Creative Times

Dear Editor,

How ironic to read about the Manchester Evening News outlining its new CityLife website in the same issue of Creative Times (11, Sept-Nov 2008) as a feature by Luke Bainbridge. After Luke Bainbridge resigned as editor in August 2003, the MEN management adopted a far more hands-on approach to the magazine, inflicting on it at the end of that year an editor with little knowledge or understanding of publishing, and even less of the city and what made it tick. I shall not dignify him by naming him.

In the 18 years I was involved with City Life, both when it was run as a workers’ co-operative and under MEN ownership - my name appears in comfortably more issues than that of anybody else - the magazine was authoritative, comprehensive, informed, and provocative. I was forced out in February 2004 by Luke’s replacement, and like much of Manchester, I ceased reading it. Was it authoritative, comprehensive, informed, and provocative under its final editor? The magazine published its final issue in December 2005, which perhaps goes some way to answering my question.

Wearing my hat as the Media and Communications Manager at the Library Theatre Company, I wish the MEN well with its CityLife website; publicity for the city’s creative community is always welcome. MEN Media’s Matt Davies is largely correct to say that “there is a lot going on in the city but so far it hasn’t been reflected in the media available”; how is it that in Bristol, for example, Venue thrives, while in Manchester, there is little but a handful of vacuous glossy ‘lifestyle’ magazines? Is Bristol really a greater creative powerhouse than Manchester?

It is approaching ancient history now, but if Matt’s employers had left City Life in the hands of people who understood it and the market it appealed to, MEN Media might still have had a credible what’s on magazine in its portfolio of publications.

Yours sincerely

Mike Barnett
mike.barnett@timewarp.co.uk