A news website targeting the region’s property and regeneration professionals will be launched later this month by Paul Unger, a property and business journalist. The site will be called Place North West.
Unger is a former business editor of the Liverpool Daily Post and assistant editor of the Western Morning News. For the past five years he has written for regional and national business and property magazines including Estates Gazette, North West Business Insider, Property Week, Regeneration & Renewal and Move Commercial.
Unger told How-Do: “Property and regeneration are booming in the North West and, from first-hand experience, I find that neither the national specialist magazines nor the local newspapers or general business magazines can do justice to the volume of stories coming out of these industries locally.”
 Unger Place North West intends to publish live news, features, and comment, supported by interactive areas such as listings for properties and jobs.
Unger added: “When it comes to national trade media, projects in the regions are competing with the West End of London and Thames Gateway week in week out, having to make do with a mention in the briefs column. "We aren’t trying to replace the national trade mags, which provide brilliant coverage of policy shifts and market data, but there is no reason why a good complementary regional offer can’t slot into a business’s subscription list.
“The site will also reflect today’s multi-disciplinary team approach to property by broadening the subject range of traditional trade mags to take in architecture, construction, transport; anything that goes into making and shaping a place, basically.”
Revenue, believes Unger, will come from paid-for access to key content, banner advertising, recruitment advertising and annual sponsorship packages.
The website has been designed and built by Rippleffect in Liverpool.
The site will be going live in the next few weeks prior to a launch marketing campaign starting late September. Unger said marketing will include launch events in Liverpool and Manchester and other offline activity together with online and search engine ranking campaigns managed by Rippleffect.
Unger has pulled together a number of journalists and property specialists to contribute to Place. They include Ciara Leeming (The Guardian, The Independent & MEN), Janet Reeder (MEN), Jayne Dowle (The Times’ Bricks and Mortar northern correspondent) and Debbie Johnson (Liverpool Daily Post & Echo).
He has also signed up a number of columnists including John Elcock (an urban design consultant), Walter Menzies (chief executive the Mersey Basin Campaign), Andrew Watt (Maze Planning Solutions) and Stephen Nicol (Regeneris Consulting).
The venture has been funded by private individuals and support from Business Link Liverpool. Shareholders are believed to include Andrew Dowding, a former Emap business magazine publisher and Reed Exhibitions director and Mike Unger, Paul’s father, a former editor of the Liverpool Daily Post, Echo and Manchester Evening News and presently chief executive of the Roy Castle Lung Cancer Foundation.
A holding page can be found at www.placenorthwest.co.uk
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