Guardian Media Group close Manchester's weekly listings magazine, City Life

For all the media commentators out there, what do you think will happen? There's been speculation that Time Out will step in, which would be great. Is it likely that there simply won't be anything to replace it and Manchester will be left listings-free?

In order to keep our words and names out there myself and a few friends are planning to set up a weekly listings mailout with a basic website/blog. If anyone has any advice on how best to do this then that'd be great. I think London has one of these - www.putmedown.com ?

And if anyone has advice on how to jump onto a new listings ship before all the other rival freelancers do, then that'd be great too.

for FUCK'S SAKE. that is fucking criminal. they can afford to run an entire web operation that makes not a penny; spend zillions on a format change about which only six people actually cared; spend a fucking fortune on pointless flummery for the london papers ... yet they can't keep city life struggling along on its shoestring.

jesus wept. that's appalling.

the listings website is a great idea too. get to it.

as for what will happen: i have no idea. i don't know if time out are in a position to expand or not. at this point in time, all any serious media company will care about is: can they make cash from this? i don't think there's much long-term planning or altruism going on - everybody's too busy trying to survive.

apart from GMG, of course, which is burning cash on over-staffed and under-read london papers.

Apparently it was losing £1,000 a week. I don't know the circulation but I wonder if a price rise could have saved it.

And yeah, it's a disgrace. Manchester - and any other city - needs a solid listings magazine. I just hope it doesn't go like Liverpool with dozens and dozens of badly-written fanziney free mags.

and of course, feel free to e-mail if you think i can be of help at all.

Aside: how does the List do? Does it help that it covers Edinburgh and Glasgow? (x-post: should CL have covered Liverpool as well?)

ian: what's the union saying about city life? i assume there was a staff chapel?

They could claim that but it'd be pretty laughable to do so.
They have, at best, only ever featured certain nights and clubs (say, about 20 a week out of 150 plus) chosen seemingly whimsically without a ha'penny worth of care nor interest as to wether a featured club is either a) ever any good or b) ever very well attended.

There's a certain club night that has recently and consistently been rammed to the rafters each time, causing local hype and fuss a-plenty and getting fantastic responses accordingly. Number of times featured in The Guide = nil. Whereas certain other nights play to 2 goths and a dog yelping to be let out and get in every single time.

I wouldn't have them advise me where to sh it let alone anything else if u want the truth.

I think the way the structure of it is that the Scott Trust also owns GMG, but the latter can run its operations however it wants, unlike the special protection afforded to the Guardian. So basically, "You make us lots of plebby cash from AutoTrader, and treat your staff how you like" or something. Maybe.

for the readers or the writers/vendors?

As such, I've just (extremely foolishly) taken on the role of gig listings editor on A Newish Music Magazine's website. Wish me luck, I'm doing it gratis cos they've got no money...

And all the best to former City Life staffers/stringers, I wish you well.

-- It'strue

I don't live in Manchester and have never worked on the Guide, so take this with a pinch of salt if you want to... but with listings pages it's usually the responsibility of the club promoter to send in their details if they wish to be listed. On time. If they miss the deadline then that's their tough shit.

ha ha, bless. unfortunately we're too busy telling claire sweeney's pr we really don;t want an exclusive interview to chase up random listings each week, though i take your point. and even if we do snaffle up half-a-dozen nights we might have otherwise missed, there's still dozens more that slip through the net - most of whom have no desire to be listed anyway.

for what it's worth, i don;t think Time Out is going to step in and save City Life. or if they are, they're keeping it v quiet.

They'd farm the contract out to some local operation, as they have done with Bangkok, Dubai, Hong Kong and various other expat outposts.

-- CharlieNo4 (starsandheroe...), November 29th, 2005.

so otm it hurts. trying to find out what's going on in any city anywhere without actually living there is impossible, always has been.

-- Hello Sunshine (fiver_the_bunn...), November 29th, 2005.

if that happens i'm leaving the country. i'd seriously rather die than see that happen.

I thought the whole point of the GMG was to be ruthless and money-driven expressly so the Scott Trust couldafford to be all indulgent with its papers. The Unlimited websites must lose more than £1000 a week, surely. Don't they cost £16m a year?

Either way, this is *definitely* the time to launch yr listing websites. Britain is really crying out from some Craiglist-style action too. Tie those together and you are on to a winner.

get one myspace.com...

A bit drastic, given that you wouldn't be legally obliged to buy it or anything.

