Trinity Mirror today revealed it was looking at several potential new locations for the Manchester Evening News and denied that the proposed move to Oldham was a done deal.

Guardian Media Group confirmed yesterday it had sold the flagship daily together with 30 weekly titles to Trinity for £7.4m cash and the cancellation of a printing deal worth £37.4m.

It later emerged that the MEN journalists and those on their 21 sister weeklies in Greater Manchester could be moving to Oldham as the MEN building at 1 Scott Place has not been included in the sale.

But today, Trinity Mirror made clear that no final decision had been made and that the papers could yet remain in the city of Manchester – although not at their current location.

A company spokesman said: “Trinity Mirror has only been granted a six-month license for the occupation of Scott Place and we therefore have no other option but to relocate MEN Media.

“The proposal to move to our Oldham site is only one of a number of options we are currently considering and we are in the process of looking at several properties in Greater Manchester.”

The latest development came as Manchester City Council revealed it is seeking talks with the company over its plans for the MEN.

In a statement today, the city council said it hoped to meet with the new owners to, “discuss their plans for the paper and how we can work with them.”

It added: “If Trinity Mirror’s acquisition of the Manchester Evening News and its weekly titles will secure their futures, that can only be good news for the city and the wider Manchester city region.

“There has been speculation that the MEN may move from the city centre. Even if true, there is no suggestion that the MEN would leave the Manchester city region.”

Reaction to yesterday’s sell-off among city and media analysts has by and large tended towards the view that Trinity Mirror got the better of the deal.

Lorna Tilbian, a media analyst at Numis, described it as “the deal of the decade” for Trinity Mirror chief executive Sly Bailey.

Paul Gooden, analyst at Royal Bank of Scotland, told the FT: “The disposal price of £44.7m looks very low, particularly as only a small proportion of it is cash.”

And business writer David Prosser in The Independent described the deal “yet another indication of GMG’s determination to bet the house on all things digital.”

He said: “It has sold a profitable group of local newspapers (albeit with profitability in decline) in order to subsidise its loss-making national newspaper division, which is obsessed with the idea of a multimedia future and, specifically, the view that charging for online content is the wrong way to proceed.

“The group can only go on selling off the family silver in order to finance unprofitable new adventures for so long.”

But Enders Analysis, usually prophets of doom when it comes to the regional press, described the sale of as a “win, win” situation for both parties.

Douglas McCabe of Enders said: “Trinity Mirror gets the benefits of synergies and cost savings in the north-west and south. GMG gets an opportunity to focus on its core business.”

Comments

All Subbed Out (10/02/2010 14:30:02)
Anyone who can see what (very little) is left of the once proud Birmingham Post & Mail group and its associated weeklies can only feel very, very sorry for the staff – and readers – of the Manchester Evening News and its associated weeklies now they have fallen to Trinity Mirror.

Alan Salter (10/02/2010 15:18:13)
My experience there was that there was never any good reason to have offices in the city.
How long, though, before Trinity decide to have a subbing hub just iff tghe M62?

nowtynowt (10/02/2010 15:25:45)
It’s the M60 isn’t it, Alan?
And just to show how London-centric GMG is these days, it doesn’t even know how far TM Printing is from Manchester city centre – only 5 miles, not 10 as quoted in the good old Grauniad.

Alan Salter (10/02/2010 16:22:04)
nowtynowt: I was thinking of half way between Manchester and Liverpool…

ex-sub (10/02/2010 16:35:47)
A subbing hub off the M62 (or even M60)? Remember that for the last year and a bit the Liverpool papers have all been sub-free zones.
At one level it actually works. But the old skills ranging from design to basic fact-checking are atrophying before my eyes. Sad.

Hamburger Bill (10/02/2010 16:59:07)
Trinity Mirror will one day cotton on to the simple answer – a subbing hub on the moon. It would after all be equidistant to the entire globe during the day and allow them to starve their journalists of oxygen as well as jobs!

nelson (11/02/2010 15:36:57)
“The Times” : Georgina Harvey..”Business Big Shot”. You would hope the spelling would be better in the Times.Another newspaper company for her to wreck.