I have made a decision to stop buying "The Manchester Evening News". In my opinion it has priced itself out and presents "yesterdays" news.
You're right about the yesterday's news, Alan. They publish the front page of the Manchester EVENING News on Twitter at around 7:30am every morning. However, they have the same problem that many newspapers are encountering. They have reduced circulation owing to competition from the free newspapers (e.g., The Metro) and the immediacy of the broadcast media. I suppose in addition that a generation has grown up expecting their news NOW and for free through new media upstarts such as Facebook and Twitter. The only way that the MEN publishers can get back the revenue from lost circulation quickly is to bump up the price and cut costs. the quickest way to reduce costs is to lose their most expensive resources who also happen to be their most experienced journalists.
The MEN is a great northern institution and I hope they will do something radical to save it. If you look at how the London Evening Standard decided to compete with free papers by supporting itself through advertising without too much of a corresponding drop in quality that might be a model that the MEN will investigate.
