For many a reason, we’ve been a bit head down recently; scrabbling about with this presentation and that.

Anyway, this event managed to slip by without too much fanfare…

http://www.guardian.co.uk/leeds

It’s the noticeboard bit; down and to the right. There…

It has two Addiply ads. Now filled. By local, Leeds punters.

And as you can see, both are paying a tenner a week for the privilege. Or rather they were; the next advertiser will need to find 15 notes to oust the pair out of their chosen slots.

There’s a bid model at work.

Those two agreed to a tenner a week. OK… Times two… that’s £80 a month; minus PayPal and an Addiply commission… OK, that’s about £72 a month heading GMG’s way.

Courtesy of their decision to ‘go local…’ For two, small, text box ads.

That allows two, local Leeds platforms to display their wares.

No GMG ad salesman in sight; it’s too small beer for them.

Does that £72 out-perform the revenue return from the Google AdSense proposition at the foot of the page… for that individual page? In that one, tiny corner of the vast GMG empire? What’s the scores on the doors… Googliath vs Addiply?

I don’t know. They’re not my numbers. I would only go as far to suggest we give MrG a run for his money. That’s all.

But look again at those advertisers; this one in particular…

http://www.leedsforum.co.uk/index.php?referrerid=95

And the wording of his text ad: ‘Live or work in Leeds…’

Right, go to the bottom of the page where the Google ads now hang out. And this might be unfair; it might just be one of those occasions where the wrong ad popped up… when a distant algorithm was having an off day….

… but the top ad is for ‘Love Leeds More’.

Quote: ‘Visit Leeds This August and Stay for just £20′

OK, it’s my italic.

But that ad is a completely different beast altogether from the one that Addiply has delivered.

Ours is aimed at people who ‘live and work… ‘ in Leeds.

Google’s is for people who ‘visit…’ Leeds.

I might be making a wild stab in the dark here, but I suspect the Guardian’s vision for Guardian/Leeds is that it is read by – and, indeed, written by… – people who are Leeds residents. It’s aim is to keep councils under check, to get potholes repaired, to see civic good nurtured and sustained.

It’s whole thrust is not towards the casual visitor; yes, there’s a good-ish ‘fit’ for the student accommodation ad, but it is not a tourism gateway.

The algorithm – in my humble opinion – has dished up the wrong kind of ad.

And if your commercial future rests on matching the right ad with the right eye-ball, that’s not good.

Particularly when the revenue from that particular ad space *can* be dependent on someone clicking upon that ad… that GMG, TheLichfieldBlog or whoever are resting their business model on PPC.

If I live in Leeds and read GuardianLocal/Leeds… why would I click on an advert that’s built around a visit proposition?

Answer is… I won’t.

Therefore, chances are, I as the Guardian won’t earn. For as long as that visit ad tops my Google Ads box and is working on a PPC basis, I’m all-but giving my ad space away for nothing.

And yet I’ve pulled in an audience that’s delivering 20,000-plus views a week…

http://www.addiply.com/index.php?option=com_addiply&Itemid=69&r1=1&r2=8

None of this is rocket science; none of this should be news to anyone.

B&B ads slapped onto ‘local’ news websites don’t work because those same local news websites are aimed at people who have no need for a B&B; they live there…

And, therefore, they will not take action via that ad… whether that’s to click on it, transact through it… etc etc…

The value is in tenancy; those are where my potential punters are; how much does it cost me to place my brand in front of them… A tenner.

Or £15 now that the ‘bid’ model is starting to kick in on the streets of Leeds.

Simples. Simples.

That’s where our futures lie. With the simples.  

OK… what have the four following posts got in common?

i) http://www.pressgazette.co.uk/story.asp?sectioncode=1&storycode=44765&c=1

ii) http://www.pressgazette.co.uk/story.asp?sectioncode=1&storycode=44792&c=1

iii) http://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/news/scottish-giant-johnston-press-close-to-refinancing-163500m-debt-1776020.html

and

iv) http://rickwaghorn.co.uk/2009/02/23/chapter-11-now-filed-in-the-story-of-fred-the-shred-brian-p-tierney-and-philly-media-kiss-good-bye-to-more-of-our-millions-folks/

And the answer is…?