Besides, some would say that Manchester alone isn't big enough to support a weekly listings mag (hence what this thread it all about).

you go and tell n3wsqvest that, nick!

the guardian's place in the future is sure as fuck not going to be based on a full-content website that costs nothing to read. and as soon as they start charging: bang, end of guardian "unlimited".

sure, it's a lovely suite of sites. but they must be shitting bricks trying to work out what the HELL they do to make it make them some cash.

Given that it's GU Talk that results in the biggest number of page hits on the site (and hence dictates how much they can charge advertisiers), they really couldn't afford for that to happen.

oh sorry, there is another way, as practiced by the (loss-making, anyway) Independent, and that's charging more than the cost of a copy of the paper to read archived articles. anyone know if that's payinf off at all? I doubt it.

CharlieNo4: No, it isn't. And it won't.

the rolling London gigging thread

e.g Liverpool is European Capital of Culture in 2008 - they have be given millions by the EU to fund this.

is there currently a Liverpool listings mag?

is this the GMG way of dealing with an argument ... nick off for a pint and hope it wins itself? ;)

i understand that it is difficult to be as pro active as might be desirable, but ultimately, those listings are goign in to make your paper more attractive. tyhey sell your publication - i sure as hell dont buy time out for the editorial. journalists dont wait for the public to phone in stories, they go out and chase them. if listings are significant enough part of a publication to warrant publishing, in terms of increasing circulation, then you have to make a decision about how much resource you will devote to making sure that the listings are as accurate, relevant and interesting enough to your readership. if you make a commercial decision such as "this simply isnt worth pursuing, our readers dont buy our paper for listings" then scrap the section, thats fair enough, but assigning responsibility without sound commercial logic behind it is in the long term, fatal, it seems to me.

hahahahahah, hoooo! heheheh. [chokes on soup]

if listings are significant enough part of a publication to warrant publishing, in terms of increasing circulation, then you have to make a decision about how much resource you will devote to making sure that the listings are as accurate, relevant and interesting enough to your readership.

fair enough, but let me give you a scenario. i have a day and a half at most per week to process and upload about 300 emails onto our gig listings database. i work for nothing. oh, and i also apparently cover THE WHOLE COUNTRY.

i'll tell you now, there are not enough hours in the day for me to call all the gig venues in frickin' *Camden*, let alone anywhere else! If I'm not emailed, it doesn't go in, pure and simple - and many which are emailed, also don't go in, also due to time constraints.

tough shit, folks - you want to employ me, go right ahead...

time out is successful becasue one of its primary objectives is to provide listings. that it devotes a large chunk of its resources (i assume) eg. actually paying people to collate them, is reflected in the fact that i cant think of anything in this country that is able to provide such wide ranging*, comprehensive** and accurate*** listings for london. that there are a) enough things on in london to devote a magazine to b) enough of a readership to still pay increasing amounts to access tghose listings is the secret of its success. its true that it seems to be shrinking the listings focus of content, and featuring more guff editorial/features, might undercut my theory, but it still feels like a listings magazine, and appears from the outside to be doing ok on that.

* yes it does onkly cover a certain spectrum of events, loads of different types of things are missed. but given its wide scope, and pagination, it doesnt do badly.
** yes it misses an enourmous number of gigs, nights, clubs, shows etc etc....some dude scraping away on a laptop in a pub doesnt get in etc etc. but it still manages to catch a large amount of what is going on
*** yes, it is often dreadfully misleading. but ever tried using thwe guide? that is worse in my experience, for starters. time out is stil lthe most accurate listings guide ive seen.

You're making a massive, MASSIVE presumption here though - you're assuming that any event that isn't listed in Time Out, or The Guide, or any other listings-based publication, has been "missed" by a negligent editor.

Thos is clearly rubbish. Some submitted listings don't make the cut because they're inaccurate, or too insignificant, or incomplete, or otherwise lacking - or indeed, because the smarmy bassist once came on to the listings editor's sister, or whatever. There are a million reasons to make editorial choices, and these choices are made in listings just as much as they are in full-on copy.

Hell, at my old paper I'd cut bands because they had stupid names, cinemas because they had poncy titles, film showings because they infringed on my lovely cut-outs, anything that sounded pretentious, anything that involved hair bands, or just anything I didn't like. The listings are hack and burn territory, that's for sure.

now i feel bad. still, fuck it: most of the "events" involved the Happy Gang, and i always had my suspicions about them.

Leeds has the Leeds Guide (glossy fortnightly mag) with its associated website, plus leedsmusicscene, run by local promoter Dave Sugden, with a message board that seems to be populated by every band member and promoter in West Yorkshire. There are also a couple of laughable local wannabe style mags, full of advertorials for canalside apartments and eateries, but I don't think anyone's ever actually read them.

wasn't it hard-copy at one point?

haha xpost -- shit *and* a professional rival!

