news value or readability pretty much deserves to get stepped all over on the floor of the 142 or flap around in the wind with the empty crisp packets.

Under a series of editors (most recently the lovely Tamsin Curry, Lucie Davies and Ruth Allan) the section did a fine job of letting us all know about good things happening in town at just the right time. The Metro folks took their work seriously and were very progressive about including a really wide range of arts and culture, especially fringe and avant garde stuff that other local news outlets generally ignored.

In the last year things had started going downhill; Associated Newspapers laid off staff and kept on a skeleton crew from the Manchester and Liverpool offices to produce a thinner Northwest Metro Life section. They were trying to cover a wider area in less space with fewer people, thus quality and range understandably suffered.

So this news isn't really shocking, but no less disappointing. Associated Newspapers: I'm sorry that you don't think the people of Manchester and Liverpool deserve good cultural coverage. I'd threaten not to buy your newspaper, but, well... Anyway, I certainly won't have any reason to pick it up from now on. And neither will a whole bunch of other people.

More cuts at the Manchester Evening News

Earlier this week, I couldn't believe it when I heard some of the people who'd lost their jobs at the MEN. These are not cub reporters by any stretch, but committed and experienced editorial-level folks who've been on the paper for years.

Outgoing online editor Sarah Hartley (Good luck, Sarah!) writes about her time at the MEN over on her personal blog. Wrestling such an old-school relic of a paper into the internet age couldn't have been an easy task, and it's unclear now what will become of the stable of blogs she developed for the MEN, including The Mancunian Way and Life Through Food. Or, for that matter, the CityLife website. You'd have to be pretty moronic to jettison websites and blog projects at this juncture, but the suits in charge of our local rag haven't ever been exactly visionary.

Seriously, is there anyone left in the building? This is what, the second, or is it the third round of cuts on the paper this year? Not to mention the fact that they've decimated the much-vaunted Channel M and cut its broadcasting time to a few hours a day.

Not to mention the fact that, when I bought my GMG-owned Rossendale Free Press yesterday, it had a notice about how the newsroom was now at Scott Place in Manchester, and if I wanted to talk with a reporter in Ramsbottom I could do so at a 2-hour "surgery" once a week. (Yeah, thanks, but news phoned in from six postcodes away doesn't sound so fresh to me. I'd much rather start a citizen-powered hyperlocal community newsblog. Any takers?)

It looks like we happen to be lucky enough to be seeing the death of the newspaper age up close and personal. It'll be painful for a while as journalism reconfigures itself for the new world order. But how this happens, what new forms emerge, and whether we as consumers of news will ultimately benefit remains very much to be seen.

In the meantime, the state of Manchester's print media is looking pretty bleak. If you've got news, you'd probably be better off shouting it from the rooftops then calling the MEN, where there soon may not be anyone to answer the phone, let alone file a story.

Manchester media update

It's an interesting time for Manchester's media world. As in the old Chinese curse: "may you live in interesting times."

Metro: Late last year they laid off a large percentage of Manchester Metro Life staff, and now lo and behold, the section seems to have entered the giant shrinking machine. Shame, that - it was one of the last places you could find out what was going on. Now it seems Metro has jumped on the old media blogging bandwagon. The Manchester Life blog is written by the few bods left over there in the scads of free time they must now have (sarcasm, that was.) Not a lot on there yet, but it's good to see them entering the fray. There's definitely a need for more cultural coverage here, online or off.

Word has it that Time Out have finally pulled the plug on the Time Out Manchester website they were hilariously updating with new content quarterly (yeah, check in once a season to find out what's on!) I guess this means there is now officially no hope of them ever producing the mag. I'll add that collector's edition issue one to my Manchester magazine graveyard, a collection that is becoming so large it may soon require its own room.