The Royal Bank of Scotland. Us, in other words.

The poor, down-trodden UK tax-payer who has been left to mop up in the wake of Fred the Shred and the Boys and upon whom the future fortunes of everyone from GMG, to Johnston, to Archant to our old friend in Philly – that chancer-cum-charmer Brian P Tierney – now appear to rest.

Of course, as that media sage Pete Kirwan points out, the fact that RBS are clearly screwing all concerned for every last buck as one man and his newsprint dog re-negotiate their debt facilities…

http://www.pressgazette.co.uk/story.asp?sectioncode=1&storycode=44792&c=1

… perhaps means that we have every reason to be grateful to the Masters Of The Universe; that we will be the principal beneficiaries of such ‘cash machines’ as they make one or two newspaper book-keepers weep.

That, actually, we have the banks to thank for ensuring that such hefty obligations – with our money – don’t actually sink without trace.

But for me, there is a slightly more troubling story here; for someone, somewhere, has yet to be brought to account.

As if, of course, they ever will…

And nor am I about to work the numbers; do the math.

That is way beyond my ken.

But someone, somewhere, deep with the bowels of RBS was clearly sanctioning such activity; oiling the stable door as the horse bolted… time and time again.

As one media outfit after another came a-knocking on their door; looking for yet more oil to grease the wheels of purchase and expansion.

In 2008.

Now, clearly who was to know that one half of this ‘Perfect Storm’ lay just around the corner? That the whole, global banking community was about to implode around something called the ’sub-prime market’?

How can anyone blame RBS for that?

OK. We’ll put that to one side; give the ‘Masters Of The Universe’ the benefit of the doubt; that they couldn’t see that one coming. Even if it was largely of their own-making.

After all, none are so blind as those that don’t want to see it.

But being blind to the structural half of this ‘Perfect Storm’?

What evidence did anyone possess in 2008 to suggest that The Scotsman, The Nursing Times, The Eastern Daily Press and the Philly Inquirer was about to crack this Internet revenue nut?

Was everyone that convinced that anyone under the age of 30 really had it in their genes to still be reading a print-based product in 2012, let alone 2008?

Did no-one suggest that come 2012 the vast majority of news and information might be consumed via what was in the jeans of said future customer; that an ‘application’ would be the point of entry for an ever-growing number of media consumers?

Rightly or wrongly, I have considerable sympathy for the newspaper groups caught in the eye of this perfect storm. I think they were fighting forces beyond first their comprehension and then their strength. Nothing works. The fact that everything might is of scant consolation.

I have no sympathy whatsoever for the media acquisition clowns at RBS and Co who were rubber-stamping their own bonuses with little or no evidence of ever applying a brake on their clients’ ambitions.

Where is anyone saying: ‘Why?’ Or: ‘You sure?’

Nah, when there’s a big, fat bonus to be had lets grease that stable door and watch the horse bolt…

And still it continues. If RBS/us are still up to their/our necks in the wonderful world of Brian P Tierney, who is representing our best interests in the 3rd US Circuit Court of Appeals?

For as AP reported, that saga is far from over; we – the creditors – are still trying to wrestle ownership of a daily newspaper in Philadelphia back into the hands of the UK tax-payer…

Creditors are trying to take control of the company that owns The Philadelphia Inquirer and Philadelphia Daily News and have hired former Publisher Bob Hall as an adviser. This hard-fought Chapter 11 case began in February. The newspaper company proposes to shed most of its $400 million in debt by repurchasing the company through a bankruptcy auction for about 22 cents on the dollar.