Huh-huh, huh-huh

Not that you're still bitter or anything...

im not ragging on listings editors per se, or trying to say that editors should be including everything and making sure that they go out to collect everything, just that i think the editors job is to match the listings page so it reflects what its target audience would be interested in. if it isnt able to do that successfully, then i cant see the point of bothering with such a section at all. the readers wont miss it, and you dont have to bother dealing with people trying to get you to publish their listings.

its difficult for me to empathise with the other side of the coin, as everytime i have tried to get listings published, i have been dealt with by turns rudely, unprofessionally or in an unbusinesslike manner, or just plain incomprehensibly.

i think it grates because whislt legitimate reasons for rejecting listings are fine, but rejecting listings "cos you dont like the name of the band" is pure smugness.
theres nothing wrong with being smug if you occupy the high ground. but with print media, to generalise, everytime you look at the ABCs, those numbers are going down, overall, save a few successes. Businesses (and im not talking about editors as such!) who act with contempt for customers and suppliers will ultimately suffer. thats it.

1) paid-for "listings-led" publications, eg time out, are produced to hellish deadlines by underpaid staff. they do not have the time to go out and pro-actively find listings - and anyway, where the hell would they begin? ringing everybody in the phone book to see if they happen to be putting on a club night?

they will, however, make an informed editorial judgement on what to print. as long as you're providing them the information within deadline, and with all the details they require, i can't see why they won't print it. unless you've shagged their sister, etc.

2) entertainment supplements that also carry listings, such as the guardian guide, are going to give waaay less of a fuck. i don't think anybody in the universe buys the guardian (or the paper stet and i worked for) for its listings: they're one of those additional-value services that newspapers include for the benefit of the few hundred readers who'd moan like buggery if they weren't there.

stet and i used to work 70-hour weeks on that paper. when a quarter-page advert came in on a thursday just as you were just putting the finishing touches to the arts section, you had a simple choice: redraw, re-sub and ruin a feature, or hack 60 lines out of the arts listings and hoy it in there. which one were people going to notice? clue: not the listings.

3) to be honest, people like ian and charlie and anyone else who actively wants to be involved in the provision of listings are beautiful, crazy, wonderful guys providing a great service. isn't the fact they're willing to spend time and effort turning scrappy bits of paper/e-mails saying "mi clubb iz onn thursdaye in town at the pubBb" into decent information enough, without expecting them to trawl the streets every night just in case they can hear the distant sound of a man with an iPod playing to three people?

since i took my first tentative steps into journalism more than ten years ago, i've dealt with an awful lot of promoters. like charlie says above: the ones who get their shit in print are the ones who provide concise, sensible information and understand the concept of deadlines. the ones who get fucked over are the ones who don't.

City Life - a Manchester entertainment magazine which began as a workers' co-operative - is in serious danger of being closed by Guardian Media.

Cost-cutting bosses want to shut the paper on December 7th and axe all the newspaper's staff - many of whom are members of the National Union of Journalists.

As an act of solidarity, a protest is being held outside the Guardian offices on 119 Farringdon Road at 1pm Friday 2nd December, and continued outside the offices of the Guardian Media Group, 75 Farringdon Road.

A simultaneous protest will be held outside the Guardian offices in Manchester.

City Life - a Manchester entertainment magazine which began as a workers' co-operative - is in serious danger of being closed by Guardian Media. Cost-cutting bosses want to shut the paper on December 7th and axe all the newspaper's staff - many of whom are members of the National Union of Journalists.

As an act of solidarity, a protest is being held outside the Guardian offices on 119 Farringdon Road at 1pm Friday 2nd December, and continued outside the offices of the Guardian Media Group, 75 Farringdon Road. A simultaneous protest will be held outside the Guardian offices in Manchester.

"we now distribute 6,000 free copies to residents living in the city centre.."

fck me i never knew that.

haha grimly i kiss you! very accurate sample email too - oh, except for the "onn thursdaye" bit, which about 30% of them leave out entirely...

shooting's too good for them :)

as for northcliffe, which HS mentions above: the difference there is that people (including our lot) are queuing up to buy the titles :(

I have a lovely mental image of half a dozen blokes standing around in a deserted nightclub, wondering why their gorgeous fliers had failed to attract a single punter...

ian: WORK WITH WILSON. it'll fall apart after five seconds, but what a glorious and fun five seconds they'll be.

(also, expect a package through your door in the next few days - was waiting for the series finale of CYE and it aired last night)

(xpost for Grimly)

Monday's MG had a whole article all about the state of regional publishing in the wake of the Northcliffe sale, but one obvious case study was lacking...