If there's no way to make a profit on a cultural mag in Manchester, maybe it's time to start hitting up the non-profit sector. That's exactly what the forthcoming Chimp magazine has done. The long-in-the-works first issue of Chimp, out Saturday for £1.80, was produced with the help of a £10,000 Awards for All community grant - sparking some debate over on NW media site How-Do

For my money (£2, if you're asking) one of the most exciting magazine launches in ages has been the appearance of the lovely Belle Vue, a tiny collectively-produced fanzine that embodies the real spirit of Manchester. And is somewhat preoccupied with where to get a good greasy spoon breakfast, but I can completely understand that. You can get it at Piccadilly Records and Cornerhouse, and there should be another one out soon. So, you see, it's not all gloom and doom. These days, small and homespun trumps big and glossy every time.

The Manchester Review launches

It's always good to see a new literary journal starting up, but to my mind this one couldn't be more exciting. The University of Manchester’s Centre for New Writing this week launches The Manchester Review, edited by the Centre's co-directors John McAuliffe and Ian McGuire. Most intriguingly, "it will depart from the medium’s conventions by existing only online, with new issues appearing each spring and autumn. These will often include broadcasts of new music, public debates and video pieces, as well as visual art, fiction and poetry."

The first issue is up now, with work from the likes of Paul Muldoon, Ali Smith, John Banville, Matt Welton and Chris Killen. Some more about the publication, from its website:

“The Manchester Review takes its cue from their proactive promotion of new writing, but uses online media to show and sponsor the interplay of poetry, fiction, music, visual art and essays by new and established practitioners. We hope that it will find new readers and audiences for exciting and innovative creative work, which is steeped in traditional virtues.

“This will be accompanied by the Review’s lively critical blog, which will take the temperature of - and maybe sometimes set the agenda for – the contemporary arts in the UK and beyond.”

Manchester is becoming quite the place for online literary endeavour. It seems like every week or so I add another couple of lit bloggers to the blogroll. We're blessed the with Literature Festival's geek-friendly Freeplay programme, and blogtastic live lit nights like no point in not being friends, with its tech-aided readings, Facebook group and antics on youtube. Even more traditional publishers and publications like Comma Press and Transmission are increasingly doing stuff online.

And new paper publications all seem to all have blogs, often as their main web presence. One such is the lovely Wufniks, started by students at the aforementioned writing school, with a fantastic tagline: "a mishegoss of shiny new words."

Is blogging dead?

Slow summer? Or has the blogging mania died down? Yes and yes. Blogging, along with every other form of media output, always slows to a trickle during the long, wet days of silly season. But it can't be denied that blogging isn't a craze anymore. Amen to that, I say.

All the cultural mavens chattering excitedly about blogging say, five years ago, have moved on to twitter about Facebooking. That means that the people who started a blog to be trendy and in-the-know have mostly drifted off, leaving their stale urls littering the blogosphere like fallen apples. The many organisations and companies eager to get a piece of the action have figured out exactly how blogging best fits in with what they do (or whether it does at all) and reconfigured things.

The result? I think people who blog now are likely to engage with it in a more substantive way. Blogging as a form of journalism and cultural comment has been subsumed into the mainstream media, while blogging as a way of publishing creative writing online continues to evolve in exciting directions.

So yes, blogging's profile has dropped a bit, but I don't think that's a bad thing. On a local level, I feel like I haven't helped much, y'know, going off and having a baby and all and not blogging much or organising blogmeets (not to overstate my own role in the Manchester scene. Ahem.) But hark! After months of me dropping hints someone has finally seized the blogmeet baton: Julia of Notebooks and MEN Online Editor Sarah Hartleyof The Mancunian Way have between them cooked up a real, live blogmeet. It's set for Wednesday, September 17 at 6pm.

The action is in two parts: first, a tour of the Manchester Evening News newsroom and Q&A with an editor there (limited numbers - go here for info. Second, a more traditional unstructured blogmeet in a nearby pub. Voting on which pub is happening at Sarah's site now. In choosing a pub, I would advise you to consider two important qualities 1.) "dive"-ness and 2.) likelihood to be empty enough to afford the gathering bloggers enough space to comfortably unwind at that thirsty hour. I will try to attend with the littlest blogger in tow, but I probably won't make it. Early evening is our fussy time.

