An American university made a transatlantic bid to change a headline on a regional daily’s website over misplaced fears about explosive chemicals on its campus.

The Manchester Evening News was contacted by Manchester University, in Indiana, about a headline on a live blog entitled ‘Manchester University buildings evacuated due to concerns over explosive chemicals’.

The blog was launched to update MEN readers after buildings at the University of Manchester were evacuated yesterday morning over concerns about the way acetone peroxide was being stored.

Anne Gregory, a press officer at the university’s American namesake tweeted the MEN’s crime reporter John Scheerhout, who was working on the blog, to request the headline be changed.

The offending headline on the MEN’s blog

Anne posted that the university had received calls from people fearing they were evacuating their campus.

However, John rebuffed her suggestion. Posting on the social networking site, he joked: “I have informed the press officer at Mcr Uni in Indiana (Anne) that we had the name first.”

John told HTFP:  “I had to read the tweet two or three times. I couldn’t believe it. You would have hoped a student in the US would have the nouse to realise this was a story from across the pond.

“I did a bit of research and to be fair to Manchester University in Indiana it does have a very long history going back to 1860.

“It only became Manchester University in 2012, however, so I think the University of Manchester, with a history dating back to 1851 and which became Victoria University of Manchester in 1903, has a prior claim on the title.

“My news editor took about a millisecond to turn down the request to change our headline. At least it gave us a good laugh in the newsroom and shows our website’s reach is pretty phenomenal. We might be losing a few US students now though!”