The proposal calls for keeping Brian Tierney as publisher. Now the case turns on whether senior lenders can use the $300 million they’re owed to make a competing bid. The 3rd US Circuit Court of Appeals is considering the issue.

Someone, somewhere has a big case to answer…

http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2009/sep/22/trinity-mirror-weekly-closures

.. it was re-assuring to discover that OfCom were there to be found with their finger precisely on the beating pulse of this regional media nation of ours…

This is a particularly fascinating and insightful document… one to be pondered at length if it is now to form a bedrock of OfCom policy going forward; which – you would like to presume – it will given that the over-burdened and invariably under-whelmed UK tax-payer has just funded said masterpiece.

http://www.ofcom.org.uk/research/tv/reports/lrmuk/

When in doubt, tis always a good time to get the consultants in – in this case, the boys and girls from Oliver & Ohlbaum – http://www.oando.co.uk/ – and a macro-economic view of the nation’s local news landscape…

http://www.ofcom.org.uk/research/tv/reports/lrmuk/macroecon.pdf

Which then, presumeably, offered the foundation for this…

http://www.ofcom.org.uk/research/tv/reports/lrmuk/Salford_local_media.pdf

As presented to a gathering of the great and the good by Stewart Purvis at Salford University.

As a piece of ‘No sh*t, Sherlock…’ it is almost beyond compare.

I know headlines to individual slides can over-simplify, but ‘Online specialists have taken market share from local and regional newspaper websites (p15)…

Or ‘The Internet is drawing traditional revenue steams away from local media… (p14).

You’re kiddin?

The best one is the data chart that offers examples of local news provision (p8); that the Manchester Evening News ‘provides Greater Manchester focussed content, with a few national stories…’ And that the Salford Advertiser provides content focussed on… Salford.

Albeit on a smaller scale than the Manchester Evening News.

Given the crisis currently befalling the world’s great media institutions – the publishers of said Manchester Evening News principal among them as GMG seek yet another round of job cuts in a bid to keep The Observer alive – it is at least heartening to know that the industry regulator knows what the Manchester Evening News does.

The fact that OfCom offers up ‘Channel M’ as a prime example of someone like GMG looking to morph itself into a ‘local media consortia’ of their overly-fond imaginings merely re-inforces the impression that the OfCom clock has stopped c2007… that the ‘Perfect Storm’ in which we are now engulfed still, to them, appears somewhat distant.

There is no sense of what’s happening right now, right this minute… to any of their thinking. As much as the likes of Guardian editor Alan Rusbridger might try to emphasise the point.

Twice.

http://outwithabang.rickwaghorn.co.uk/?p=313

And, in particular… ‘in delivering this line… ’I don’t think our legislators have begun to wake up to this imminent problem as we face the collapse of the infrastructure of local news in the press and broadcasting…’ he actually went over a phrase again.

‘I don’t think our legislators have begun to wake up to this imminent problem – even begun to wake up to this problem – as we face the collapse of the infrastructure of local news…’

Go back to the work of O&O and you’d be forgiven for thinking that the Rusbridgers of this world were making a fuss about nothing…

That if you flick through to P30 of this, even the ‘low case’ example would see EBIT margins dipping to, say, 10% by 2013. You can get 15% on P29.

http://www.ofcom.org.uk/research/tv/reports/lrmuk/macroecon.pdf

All the MEN, the Salford Advertiser, etc… have to do is share their print costs/capacity with every other regional newspaper publisher in the North-West and then hack away at their individual ad sales teams to build a pan-regional ad tele-sales operation that could service MEN, Trinity’s Liverpool titles, NewsQuest’s Bolton operation, Granada TV, Key 103, Smooth, Galaxy, Channel M, etc, etc… and all would be well.