Music blogs

Just noticed this good article on music blogs in Sunday's Observer, by Killian Fox. The article is fairly explicit about the increasingly important role the blogs play in spreading the word about new artists. If anyone's thinking of setting up one, don't worry about artists or labels coming after you (as long as you aren't silly enough to post whole albums in perpetuity) - they're almost always more than happy for the publicity. In fact, they're sending stuff out to bloggers constantly, as I'm sure the Manc music blog brigade can attest to.

Even this non-mp3 blog has been getting a lot more requests to post tracks and press releases from music labels and prs lately, most of them Manchester-based. I won't say trying to get me to listen to/post about music is a total waste of time, but chances are pretty slim that I'll end up writing anything. The tiny bit of music-related blogging I do on here is basically me mentioning gigs of bands I like that are coming up in Manchester. These bands are more and more likely to have released their best work sometime in the last century. I'm open to new music but I just don't care enough anymore to spend too much time trying to keep up with musical fashions.

I accept that as a media outlet you're going to get a certain amount of pr spam from club promoters and music bods, and that's fine. But sending me three emails a day about your sizzling band is probably just going to annoy me.

BBC Manchester Blog: RIP

Some sad news: The BBC Manchester blog is no more. The experiment has run its course, and creators Richard Fair and Robin Hamman are bowing out.


You have to hand it to them - okay, I became involved with it, so I'm not totally impartial here - but they did good. In fact, I was initially very suspicious of the project. So many other instances of traditional media trying to "do" blogging result in tin-eared, unreadable sites that have all the easy authenticity of Michael Howard in a metallic hoodie. Or they expect bloggers who already have an established audience online to fall all over themselves to write for their media outlet just for the sheer privilege of it, and seem gobsmacked when they don't.

But Robin and Richard, from the first, demonstrated their willingness to engage with the existing community of Manchester bloggers on equal terms, and use the BBC's broad reach to make the medium increasingly accessible, welcoming many Mancunians new (and old) to blogging with workshops, radio spots and generous linking. They showed that blogging can be a very effective way for established media to incorporate new voices into their output - and that local people who are not necessarily members of the media elite can contribute really worthwhile and fresh content about their city (even if it isn't news-led; even if, in fact, it is totally random.)

I'm sorry to see the experiment end, but I understand it couldn't go on forever - these two guys are pretty busy. I'm frankly amazed they were able to keep the blog active and interesting for as long as they did, given the number of other things they both have to do. Still, the UK landscape has changed so drastically in since the blog started in 2006 - big newspapers and media companies seem to be getting a bit more of a handle on this blogging thing, and local microsites, citizen journalism and community-led content are the buzzwords of the day. The BBC Manchester Blog was certainly at the forefront of this trend.

Rayner: Manchester restaurants "not quite"

"What is it with Manchester? Why, when it comes to restaurants, is it always so nearly, but not quite? Why does every restaurant I visit fail to deliver? Is it me? Do they hate me so much that they decide to show me such a mediocre time I won't return? Or is it the city? It's a big buzzy place, Manchester, full of interesting-looking people, and there are lots of Mancunians with money - exactly what you need for a thriving restaurant scene. And yet almost every time I eat here, I return home wallowing in disappointment, as though a little bit of me has died."

That's the lede of Jay Rayner's review of Grado, Paul Heathcote's new Spanish place on New York Street, in yesterday's Observer.

Rayner is one of the few national restaurant critics I have much time for. He's down to earth and clearly loves food, but never takes it too seriously. He seems like the kind of guy you wouldn't mind sitting down to eat with yourself, unlike most of the pretentious, self-worshipping windbags sharpening their steak knives on restaurants these days. And most of all, he's fun to read. ("It's all very well to source Iberico ham, but to then machine-cut it is an insult to the pig. To cut it thick and serve it fridge-cold is to jump on the pig's grave while howling at the moon.") I've always wondered why he doesn't review more Mancunian eateries, and I guess now I know why.

To be fair, Rayner goes on to praise my beloved Red Chilli to the skies. But his indictment of the city's dining scene is pretty damning. And in a way, I think he's got a point. Not neccessarily about Grado (I haven't been there yet, mostly because Heathcotes places are, in my experience, kinda boring) but about the standard of eating here.

