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How-Do weekly Wrap - 5 September 2008 - Mike Unger | Print |  Email to a friend
Friday, 05 September 2008

Welcome to the weekly Wrap from How-Do - media news for the North West.

 The Wrap's guest editor this week is  Mike Unger.

  It was only last month that Man City was borrowing £2m from its former owner to pay the wages, but then on Tuesday we woke up to find that some seriously rich oil people had moved in and it was now probably the richest club in the world. News that touched a few buttons.

Noel Gallagher said that he’s in heaven because every time a Man U supporter fills up with petrol he puts more money into City’s transfer kitty. And Ric Turner – an avid supporter -  thinks he’s in a twisted dream and fears waking up to discover it’s still 2006 and Stuart Pearce is tracking down players of the calibre of Billy Sharp and Izale McLeod.

I always thought that exclusives were – well – exclusives. Not boring, simpering chats with yesterday’s girl band singers desperate to tell naive telepeople they know nothing. And then for Granada to brag that they had bagged Posh Spice’s “only Manchester television interview” is nothing short of pathetic. Where else is Vicky’s PR machine meant to go (seeing that the Beeb NW don’t do this type of work) – Channel M? Presumably the “much heralded behind the scenes negotiations” were to persuade  Granada to broadcast it all. There was a lovely comment at the end of the story saying that this was akin to the Knutsford Guardian interviewing the Scout hut leader.

The How-Do Polls are great and whoever writes the questions deserves a pint of Cains. In the poll on How Excited Are You About Liverpool 08, the winner was “Praying for success and not a balls up.” While I voted for this, tragically the year is actually neither an unqualified success nor a balls-up. There have been lots of strange decisions and too many one-offs that could have been in town for the year.

The problem with the hunt for the £500 logo for the new county of Cheshire West and Chester is not that the four on the short-list are boringly predictable, it is that the name is politically correct nonsense – short, punchy and evocative it is not. And I live in the patch.

Finally and for the record, the Wolverhampton Express & Star has the biggest circulation in the regions, while the MEN has the biggest combined circulation and distribution The problem with  large regional papers like these and the Liverpool Echo is how they reflect the communities they serve – which is what all good papers should do.

Former newspaper editor Mike Unger is shortly stepping down as chief executive of  The Roy Castle Lung Cancer Foundation and is chairman of Placenorthwest.co.uk

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  Comments (3)
RSS comments
 1 By Hmmm, on 08-09-2008 08:39
Didn't Mike Unger add to all the celebrity hype 20 years or so ago when he hired a young lad called Peter Willis to file 3AM-style reports on Manchester's glossy nightlifescene for the MEN diary, overturning the traditional hard diary mix that Duncan Measor and Guy Meyler made such an essential part of the paper. Measor was known as Mr Manchester long before Tony Wilson came on the scene. Sorry Mr Unger, but by going for the Sprice Girls approach you helped to create today's culture just as much as the Mirror and Sun did. And it didn't save the paper as sales continued to plummet.
 2 By Beebwatcher, on 08-09-2008 09:09
"the Beeb NW don't do this type of work".  
Oh, yeah. What was the long plug last week featuring Lorna Luft, Lisa MIndelli's Daughter, to choose a new star for teh Wizard of Oz. Which, we are promised, will be cobered prominently in weeks to come.
 3 By George Dearsley website, on 19-09-2008 07:35
I have to disagree with Hmmm. I worked on the MEN's diary one day a week during this period and although Peter Willis was raw and a bit of a maverick he brought in good, newsworthy and interesting stories which were properly evaluated by Guy Meyler who ran the page brilliantly. Indeed the diary was the best read part of the paper as various reader surveys confirmed. This was the era of "Madchester" and with Granada and Coronation Street on the patch is it any wonder that the diary carried celebrity stories? However, it also featured a very wide spectrum of individuals from politicians to football stars to entertainers to businessmen. The diary was put together by three people. Among the contributors was Andy Spinoza, now boss of high flying PR company SKV. Nowadays, through cutbacks, it is written by just one person, an impossible task. By the way, Meyler was a legend and a personal friend of many stars, including Barry Humphries. My favourite Meyler story was when he arrived late to interview Gandhi on a visit to the North West. Running alongside the train as it pulled away Meyler shouted to the great man, as he leaned out of the window, "have you got a message for the people of Manchester?" To which Gandhi replied "No!" It's true that the circulation of the MEN fell like a stone but the diary was not the cause.

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