There’s a 30% saving to be had there. Chop, chop…

If only someone had a fully-networked, self-serve, 90% revenue return ad system that we could take off a shelf and just over-lay across all concerned and then offer pan-regional, highly-targetted branding opportunities to advertisers large and small…

Oh, someone has…

Of course, it should come as little or no surprise to find ‘big’ Government turning to a ‘big’ consultancy firm in its search for the ‘big’ answers…

http://outwithabang.rickwaghorn.co.uk/?p=244

The fact that there might simply be no ‘big’ answers doesn’t actually appear to pop up on their radar; this idea of Mr Shirky’s that ‘Nothing works, but everything might…’ appears a conceptual leap too far.

What bugs me most, however, is the underlying assumption that come 2013-2015 we’re still looking at a ‘Newsprint’ Britain, a ‘Television’ Britain and a ‘Local Radio’ Britain. And not a ‘Digital Britain’.

In a ‘Digital Britain’ there is no them and us; no TV, no radio, no newspapers… just this glorious, heaving mass of ‘digital publishers’… all trying to wipe the smug grin off the BBC’s face as we scrabble for survival on the one, single platform that is the web; the ‘big’ now shattered into the small.

Try as anyone might, it is a future that OfCom doesn’t appear to ‘get’ at all.

It’s there in streets of Stockport, Didsbury, Wilmslow and Hale that two tribes are going to war – the NUJ summoning up the spirit of the Scott Trust to flail into The Guardian Media Group.

It is an increasingly bitter and divided battle as the NUJ goes on the offensive with a series of adverts designed, one presumes, to force GMG into a fundamental rethink of their plans to all-but halve the editorial floor of the Manchester Evening News.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2009/mar/31/nuj-advert-guardian

For the ‘bosses’, the spirit of CP Scott is a tricky one to combat; it’s either this or no newspapers at all was the line from the boardroom as the one-time cash-cow of GMG’s newspaper operations dies on its legs.

http://www.pressgazette.co.uk/story.asp?sectioncode=1&storycode=43450&c=1

It is, of course, a block we’ve wandered round before…

http://outwithabang.rickwaghorn.co.uk/?p=262

But as the NUJ turns up the heat and Ms McCall points to the forest fire that threatens to engulf us all, this most public – and painful – of confrontations continues to take centre stage.

For as the NUJ rightly point out, if anyone is ever to shoulder the responsibility of keeping the flame of local journalism a-flickering then it ought to be the heirs of CP Scott. After all, the great man never was one to put profit first – comment has long been free…

‘Despite the acknowledgment that The Manchester Guardian under Scott deserved to be considered as a great newspaper, it did not always make profits…’

On all this, the NUJ is clearly on the high ground; it has a morality tale to work with.

But the problem, as ever, comes in the detail.

The ‘How?’

‘Advert asks readers to urge their local MPs to sign early day motions to ‘help keep local newspapers alive’ runs the sub-head.

A noble aim. Buy ‘How?’

For Sly and Co part of that answer clearly lies in throwing their lot in with Johnston; fr GMG it might come in the shape of morphing into some sort of South-East mass that is Northchant – or Archcliffe. Throwing the Reading Bi-Weekly Chron into some sort of M4 massif that features the Ham&High somewhere near to one end with what’s left of the Bristol Evening Post at the other.

And if they can borrow a bit of Newsquest and get the Swindon Evening Adver into the mix as well, then so much the better…

Will it provide any better coverage of Stockport Town Council meetings? I suspect not. Will the Hatters get the kind of coverage that Edgeley Park has been accustomed to? Suspect not.

So if bigger silo-building is just a short-term, patch-it-up-and-pray scenario, what other tricks have the NUJ up their sleeve for HM Govt to work on?

Cos Andy Burnham has already given the big ‘Thumbs down!’ to any notion of a direct state subsidy – not that they’ve got the cash to splash anyway. That’s already been trousered by Fred The Shred and his little venture into Philadelphia Media Holdings.

The other point that, for me, the NUJ needs to bear in mind is the use of the word ’serious’ in that advert.

Because if the implication is that you are only a ’serious’ journalist if you continue to stain wood and see it delivered on the back of a bicycle every night then they need a radical re-think.

