There may already be a BusinessWeek, but that isn’t stopping Manchester Evening News publisher MEN Media launching its own Business Week for the city.
Now owned by Trinity Mirror (LSE: TNI), MEN will publish a new, 40-page metropolitan business title and website with that name from next Thursday, produced by what it says is an existing in-house business reporting team that recently added two new staff.
Nothing to do with the original title, now owned by Bloomberg, of course.
There’s a wider local turf war going on…
Crain Communications came in to the north-west of England with Crain’s Manchester Business back in 2007, but TheBusinessDesk.com, a regional news site started by a redundant Birmingham Post editor, later launched a north-west website.
Crain shut its Manchester title this summer, citing loss of key advertisers, encouraging its readers to instead visit TheBusinessDesk.com.
MEN Media’s launch could be seen as attempt to regain the initiative from the upstart independent website.
(NB. The cover picture here is just our fun hypothetical)