I don't have a huge eating out budget; I love food and seek out good restaurants when I can. But in the five years I've lived here, I've found that lots of places the local press made much of (The Bridge, The Ox, Yang Sing, Obsidian) didn't live up to the hype, while others (Le Mont, Establishment) never appealed enough to try. I haven't been to the Michelin-starred Juniper yet, but am dutifully trotting over there before Paul Kitching leaves. Like most people, I'm happy to stick to my less-exalted favourites in the city: This n' That, Red Chilli, or the wonderful Market if I have some extra cash. Still, for a rock-solid special occasion meal, I'll usually be heading into the surrounding bits of Lancs and Yorks, which isn't what I would have expected before moving here.

Rayner speculates that Manchester's culinary shortcomings are down to the calibre of cooks in the city's kitchens, which could well be. For my part, I think too much time and money goes into creating a restaurant that looks flash, while less attention is paid to what comes out of the kitchen - and with an increasingly savvy dining public up here this tendency is starting to seem out of place.

RenterGirl in the Guardian

Yes, it's another "Manchester blogger makes good" post. Y'all are just so darn talented these days. Our MBA best new blog awardee RenterGirl has a nice big feature on the front page of the Guardian's Society section today. Called "Lost in Neverland," it's about the perils of living in a rented new-build apartment in the city centre - essentially a short n' sweet version of her blog. Well done!

Curiously, the article never mentions Manchester - perhaps the Guardian wanted to help it appeal to urban nomads all over the UK? Or maybe they were trying to shield the actual location of Dovecot Towers to prevent reprisals from angry landlords?

Another interesting thing is that RenterGirl has dropped her anonymity for the article and used her real name, Penny Anderson. Penny's a freelance journalist based in the city whose professional writing experience clearly shows in the polished tone of her blog. It's interesting how anonymous bloggers find they can't keep their identities a secret anymore when they cross over to print (see Single Mother on The Verge/Maria Roberts) but I guess it's not surprising. Most newspapers, mags and publishers aren't down with anonymous bylines, at least not for stuff that's based on real-life experience.

Time Out Manchester... it's alive?!?

Missed this little piece on Time Out Manchester from way back in July on How Do. Not much information in it, but the folks in London are saying the project isn't dead, and the TOM website has been updated with a wee bit of content. So I'll certainly let you know if I hear anything more than this. But I suspect there are some among this blog's readers who actually do know something more than this. Ahem. Hello?

Incidentally, if you scroll down to the comments on that How-Do article there's a cringe-inducing catfight between two local media folk that makes for pretty funny reading.

Manchizzle in The Guardian

Holy cats! Today's Guardian Guide did a Blog Roll feature on Manchester, and here's what they had to say about this blog:

"The pick of Manchester culture and hub of blogging goodness."

Couldn't have said it better myself. Cheers, nameless Guardian writer.

Blog Roll also namechecked Mancubist, The Ring Modulator, I Shook My Head, Manchester Looks, Yer Mam!, and Chronicles of Joy Division.

Now off to enjoy the rest of the bank holiday weekend. They said it was supposed to be sunny, didn't they? THEY SAID IT WAS SUPPOSED TO BE SUNNY.

How-Do? How-Don't!

After a reading a few interesting features on new NW media site How-Do (buried in among reams of head-poundingly dull pr babble) I was unpleasantly surprised by this week's edition of "The Weekly Wrap", their e-newsletter. Guest editor Paul Carroll writes:

"I bet there’s not been an agency presentation made this week that didn’t propose ‘doing a blog’ for client X, Y or Z. But are blogs really the future of ‘citizen journalism’ or just a load of egotistical, boring claptrap? Venturing onto How-Do’s blog section, there’s over 50 links to entice the visitor. Who has the time to read them? Who, in fact, has the time to write them? Worse of all are the so-called blogs that are thinly veiled corporate vehicles, whose attempts at being ‘street’ are as cool as the Concert for Diana. There are some good, amusing and thought provoking blogs out there (including some notable ones in the How-Do list), but these are the exception rather than the rule. My advice to most would-be bloggers? Shut it!"

