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.

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.