US publishing giant Crain Communications is set to launch a weekly financial newspaper in Manchester this December creating up to 25 jobs.
Crain Communications publishes city-based financial titles like Crain’s New York Business
Following its success with citybased financial titles in New York, Cleveland, Chicago and Detroit, the company, which has titles across Europe and the USA, hopes to achieve similar growth in the UK.
The newspaper, run by publisher Arthur Porter, will be called Crain’s Manchester Business and be partnewsstand and part-controlled circulation, costing £2 where sold.
There will initially be around eight journalists, rising to as many as 25 in the future. Discussions with prospective editors are currently underway but the paper’s management would not comment on possible recruits. Depending on advertising, the tabloid Crain’s Manchester will be between 24 and 40 pages.
Porter said: “I brought a trade mission over here a few years ago when Malcolm Glazer bought Manchester United; that was the catalyst for it. I was the publisher of the Tampa Business Journal [in Florida] at the time and when I came back on this trade trip I saw there had been a huge change that had happened in Manchester since the IRA bomb [in 1996] and the Commonwealth Games [in 2002]. Manchester was a perfect venue for a city business newspaper.
“Every single city in the United States has its own weekly city business newspaper, but there weren’t any here – Crain wanted to expand its empire outside of the US so it made sense for me to join the company and do it here.
“The professional services industry in Manchester is huge; certainly outside of London it’s one of the biggest in Europe.The opportunities here are very, very big.”
The Manchester project is the second major journalism launch in the English regions in as many months. At the end of July, KoS Media revealed that it was spending £1 million launching eight new weekly newspapers across Kent leading to the creation of up to 20 journalism jobs.
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