And that's exactly what i did... with the email. If How-Do wanted to make it clear that they represent the backwards-looking, tin-eared, grammatically-challenged old boys of the North West media, they've succeeded by enabling this rubbish.

I'm the first one to agree that thinly-veiled corporate vehicle blogs (or, as I like to call them, "flogs") are evil - and there's an interesting and timely piece to be written there, as many web-users still seem blithely unaware of the mercenary element lurking on blogs, messageboards and social networking platforms. Though, as long as they're up-front about their identity, company blogs can be great reads and very effective in many ways. But any interest I had in his line of thought disappeared when Carroll conflated it with the old saw about all blogs being "egotistical, boring claptrap." We've all heard this argument (expressed more intelligently) before, and it was wrong then. Now it's five years out of date, badly written, and still wrong. Nice one.

Of course, I'm sure all concerned will read even this negative bandwidth as buzz for their respective brands. No publicity is bad publicity, after all! Just keep saying that, guys.

Time Out Manchester update

Yet another installment in the laborious will-they-or-won't-they saga of Time Out's much anticipated Manchester launch.

In an interview on brand new NW Media networking website How-Do, Tony Elliott declares that the magazine will start in October, following the launch of a beefed-up TOM Website. It should definitely launch by the middle of October, he says ... unless it takes longer to set things up, that is, but certainly we can look for a launch no later than the beginning of next year.

Uh huh.

There are some more interesting bits in the interview, like the part where Tony says he's "fairly confident" the magazine can shift 8,000-9,000 copies every week. And, yes, it's a video interview delivered via YouTube. Pretty spiffy, no?

But the best part of this interview is down in the comments, where two competing magazine editors have written little love notes purporting to wish Tony good luck on the Manchester launch that are actually wince-inducing, thinly-veiled shills for their own unimpressive mags, 69 and (my favourite) Moving Manchester. What a couple of palookas.

If you're wondering where How-Do came from, it's the brainchild of Nick Jaspen formerly of the NW Enquirer. It "offers news, opinion and resources for those working in all aspects of media in the region." It looks promising so far.

Other interesting bits include a piece on Manchester Confidential, complete with an amusing description of the advertorial site's restaurant "review" process, and a comments spat... already! And we notice they have very good taste in blogs, too.

(Thanks to Mind for the Time Out tip-off)

MIFfed on Portland Street

I thought I was safe from news of the Mancunian arts scene way over here, but today it came looking for me. I opened up the New Yorker this morning and read this Talk of the Town piece about the upcoming Manchester International Festival (that takes way too long to say, doesn't it? How about we come up with something shorter, like Muffy or the MIFfest?)

MIFfed is surely how some people in our city felt after reading the piece, which made Marketing Manchester's Nick Johnson, Sir Richard Leese and Alex Poots (listed in descending order of how silly they came out sounding) look a bit, well, idiotic. Like powerpoint hucksters trying to condense the city's appeal into "brand signifiers" and not letting little things like historical accuracy or not actually knowing much about Manchester get in the way. Apparently, Poots
still lives in London half the week. I know it's not the same as trying to commute from Australia, but still.

Anyway, I thought the article was good, slightly patronizing about Manc at times, but those New Yorker writers probably don't get up North much. And it's downright refreshing to see someone write about the city without the automatic unquestioning deference for Mancunian sacred cows (The Hacienda, Alan Turing, Peter Saville, etc.) that the local press always includes free of charge.

Observer Woman: Bite Me

The Observer Woman monthly has been known to make me so angry that I waste perfectly good Sundays being a seething mass of bitter rage, devoting hours to brooding and muttering that were intended for lingering over your third cup of tea and lazily contemplating making another bacon sandwich. So I've stopped reading it. I've strictly limited myself to sneering at the cover (all right, and muttering just a little bit.)

