Macclesfield Express office to close

I've posted previously about how the 'Express shut their office on Chestergate - but at the time all concerned thought that a new office would be opening somewhere else in the town.

However news has been released today by the Guardian media group that the Macc Express will now be published from Manchester, and that some of the journalists will be losing their jobs.

This is terrible news for them and this is terrible news for us.

Macclesfield, whilst not strictly being in the middle of nowhere, isn't exactly part of the urban area of Manchester. We need local reporting in our local paper, and I fear that this will suffer with the news announced today.

Sadly, this is the part of a slow death for local news. Resources are being cut because the ignorant and hypocritical champagne socialist fat cats (oxymoron?) who run the guardian media group want to make a bit more cash (the chief execs package of £827,000 obviously isn't quite enough). The result is that this will turn the readers off. News will have less of a local feel. The express used to send a reporter to some of our local community meetings - this will now stop. Readership will drop, advertising revenue will plummet and that will be the reason for more redundancies in two years or possibly closing the paper altogether.

Coming from a left-wing media group who thought they championed the art of corporate social responsibility, this news makes me sick to the stomach. I knew that Toynbee didn't practice what she preached - but I didn't know that they were all at it in London.

As for the staff of the 'express who are lead by an excellent editor and who have all proved to be excellent over the last year, I wish them all well.