Is Linda at www.darwenreporter.com not ’serious’? What about James at TowcesterNews, http://www.aboutmyarea.co.uk/Northamptonshire/Towcester/NN12?

If the NUJ is really, really serious about trying to get the spirit of CP Scott to live on in the streets and suburbs of Manchester then it is, maybe, to the Lindas and the James’ of this world that they should turn.

Because maybe, just maybe, neither Ms McCall or HM Govt have actually got an answer to their increasingly strident and heart-felt pleas.

�

And so for those in need of a sobering read this morning, I can only commend this to you.

Albeit with a heavy heart and a sinking feeling for all concerned. My Mrs remains in the eye of the Archant storm.

http://blogs.pressgazette.co.uk/mediamoney/2009/03/26/collapsing-ad-markets-mean-that-only-redundancies-will-keep-the-bankers-happy/

So, keeping those numbers and the clear implications therein somewhere near to the fore of our minds, apologies if I don’t whoop for joy at the latest innovation to pop out of the Guardian API/Open Platform initiative…

Which you can find here…

http://www.journalism.co.uk/2/articles/533854.php

And for all those who want to know how it actually ‘works’ the detailed, tecchie stuff is here…

http://ouseful.wordpress.com/2009/03/18/last-weeks-football-reports-from-the-guardian-content-store-api-with-a-little-dash-of-sparql/

Now, we’ve down this little road before; and I have no doubt that it is a wonderful, clever use of data. And fair play to the two gentlemen concerned…

But – unless I’m missing something completely here – I now know that a Guardian match report was written at The Emirates. And I now know where The Emirates is on a map.

Fantastic.

Right, now do the same for Stockport County vs Wrexham on a Tuesday night. Or Yeovil versus Torquay.

When there ain’t no local football reporter sat in a Press box at Edgeley Park cos the Stockport Express has just gone to meet its GMG maker – taking Hatters football reporter down with it. Along with 50% of the editorial floor at the MEN.

This is the big problem. Thinking that top down solutions that are tech-heavy but people-lite will serve all our ‘news’ needs.

And it’s not just Leagues One and Two that any great Guardian data bank will have difficulty in servicing; there’s not too many of Fleet Steet’s finest knocking around in Championship Press boxes either – be they of the broadsheet or tabloid.

People just haven’t got the staff to deliver the kind of ‘data’ that matters to readers of the Sheffield Star, the Bristol Evening Post, the Norwich Evening News…

This is The Guardian’s real danger – that if all any of us want to know is where The Emirates is, what Robin van Perise looks like and to re-read a Guardian football report on Arsenal’s latest Champions League clash then… fine.

But, funnily enough, I suspect for every happy Gooner the world over – now suddenly empowered to find out where The Emirates is as he sits in a sidewalk cafe in Brooklyn – there is a Blades fan, a Wednesdayite and a lad in Barnsley wondering where the f*ck he’s going to get a decent, independent match report from when the Sheffield Star finally sets on South Yorkshire…

… an event that, on Pete’s timetable, could yet be little more than months away.

Cos they ain’t going to find one sat on a Guardian API; or if they are, it will be the six-par homogenised version that PA might churn out to all and sundry.

And aren’t those people deserving of a decent match report? Or are they going to have to accept their paltry, provincial lot?

But, you know what, at least they now know where Hillsborough is.

I look around and the world is obsessed with maps. As much as I love – and respect – the boys and girls at 4iP, there’s a bit of that going on there… look what we can do with maps… and it’s the same in Whitehall. Just give them maps…

Great. No news from my town council, no Owls footie reports, no news as to why it has taken the city works department six weeks to reapir the pot-hole in my street… but at least I can see the Town Hall on a map. And find Oakwell on a map.

At some point, someone, somewhere has got to start thinking rather more about how we service the needs of the millions of provincial UK citizens whose daily news needs are never, ever going to be serviced by the data a Guardian API spews out.