That's why I'm delighted to see that two fine Mancunians have picked up my slack in the righteous ranting department, except they're doing it online and in a much more organized and coherent way. Observer Woman Makes Me Spit is a noble blog that defines its mission thusly:


It arrives once a month. It’s often painful, always annoying. Liable to invoke irrational mood swings and violent bursts of temper. It’s messy, embarrassing and is often known as ‘the curse.’ Yes. It’s the Observer Woman Magazine. Could it be less relevant? Could it be more offensive? 51% of humanity reduced to simpering, bitchy whores of the fashion industry. Nothing to trouble our little minds but hunky men, flashy lip gloss and Gucci gussets. We hate it. We hate it so much we went to all this trouble to set up this blog. And we have real jobs. It took a good 30 minutes out of our drinking time. Spill your bile here. We will.

And I will too. If I ever let myself read it again.

The MEN weighs in on blogging

The MEN has published an article about blogging today - local blogging superstar Geoff of The 43 is quoted, as well as Robin from the BBC Manchester Blog (Which I'm still writing weekly bits for, by the way.)

Time Out Manchester: Outta Time?

We've all been wondering what's going on with Time Out Manchester, which was supposed to launch this spring, you remember? It's been verrry quiet on that front. But Monday there was another communication from on high, buried down at the bottom of a Media Guardian gossip column. Here's the key bit:

"Elliott scoffs at suggestions that the magazine is being shelved. "We remain completely committed to Manchester and will launch in autumn," he says. "We are still in the process of raising investment. We need about £1m, and we have people working on that. We just do not have the liquidity to set it up on our own, though we have always said we really want to run Manchester ourselves, like we do in Chicago and New York."

Yeah, remember when he swaggered into town and said all that stuff about giving Manchester "the magazine it deserves?" Hmmmmm. The crack team of journalistic guns-for-hire assembled for the launch issue are all wandering away, I hear, to work on other promising "projects." A few were allegedly offered starvation wages to write for the soon-to-be-expanded TOM website, but declined.

It seems money's tight for TOM. Maybe we should start a fundraising drive, hold a few bake sales?

Two new magazines in Manchester!

Death of the print media? What? Manchester's about to get itself two shiny new magazines, and neither one is called Time Out (no word on that launch, BTW)

RevolveWire is a new Manchester-based magazine about culture and creativity. It's quite beautiful, and is edited by the shockingly multi-talented Ruth Heritage. The theme of the first issue is looking, and it should be available soon from stockists nationally and then some. *Blatant Plug* I contributed an article in this issue about blog fiction and an interview with the amazing Sarah Hepola. (Coughs awkwardly, changes subject.)

Who's Bob? In his own words, Bob is "a new free magazine that's as honest, unpretentious and approachable as its name suggests, bob is here for you. interested in the things that make you love life, bob will be a trusty companion ready and waiting in all the best haunts around manchester. bob launches in late march."

Check out that pilot issue on their website. Looks pretty dang good to me, and even features writing from email ninja and huge Manchester Museum fan, Andrew Shanahan.

Go on, shower them both with love and affection.

The week in Manchester blogs

From now on, I'll be posting a weekly roundup of what's doing in Mancunian blogs over on the BBC Manchester Blog. The first one is up now. I'll also be on BBC Radio Manchester today around three to chat about the same topic with Richard Fair, so tune in if you're able.

I'll be scouring all the blogs on my blogroll for material for this weekly thang, so please let me know if there are any marvelous new blogs that should be added. Also, drop me a line (themanchizzle at gmail dot com) if you or someone else has written anything especially good - for this feature I'll be most interested in blogging about/related to life in Manchester.

Follow the Star

The new edition of the Salford Star, our homegrown bastion of butt-kicking investigative reporting, is out now. It looks to be packed with all manner of Christmas goodies, but the story I'm really itching to read is the long promised MediaPity:UK, a 7-page "study in hypocrisy"concerning the BBC's beleaguered plan to move a chunk of their workforce to the proposed MediaCity: UK complex at Salford Quays.

There's been a lot of speculation lately about whether that move will ever happen. As the BBC looks likely to get less dosh than it's asking the government for, many have predicted that the Beeb will use the funding issue as an excuse to wriggle out of a move that seems to be wildly unpopular amongst the southern majority of its workforce. They're still hemming and hawing.
But the government is making no secret of its support of the plan.

The story is not up on their website, but I can only hope they'll put it up soon, since I could have a hard time getting hold of a copy here in Vermont, where I have arrived for Yuletide