For much of my journalistic life I was one of the key freelancers at the Manchester Evening News. You name it, I did it. MEN Diary, Women's Page, feature interviews with tbe great and the good. Plus the more mundne task of covering local news stories for the newsdesk. They were good years both financially and professionally and my colleagues were all excellent, meticulous journalists. I was a freelance negotiator with the management and did so much work that most thought I was a staffer. I wasn't.
Some years ago the MEN got rid of most of its freelances - me included - and the only vestige of my previous life is a page I write weekly - which I have done for the past 14 years .
This week, MEN journalists learned their workfocce is to be reduced by half. The paper is already a shadow of its former self and I cannot envisage how it will survive with further cuts.
All the weekly newspapers owned by the MEN are to, effectively, close. These are sad days for journalism and I will do my best to attend the lobby of Parliament on March 25 on this issue. I noted the other day that the MEN's business pages reported that 1 in 10 people are soon expected to be out of work. That's a figure which will resound with anyone who grew up in the Thatcher years. UB 40 immortalised the number with a song we all remember. Truly looks as though we're heading back to the 1980's .
Wednesday, 11 March 2009
MEN-RIP
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Posts
5 comments:
As a former MEN freelance I agree with you. The MEN under Brian Redhead and was a decent paper. But Paul Horrocks was a tool of management and turned the aper into a rag. The NUJ didn't support freelances when MEN staffers were moonlighting because freelances were seen as independently-minded. When the paper became too nasty for words and also cut payments I left. Serious journalists like Guy Meyler were the backbone of the paper.
Trouble is, my local GMEN paper, which, unlike some freesheets in the group, costs 55p, is a pile of old tofee. Badly edited, subbed, written and reported. It misses and under-reports serious stories and goes for heartwarming treacle.
A move to have it edited in Manchester might bring some style into the paper.
Hi Alan, I saw Guy Meyler the other day ( he lives in Hebden Bridge)- he is still inimitabkly Guy! I agree people like him were hard taskmasters but the backbone of the paper. Likewise David Harrison, Andrew Grimes, Laurie Bullas , the late Mike Duffy and sundry others who were a credit to the profession.
Many papers these days just regurgiutate press releases. I remember when press releases were the start - not the end - of the story. Freelances suffered particularly from the first wave of cuts at the MEN. Most of us have never recovered financially.
In recent years I've diversified into PR and teaching but I do regard the years between 1990 and 2002 -when I worked more of less full-time at the MEN - as the highlight of my career. It is a shame that market forces have reduced the paper to a shadow of its former self.
I think someone is conveniently forgetting the "mundane" chemist rota and roadworks bulletins!
Not at all. They took 10 minutes to do but were hardly the highlight of my career. Freelances always bear in mind that bad times may occur.....
Hi Susan,
I was a big fan of Laurie Bullas, he was a good ward councillor and stood no nonsense from ,ore extremeelements. He was a man of the people and knew that you first had to get elected. His faith led him to become a preacher (like Brian Redhead), but a moderate one. David Harrison was also of the generation when journalists were gentlemen. I interviewed Guy, Duncan Measor (the original Mr Manchester, long before Tony Wilson) and David (the baby of the team) back in 82 for Press Gazette.
Also Mike Unger when he first arrived.
I now do some corporate work and also some work for an educational body.
The world in the 80s, despite all the horrors of Thatcherism, still had some corporate responsibility. The legacy of Thacherism has left a totally broken society.
Post a Comment