They don’t do data. They do people. People like people. People read people.

http://www.journalism.co.uk/2/articles/533854.php

There has to be a bottom up solution… there has to be a cherry on the top of EveryBlock.

And if GMG is to ever hold true to the spirt of its founding fathers, I think they need to look for a solution that works for Edgeley Park and not The Emirates.

http://outwithabang.rickwaghorn.co.uk/?p=262

If nothing else, they owe that to half the editorial floor on the MEN. Those that don’t quite fit into the management’s ’skills matrix’, but still have families to feed.

Who can, hand on heart, be this all-singing, all-dancing multi-media hub; vidcasting here, podcasting there; when money is too tight to mention…

Not the Telegraph Media Group, clearly, who – to their link credit – today emerged as the first national newspaper to proffer a hand of partnership in the BBC’s direction after Auntie yesterday announced that she was about to let the rest of the kids play with her toys; that it was in no-one’s best interest to see her as the ‘last man standing…’ as this forest fire rages.

So, fair play to TMG, rather than bite the hand that was trying to feed them, someone has clearly sat there and thought: ‘You know, what… we’ll have a bit of that… Oooh, and that… And, can we do this too…?’

And that’s smart. Very 2009. What it means for the future of TelegraphTV is a moot point; perhaps in the current climate they’ll just look to keep it ticking over as best they can; but maybe not throw the millions into it they once were… not now they were starting to poke around in Auntie’s video drawers.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2008/dec/12/bbc-iplayer-telegraph-media-group

All of which was heralded yesterday as the Beeb, chastened by their bruising run-in with the Newspaper Society over their local video plans, came back to the table with their toys out…

“We’re been in discussion with one national daily newspaper about a pilot scheme which would for example make BBC online video much more available to that newspaper’s website,” Thompson told journalists yesterday, the ink starting to dry on their ‘understanding’ with TMG.

“If that is successful we will also offer similar arrangements to any other newspaper – national or regional – who want to take advantage of them.”

One of which is clearly the Guardian Media Group – particularly now that the Telegraph have taken the lead… that much is clear from Emily Bell’s reaction today; they too want a slice of that action…

http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/organgrinder/2008/dec/12/bbc-iplayer-partnerships

Whether the word ‘regional’ was spat out by Thompson through gritted teeth is another matter. For me, what will be fascinating to watch is who of the ‘regionals’ breaks ranks first and actually grabs whatever’s going; all fresh, of course, from their ‘No, no, no… no need for you lot round here…’ antics of the summer.

It might also put Ms McCall in an interesting position given that GMG’s Queen Bee wears two hats in all this… there’s Ms Bell saying: ‘Yeh, bring it on… link, link, link…’ whereas put her ‘local-stroke-MEN’ hat on and having led the charge against those local video plans with Ms Bailey…

“Regional and local newspapers are having to reshape their business around what consumers want to see and what they can afford to serve,” said Ms McCall, just last month…

http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2008/nov/21/bbc-local-online-video-newspaper-society

“This [decision] is going to give [local media] a chance to reshape their businesses experiment and innovate in local video. They need time to find a way to do that.”

… then there might be a quandry afoot. For if Ms Bell wants to innovate in national video with the BBC; does Ms McCall want GMG to innovate with the BBC with local video… now that they’re offering it up for free? No, was the answer last month; one month and a new set of 2009 ad reveune forecasts later… who knows?

And where might this all leave GMG’s other baby in this, Channel M TV? Their own great – and, presumeably, expensive – innovation in local TV?

Go back to Mark Potts’ way forward for the imploding US newspaper industry yesterday and one way out was to share, to consolidate, to cluster… to share the same life-raft, in effect, if anyone wishes to carry on with the Web as an iceberg thinking.

‘I’ve got a bar of chocolate, we can share… I’ve got a bottle of mineral water…

Because that’s what Thompson and Co are still offering – to link. To share. To co-operate. To cluster.

“The essential answer to are we prepared to share is yes we are. Neither we, nor our audiences, want the BBC to be the last man standing,” said Thompson.

“As the economics of regional TV news get tighter, it will make more sense. Why send multiple camera crews to get rushes of a local traffic accident when just one will do?”

Exactly. Why?

Because we’re a regional newspaper group and we’ve now got all these multi-media journalists [both of them...] with their hand-held cameras; we can do it just as well as you…

Can you? Can you really afford to be in all places at all times? Or are your staffing levels now such that if someone rings up your newsdesk and says: ‘Decent RTA on the M6, we’re sending… pop you a link across in a couple of hours…’ you’re going to turn that down?

Really?

At which point are you providing your customers, your punters, [what was once] your audience with a bigger and better service? Or are you still stuck up that ivory tower, refusing to come down and join the rest of us as we all scrabble about for any free content we can find?

What’s ‘backchat’ all about? Well, as much as it all about letting a community find its voice and the journalist therein to spark some better-informed conversations, it is also all about sourcing a dynamic, 24/7 rolling UGC feed. That’s free to a poor-as-a-down-at-heel-church-mouse like me.

Stick to that ‘No, no, no… of course, we were the only news organisation there…’ line and you’re just hastening your own demise.

It’s a networked world of Shirky’s thinking that we’re moving into; one where only the linked will survive.

�

http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2008/nov/04/bbc-pressandpublishing

Without repeating ourselves over and over again, McCall’s ‘get off our lawn…’ speech was interesting.

Because she’s quite right; in this multi-media age you can’t have a local website without video.

Thereafter, however, I’d take issue with her…

“You can’t have a local website without video; it has taken local publishers a long time to get the investment to do video and to actually do video on a return-on-investment basis,” McCall added.

“We are having to go to quite a lot of pain to justify the capital expenditure required to put video on websites, because at the moment websites don’t have return on investment commercially, so you have to take risks.

“The BBC would be able to do local video much more quickly with much more deeper pockets and they would be able to leapfrog the regional press in terms of what they can do and that is going to be unbelievably damaging for local media that might not be able to survive that kind of onslaught…

The point is no-one asked the Manchester Evening News to re-invent itself as a digital broadcaster; yes, it’s website needs video content; we all do…

But why does it have to be the MEN that has to deliver that content? Why can’t its audience? Why can’t backpackdave08 offer up his digital efforts? Why not pal up with MSN or Bebo and run their latest ’show’ through MEN?

Why not, actually, sit down with the BBC and swap your content? Do the BBC do Manchester United or Manchester City football coverage as well as the MEN? No.

Right, so you swap your football content for their local video offerings. Or bits of; clearly you keep the ‘exclusives’ to yourself, but by and large you fill in the BBC’s content ‘gaps’ with some of your own…

It’s called the ‘link economy’ – and as financial necessity proves to be the mother of all re-inventions, take it to heart – do what you do best, link to the rest…

In the current climate – cyclically and structurally – can you afford to kid yourself that you, too, can be a digital TV broadcaster of the BBC’s ilk; I know technology has levelled the playing field beyond measure, but have you the time, the staff or, indeed, the basic will to try and compete with 70-odd years of broadcasting experience?

Or might you not be better served by saying, you know what, let’s work on the basis that a combination of the BBC, backpackdave08 and MSN/Bebo/YouTube can do this TV thing… what resources we have left, we’ll concentrate on doing what we do best…

… on doing what we’ve actually been doing best for the last 200 years and sourcing original written content from Manchester and beyond…

… that’s what we – still – do best, thereafter let’s link to the rest.

And let the rest link back to what we do best… write.

Get off your high horse; get a grip of who you are and what, realistically, you can actually deliver with any certainty and style in these current, apocalyptic times and pull your wagons tight in around those that are still of any value.

Your writers.

And then swallow your pride – and link.